Baseball on Easter Sunday

Eighteen games into the MIAA schedule we are now 17-1, with ten games left to play.  Half of our four game series against Hope College was postponed due to Friday's weather, and those games will be made up on May 10th.  Though I was hoping we would play last Friday, now we will be able to use six different starting pitchers during that last week (Friday, Saturday, Tuesday) and thus have some more of our pitchers prepared for the Regional Tournament.

Though we still can't count our chickens before they hatch and we can't take a Regional appearance for granted, our practice of believing in ourselves gives us the opportunity to visualize the regionals already.  Our closest competitor in the loss column is Kalamazoo College at 9-7, and the next best team in the win column is Calvin College at 12-8.  We play our Kalamazoo series in two weeks, and we have already played Calvin.

Early in the season, or actually in the pre-season, I had the pitchers use visualization while we practiced inside.  For the returning players, I told them to envision being on the mound at Marietta College's field.  That is where the Mideast Regional tournament was last year and again next month that will be the site.  All of the players who played last season in that tournament are able to visualize themselves being successful on Marietta's field, and that can only help us when we get there.

Again though, we still have to take care of business in our last ten games.  Yesterday we swept Hope, with Ryan Domschot throwing another shutout in game #1, which gives our pitching staff eight shutouts in our 18 conference games, and seven shutouts in our last twelve games.  That is an indicator that we are continuing to improve, but we have to keep reminding our guys that no matter how well we have been playing, there are still mistakes made that we can learn from and thus make ourselves a better team.

The luxury that a team has when it is playing well is that in trying to improve on weaknesses, or mistakes, it is easier to pick out those mistakes after games because there aren't as many of them as in a poorly played game.  In providing feedback after a bad game, there are often so many mistakes to try to hash out and then some of them can unfortunately be overlooked.  After well played games, we can look at the mistakes we made and spend some time in dialogue as well as in practice to try to take care of those situations more effectively in the future.

Yesterday our hitters did a great job of giving us a lead early in each game.  They executed great in all situations and hit a few long balls for good measure.  Though the homers by Brian Bilius and Nate Sarkissian were great, special props go to senior Nate Clark for absolutely crushing his first career homerun!

Today was a fantastic Easter Sunday.  I was able to watch some baseball on tv with my kids, cook a roast along with potatoes and veggies for us, watch a movie, and nap on the couch.  These kind of days don't happen as much as I would like anymore!!  I'm grateful for the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, and for being able to share this day with both of my kids!!

Go Adrian College Bulldogs!!

Business as Usual

A lot has happened in the almost two weeks since we played Heidelberg College, unfortunately most of what was happening had to do with Mother Nature trying to prolong winter here in the Great Lakes Region.  Our MIAA conference openers last Friday were postponed due to cold temperatures and rescheduled for May.  But when we got to practice Monday we were informed that we would play our four game series against Calvin College on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Therefore, we (and Calvin) now faced the prospect of playing four conference doubleheaders in the next five days.

As soon as Coach Rainey told me the news of the week's schedule, I genuinely painted a positive picture of the opportunity that it presented for our pitching staff.  Then I was able to meet the pitchers in the left field corner and tell them the great news.  This was going to be an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we have a very deep and talented pitching staff.  Our conference format of 28 games over seven weeks, facing one conference opponent each week (a doubleheader at our place and a doubleheader on the road), puts us in a position of using our top four pitchers in those games.  Because the games are seven innings (rather than nine innings), if our pitchers are efficient in their starts we don't need to use our bullpen very often.

As I presented the scenario to our pitching staff on Monday, it was clear that I was excited.  I have been saying for the past few years that our schedule has not prepared us as well as possible for our Regional Tournament and DIII World Series, tournaments in which we play nine inning games.  We are forced to use the bullpen more in the post-season, and thus we use some guys who haven't pitched much in legitimate pressure situations.  Sure, they have pitched some quality innings, but nothing like the kind of innings we play against great teams in the post-season.  So I told the pitchers that this week we would probably use six or eight starting pitchers and that would be a good thing for us, for the reasons already mentioned above.

What has happened so far is working out to be exactly the way I thought it would.  We have played our first six of the week's eight games, and have won all six.  On Tuesday we used our staff aces, Ryan Domschot and DavePartyka, our only two senior pitchers.  They were their usual dominant selves, as we won by scores of 3-2 and 4-2.  Again, our defense was also outstanding.  We struck out 19 batters in the 14 innings and gave up only eight hits.  As I predicted in my previous blog post, our hitters started to make strides as well, and this was only the beginning of the offense getting back to being fat (in a great way)!!

On Wednesday we went to Calvin and beat them twice again, with Jason Fryman throwing a complete game on only 67 pitches in the opener and Josh Burd, getting his first start, going the first five innings in game two.  Freshman Mike Osterman made his first varsity appearance and pitched the last two innings, allowing only one hit.  During the wins by scores of 6-2 and 9-1, the offense continued to improve and our pitchers allowed no walks in 14 innings.

Yesterday we began our four game series against Trine, playing at home.  Game one was started by sophomore Zach Robbins, who had some shoulder tenderness after our southern trip.  He was perfect through four innings, and then walked two guys and hit one in the fifth.  We decided to take him out after five, even though he had a no-hitter going.  Sean Hartman pitched the last two innings and did not allow a run as we won 6-0.  Freshman Rylie Robinson started game two, and after throwing five innings of 2-hit baseball we took him out so that Brent Greenwood and Craig Steadman could shut down the opposition in the sixth and seventh innings for a 5-0 win.  For the day we threw 14 innings and again with great defense, did not allow a run and gave up only five hits.

I had told the pitchers that if we ever threw two shutouts in one day they would be treated to some batting practice, so at today's practice they will get to take some swings.  Hopefully we can limit them to only a handful of swings each, and then we can be prepared for tomorrow's doubleheader at Trine and continue with  business as usual.

Tomorrow, Head Coach Craig Rainey will be going for his 400th victory at Adrian College.  If we play up to our expectations, he will also get victory #401 and we will be off to a good start to the 2011 MIAA season!  I'm sure he is more focused on getting one victory at a time tomorrow rather than reaching a milestone like 400, as are we, but it is always special to be able to congratulate a friend for such an accomplishment!!

Bittersweet weekend....time to eat an elephant

The weekend is over and spring has arrived, we have played nine non-conference games, and now it is time to prepare for a 28 game conference schedule.

As for the weekend, it was bittersweet.  After beating the nation's top ranked Heidelberg College team in a 2-1, ten inning game yesterday, Heidelberg turned the tables on us today and won another ten inning game by the same 2-1 score.  One could say that the weekend was a success, but it didn't necessarily feel that way when the last out was made in today's tenth inning.

When a team comes so close to knocking off the top ranked team in two consecutive games, only to lose the second one, it might be natural to feel a little deflated.  The way I generally try to look at things is that it is now time to prepare for the next game.  A team is only as good as its next game.  Our last game is over and has been entered into the history books, but if we indeed achieve one of our often stated goals of trying to improve every day, we have to take a look at these two games, evaluate our performance, and look for ways to improve.

We did some things very well this weekend.  As in our last two games (two weeks ago in Florida against Marietta College), we pitched well and played great defense.  In two games (20 innings) against Heidelberg we gave up a total of three runs, one of which was earned.  As for that earned run, it was scored when a fly ball to deep left-center was caught by left fielder Kyle Strawn and the runner on second base advanced to third and home.  It was a very good defensive play by Strawn and an outstanding hustle play by the Heidelberg runner to score all the way from second base (an extremely rare occurrence) .

So we can say that we did a pretty good job pitching, but it was a little more difficult to pitch all those shutout innings than it was against Marietta two weeks ago.  Against Marietta we retired the leadoff batter in 15 of the 17 innings we played.  Anytime you get the first batter out, there is a lot less pressure on the pitcher and defense.  We walked more Heidelberg batters (this weekend we walked 14 batters in 20 innings) than we did Marietta batters (4 walks in 17 innings) and thus had to make more stressful pitches this weekend.

What we did a very good job of, partly due to allowing more freebies, was maintaining damage control.  It is an important part of pitching that the pitchers and I often talk about.  One of the reasons we were able to prevent Heidelberg from scoring when they had runners on base so often was that we did a great job of getting strikeouts and pop outs with runners on base.  Runners don't advance on strikeouts and pop outs; thus we successfully pitched and played great defense in crucial situations and kept the Student Princes from scoring.....in other words, our damage control was pretty good.

What can we do better?  As a pitching staff, we need to do a better job of allowing the hitters to get themselves out and thus make it easier on us.  By allowing freebies and pitching so often with runners on base, we are forced to throw more pitches than we would like to throw.  Therefore, efficiency is probably the most important thing our pitching staff has to improve on as we prepare for our first conference games.

We all know that we also need to score more runs, and I am confident that will come with time as our hitters face game pitching more consistently (remember, we had gone two weeks without playing a game).  We do have to tip our caps to the pitchers Heidelberg threw at us this weekend, just as we had to give Marietta's pitchers credit for keeping the games low scoring.  As we play our MIAA conference games, I'm sure our batting averages and situational hitting will gradually improve, and soon we will put up some good offensive numbers.....it happens every year!!

And now that spring is here, we hope to have warmer weather on a more consistent basis.  That is another thing that can help any team score more runs!

MIAA conference games begin for us Friday when we play two home games against Calvin College.  Saturday we will travel to Calvin for two more games.  In the last two seasons, we have won 48 conference games and lost only eight in earning the MIAA Championship both years.  Our goal is to win every conference game that we play, but just one at a time.  The regular season MIAA Champion earns an automatic berth into the NCAA Division III Regionals, which is the first step in earning a trip to the DIII World Series in Appleton, Wisconsin.

The path to the World Series is like eating an elephant, which one can only do one bite at a time.  We have taken a few small bites already; now it is time to put on the bib and get to work on the main part of that elephant.  Personally, I am proud of our entire Adrian College team; they have played well enough to know for sure that they are one of the country's best DIII baseball teams!!