Baby Steps

On Sunday we returned from our Spring Break Southern Baseball trip.  For the most part, it was a struggle trying to win games.  Our opponents were other northern DII teams who were doing the same thing we were doing—beginning the season in warmer weather without having to miss any time in the classroom.

We began the trip in Louisville for the second straight weekend.  Though we didn’t win any of our four games there, on Sunday our starting pitchers, both in their first college starts, did a great job of pitching late enough in the games and giving us a chance to win the games.  When we went from Louisville to Clearwater, Florida, the struggles continued as our starting pitchers kept us in the games roughly half of the time.

As the hitters were having their own issues trying to be more consistent in reaching base, moving and driving home runners, and extending rallies, our starting pitchers often set the tone early in each game, good or bad.  By the end of the trip, the hitters started to find a groove, and scoring runs seemed to come a little easier.  Not only were we swinging the bats better, but we had so many more good at bats later in the trip than we did earlier in the week.

We ended up winning only the last game of the trip, just prior to showering and boarding the bus for the 21 hour ride home.  That last game victory, in combination with scoring significantly more runs in the last few games than we had done in our previous games, made the bus ride home a little more enjoyable.  The twelve game trip also gave us opportunities to see some guys get valuable experience, and provided on the job learning for players and coaches alike.

I am in my 26^th year as a college baseball coach.  I have experience early season struggles several times in the past.  One of the many important aspects of trying to improve as a team is dealing with the mental part of being competitive athletes and being great teammates while dealing with disappointment.  We have had a series of what we call ‘chalk talks’, beginning in the first semester, to discuss ideas and definitions of things like what a team is and what teammates are, of expectations, confidence, belief, trust, communication, and team goals, etc.  Sometimes it is easy for athletes to understand mental/emotional concepts and theories, but more difficult to put them into practice when they get in competitive situations.

When athletes and teams are in the process of doing new things, like we are doing, the learning curve can sometimes take backwards steps before taking leaps forward.  Understanding that belief in one’s self is one thing, but putting that belief into action and successfully executing in perceived pressure situations can be a difficult challenge.

Our players are getting better, and thus the team is improving.  Our goals for the season, to compete in the post-season for a championship, are still there for us to achieve as we begin our GLIAC conference schedule this week.  The ability of our guys to check their thoughts, use Thought Replacement Therapy when necessary, visualize success, and compete like dirtbags is getting better each day. 

I’m looking forward to seeing where their efforts take us in the next couple months!!

Back to Louisville

We played our first two games last weekend in Louisville against Davis & Elkins College out of West Virginia.  Our Sunday doubleheader against Alderson Broaddus University was canceled due to rain, sleet and snow.  Though we hoped to play all four scheduled games, getting the two games in gave us a starting point and a good idea of some things to focus on during this week's practices.

We came out of the doubleheader with a split.  We won game one 3-2 and lost the second game by a 6-1 score.  From a pitching perspective, our starting pitchers did a good enough job to give us a chance to win in both games, and in that respect, they did what we always want starting pitchers to do.

In game one, Shane Armstrong did a very good job of damage control, considering that his first pitch strike percentage was well below our goal and his overall strike percentage hovered at 50%.  Taking care of damage control is evidenced by the two double plays that we turned with him on the mound and allowing only three hits in 5 1/3 innings.  The double plays, in combination with allowing only three hits, made the low strike percentage and a handful of freebies tolerable and allowed us to give up only two runs and win the game.  The bullpen did a great job, as Colin Gerish induced another double play ball after he entered with one out in the sixth and Dan Pochmara struck out three batters in the seventh for the save.

In the second game, Matt Reck pitched very much like Shane had previously done.  Matt did a better job at getting first pitch strikes (14 of 21), but like Shane, his overall strike percentage wasn't what it should be. Matt did give us a chance to win, as he did a good job with damage control by also allowing only three hits. He left the game as we trailed 2-1 in the sixth inning after allowing the first two runners to reach base, but when we went to the bullpen, we did not take care of damage control; thus D & E put a rally together in the bottom of the sixth.

We do have to tip our cap to the Davis & Elkins game two pitcher, as he did a nice job of pitching at the bottom of the strike zone, not letting our hitters string together many hits and push runners across the plate.

We were happy to give our head coach Eric Theisen his first college head coaching victory, but he knows as well as the rest of us do that we can play and execute much better than we did in earning the doubleheader split.  We have plenty of chances to do that this weekend with four nine-inning games in Louisville and then eight more next week in Florida.

We've only just begun, and the attitudes of our players and their willingness to keep working hard will result in daily and weekly improvements.  A week of baseball in the warm weather, with nothing else to think about.....beginning with tomorrow's bus ride.....well, it doesn't get much better than that!

Opening Weekend is Upon Us! Charge On!!

A week from now, the Hillsdale College Baseball Team will be on a bus, riding back from a weekend of four games in Louisville, Kentucky in our season's opening weekend.  We have had five good weeks of practice, with another five practices left, to prepare not just for next weekend, but for the entire season.

One of the major goals for next weekend is to return with four wins.  Among some of the other goals, or sub-goals, will be to do what it takes to win those games.  An easy explanation for stating the goals of the pitching staff is simply to execute pitches.  We need to execute pitches during every at bat, in every inning, in each of the four games, in order to give the team a good chance to win games.  Ultimately, each game's starting pitcher has the job of giving his teammates a chance to win each game.

How do we do that?  Well, as with pretty much every pitching staff in the country, we will need to be able to throw quality fastballs inside.......and outside.  We also need to throw quality fastballs at the bottom and top of the strike zone.  The goal on each pitch is to get the hitter to swing and make an out.  Though each pitcher is unique, in addition to throwing quality fastballs at many edges of the strike zone, each guy will need to be able to execute their off-speed pitches.  Curve balls, sliders, cutters, changeups, and other varieties of off-speed pitches also need to be thrown for the purpose of getting hitters to swing and make outs.

When pitchers can get batters to swing, especially early in the count, it becomes a game of nine versus one, in the sense that the pitcher is letting the hitters get themselves out by hitting the baseball to the defensive players, who will execute the plays they have practiced and envisioned for weeks.  It is a simple formula that is sometimes easier to complete than at other times, but a formula that requires confidence, intelligence, and emotional control as well as physical execution.

This will be my first season with all of these guys, but since September they have all made great efforts to be on the same page, to get stronger and more athletic, to buy in to what the coaching staff is trying to do, and to be the best teammates they can possibly be.  They have built their pitch counts up to 80-100 pitches and have improved the overall health of their arms in the process.

On the pitching staff, we have one guy returning from injury and will throw his first inning off the mound this week, and we have another who had an unfortunate injury when he was kicked in the hand by a horse while volunteering to help a local elderly woman with some chores.  He had surgery on a broken finger and will have pins removed from his hand after our spring break trip.  The rest of the pitchers who had some arm tenderness in the fall or in January are now feeling great, so we are ready for next weekend's 28 innings and feel confident in the quality and depth of the staff.

As happens every year at this time, I can't wait to get on the field and watch these guys give 100%, 100% of the time.  It will be a privilege for me to witness them compete and win games, and it's going to happen a lot!!

The same, only different--2014

We have completed the first of our six weeks of indoor, pre-season practices.  For those of you who have been reading my blog posts in previous seasons while I was Adrian College, now that I am at Hillsdale College, our pre-season practices are the same, only different!  I didn't look back to see what I wrote the last couple of years in January, but I'm sure there are paragraphs I could copy and paste here in 2014.

So, I can at least write about what things are the same, and what things are different.  Let's go with the differences, first.

During my nine seasons at Adrian College I was working part-time there, and my full-time job was in the local public schools.  At Hillsdale now, I am on campus full-time, as I had previously been in my sixteen years at Siena Heights.  There are several differences when we compare a full-time job to a part-time position, most notably the fact that being on campus all day, every day, allows me to be in contact more often with our players, my fellow coaches, and the rest of the college community.

Another difference is that I work with different coaches now, and though I enjoyed all of the coaches I have been privileged to work with before, I now get to work with my son Eric, who as the head coach is my boss. Eric and I share an office, and that means that now I am with him usually for eight hours or more every day, at least during the winter months.  Unless you have had this sort of opportunity to work with your own son, you can only imagine how awesome every day is for me!

I also have the opportunity to work with our hitting coach Brad Kocher for the first time, and though we don't share the same office, he is right down the hall.  Working with Brad has proven to be an easy and comfortable thing to do, both personally and professionally.  We also have a new volunteer coach who is working with our catchers.  Joe Dubina is a former Adrian College catcher with whom I was able to coach for four years.  He is a public school teacher, and he brings a special kind of passion to coaching catchers. He is already helping our team get better every day.

There are several other differences as well, and perhaps we'll get into those in the future.  Some things included in a list of differences include my additional roles as part of being full-time, the different indoor practice facilities, the number of players in the program, being in a different division of the NCAA and a different conference, and the beauty of my 35 mile drive to work on the country roads of southern Michigan.

What is the same?  That's easy, and awesome.  In January and February we continue a plan of action to prepare for the spring season.  As pitching coach, I get to prepare the pitching staff in an aggressive yet patient manner to pitch against opponents by the first of March.  We are following the same plan of preparation that I had been following during the pre-season in my previous seasons at Adrian.

Physically, the pitchers will gradually work their way up to throwing at least 80 pitches live before we play a game.  Mentally, they are learning our philosophies of pitching by working toward achieving a set of goals that are designed to give the team the best possible chance to win games and championships.  Everything we do at practice is determined by our team and pitching staff goals.  Statistical goals, strategic goals, fitness goals, goals of attitude, emotional control, and the progression from pre-season to the regular season and into the post-season are part of the entire plan.

In practicing with repetition and progression, including the practice of visualization and self-talk, the understanding of sacrificing for teammates and for a common cause, our players (and thus the team) are improving every day, like many others across the country.  Improvement doesn't just happen, it is done intentionally as individuals and as a team.  That does not change.

And of course, our main objectives as a pitching staff are still the same......throw first pitch strikes, get leadoff batters out.