Kevin's Ramblings…

As I have written, yesterday saw the Rockies two teams (AA, AAA) playing three games in total. We started off the day with the AA’s taking on the league leading Angels.  I had one of the AAA players come to get some pitching work.  It didn’t quite work like we had hoped, he got rocked by a team that can hit the ball.  In the 1/3 of an inning that he pitched, 7 runs crossed the plate.  In hindsight, perhaps I would have been better off getting him down to pitch against a team that doesn’t quite hit so well.  We ended up losing by a score of 14-0. The Angels pitcher threw bullets and one hit us.

The AAA team then played a double header. In the first game, they faced the AAA Angels who are not quite the same team that their AA team is but it was the same result for us – a 14-0 loss.  In the back end of the double-header, we had a great game going until the 7th inning. The Rockies hit their first home run of the season. The game ended on the losing end, 10-3.  Both teams are in need of a reboot.

Today, the AA’s face the Dodgers, so do the AAA’s.  I can’t be at both games as I have not yet figured out how to be in two places at once – both teams start at 1PM.

This week is a bit of a quieter week for both teams, game wise anyway. We have practices both Monday and Tuesday with games mid-week and the weekend of course.

I spoke with the AA’s before and after the game on Saturday.  I told them that they need to make a decision on how the season continues.  No one chose my option of “just going through the motions” – that is a good thing.  After the AAA double header, the Manager pretty well gave the same speech that I did. At least the staff seem to be on the same page. We are both at a loss as to what to do with our teams.

Today is another day.  We will play some ball, there will be a winner and a loser. The players will decide which side of that fence we are on.

The next few days are busy with baseball.  We are supposed to have a batting cage tonight but, by the looks of it, the weather is not going to cooperate. We are supposed to have rain and thunder showers this afternoon and evening.  It is currently fairly dark and gloomy. We will see.

Tomorrow, there are three games. AA’s play at 10am and then the AAA’s have a double-header, 1pm and 4pm. I will be there for the first two, I am not sticking for the third as I have evening plans and don’t want to be out all day.  One of the AAA players will be down to pitch and get some at-bats with the AA team.  He’s been struggling so hopefully this will help him.

Sunday sees both teams in action, both at 1pm. I will be with the AA’s and will have to skip the AAA game. Managing comes before coaching I guess.

Both teams practice on Monday evening and have a combined practice on Tuesday. It will be a busy few days.

In speaking (or emailing, actually) with the other AA coaches, I am going to change the strategy for the AA team. The starting pitcher will be scheduled for 2 innings, or so. All of the relievers will throw one inning each. So, if we play 7 inning games, we should see 6 or so pitchers each game. If they throw around 20-25 pitches, it shouldn’t be an issue doing that on a nearly daily basis.  This will help build some arm strength, I am hoping. We will see.  Our defence still needs to step it up and I think our hitting will come around.

Either tonight or tomorrow AM, I am going to have a chat with the players and ask them to make a choice. We either need to give a constant effort, regardless of score and come to practices and batting sessions, or we decide that is not the way we want to go and we just want to come out and have fun.  I am hoping they choose to compete.

It will be an interesting and hopefully season changing weekend.

My last post was about a good practice hopefully turning into a good game.  Well, that did not happen, to say the least.

We started out, as we typically do, well.  We held them in the top of the first scoreless.  Great pitching, great defence.  On the offensive side of the ball, we were able to score a run.  Not bad at all.

In the second, the wheels started shaking when my starting pitcher threw and hit the batter.  It doesn’t matter that the batter is the only girl in the league, but she is.  He didn’t do it intentionally, at least I highly doubt that he did.  I wouldn’t ask a pitcher to throw at a a batter.  I might talk about it, but in the grande scheme of things, that isn’t my style of ball.  Even if it was, we don’t have enough control to actually hit someone.

So, she got to first and I figured it might rattle my pitcher.  It did.  He made it out of the inning though, threw around 50 pitches in 2 innings, far too many.  His day on the mound was over.  The other lefty, new to pitching this year was next on the hill.  His control was an issue from the get-go.  The strike zone, although consistent, was low.  He couldn’t find it.

I went through a few more pitchers, each having some location issues.  Defence behind them wasn’t good, not at all.  Run after run cross the plate.  The opposing Manager didn’t seem to fall into the category of when up by 10+ runs, you go station to station.  When they were up by a mere 8 runs, their runner on third straight stole home.  When I returned to third base to coach the next inning, he assured me that the player went on his own.  That is a good way to get yourself plunked…

We did chip away at the massive lead, but a majority of the team didn’t care about the game any longer.  Signs were missed, base running mistakes were made, defensive errors piled up.

At the end of the 5th, we ended up losing a 2 hour 20 minute game by a score of 25-8.  That.  Is.  Ridiculous.

I am not sure where we go from here.  I really don’t know.  We have a batting cage session on Friday.  I will have another talk to the boys.  I don’t know if it will work, none of the other talks have.  We will see.

I am going to give them a choice.  We can either start playing as a team and giving 100% regardless of score or we can stop practising, having batting cage sessions and showing up 1.5 hours before game time.  Why put in all the extra effort if all they want to do is play the game and have fun and not care about wins, losses, improvements, etc.  If they do decide to take that route, and I hope they don’t, then this will be my last year as a coach.  I will hang them up.  I won’t give up in the middle of the season, but I don’t need to put in any future years.

I can join the Board, as I plan to anyway and I can return to umpiring.  Putting in hour after hour and getting little or nothing on the other end is wearing on me.  I am sure it is wearing on my coaches and the parents.  I can only hope it is wearing on the players enough for them to want to do something about it.

Time will tell.  We are back to action on Saturday.  Wish us some luck.  Hell, wish us a LOT of luck.  We need it.

Last night we had a great turnout for practice for the AA Rockies. I had two players email me (or maybe they texted) and said they could not come because of school related stuff. It is interesting that it seems that school events only occur on nights that we practice. There don’t tend to be a lot of events on game nights.  Odd, eh?

Anyway, we had 13 players out last night. We were supposed to be at the Coyote Den for batting practice but instead, we used a school diamond beside our main park. The diamond was not in particularly good shape but it gave us an area to hit, field, etc. We broke down into groups to work on various core elements. We finished up with some live hitting and ended with the “golden glove” competition where ground balls are hit to each player standing along the infield/outfield line and they have to pick up the ball clean (no bobbles) and throw it to the catcher without drawing him off of the plate. As we go through a few rounds, we make the throwing requirements more stringent, top of head to knees to start and we make it smaller as we go on.

It ended with one of my outfielders winning the infield competition against the last practices winner.  No prize today though.

We play tonight against the league leading Angels. We play them again on the weekend. Interesting schedule.

Wish us some luck – we need a bit of that as well.

My AA Rockies faced the AA Indians yesterday afternoon. We had the players show up 2 hours prior to game time for a full practice before the game. One of the parents offered to assist and worked with the hitters. Meanwhile, I did some outfield and infield drills with the rest followed by some live batting practice.

It was a warm day in Calgary, hot actually by Calgary standards. There was no humidity of course, something that I have come to love about living here.  The temperature was 30C and it felt like 30C, not the 40C it would have felt like had I still been in Southern Ontario.

So, 4pm rolls around, game time. One of the previous times we played the Indians, we pitched a different pitcher in each inning.  We tried a similar strategy yesterday.  It seems to work.  The other team can’t get used to one pitcher and their style. It gets a lot of players a little pitching experience and it ensures that pitchers don’t get tired or throw their arms out. It doesn’t allow for a player to build up much stamina, that is the downside. My pitchers this season seem to be slower in developing than I am used to, so this may be a good strategy for now.

We traded leads a few times during the game and our bats were explosive. We broke the game open with a stand up, bases load triple to deep right-centre. The Indians didn’t give up and kept chipping away. With time out (no new innings after 2.5 hours), we were in the bottom of the sixth with two outs. My final pitcher (or who was supposed to be my final pitcher) could not find the strike zone and I was forced to pull him. On the mound goes one of the previous days pitchers, something I normally do not like to do, but he threw less than 30 pitches. He got the job done with a sky high pop out to the second baseman to end the game on the victorious side, 16-13.

Pitching was solid. Defence was OK, we didn’t make many errors, we just weren’t as sharp as we could have been. The offence, when compared to Saturday’s lacklustre loss was dynamite.

I keep telling my players that if we come together with all three aspects (pitching, offence, defence), that there really isn’t a team in the league that we can’t defeat.  I am hoping that the boys are starting to believe it.