Well ,that was interesting

Nice comeback by the guys, but we fell a little short. That's something where we were facing probably the best pitcher in the league, and that makes it tough to get something going offensively.

Tonite was a good game, because the guys seemed to be interested, they were up on the fence a lot cheering on their teammates, and weren't acting downtrodden about the situation. I really enjoyed being the coach of this group tonite.

I was looking at the book, and I can go with a positive spin, or be negative, so I'm gonna go positive! Here goes...
Alex pitched 5 1/3 innings for the Rays. Of those 16 outs, 13 were strikeouts, he caught 1 pop up from Sam, and picked us off 2nd once. The only out that didn't involve Alex was a 6-3 groundout by Jerald. (Alex also surrendered 3 walks, Jerald reached on an error, Nick got a hit, and Austin reached on a catcher's interference.)

Not so hot hitting by us, but here is where I am happy. I see Juniors LL as development for Jr Hi ball. Going down our lineup, every single person on our team got us outs defensively tonite. We aren't getting much practice due to track and weather, but the guys are getting their opportunity to get outs, and improve themselves.

Through the first 6 innings for the Rays, only the pitcher, catcher, short, and 1b even got to touch the ball. For us, going thru our lineup tonite, what we did defensively....
Nick played a good catcher, including a nice play on a ball hit just in front of home plate, and threw the runner out at first. CJ got to apply a tag at first, and some put outs there as well, Jerald pitched 2 innings of shutout ball. Sam, after struggling at 3rd last game, threw a kid out from 3rd tonite, and also pitched an inning for us. Will caught a couple innings, and pitched a scoreless 6th. Austin caught a pop up at short I think, and also threw a kid out from there. Zach had a nice catch in CF. Aren fielded a ball at 2nd, and threw a kid out. Wyatt applied a tag at 2nd on an attempted steal. Ryan applied a tag when he and Jerald picked off a runner at first, and Cole pitched 2 innings for us.

So in short, every player on our team had a putout tonite.

Now, we had a couple errors. We had outfielders not backing up bases. And our offense was pretty sad, until the 7th inning. We did not meet my goal of 1 walk/HBP per inning or less (8 in 6 innings) But again, we didn't give up, and hits combined with walks made the Rays earn it, at least.

Of course no practice doesn't help. A lot of the guys were not used to seeing curve balls, and got froze on those. I'm thinking we will have much better success hitting the ball this Saturday.