Very impressed with our pitching tonight. Definitely pitched well enough to win the game.
Ball St also pitched really well. Their starter did well and we were finally starting to get to him. Their coach saw a chance to ‘steal one’ and put in their best pitcher to go the rest of the way. Ryan Brown was a freshman all American last year and is supposedly the top draft prospect in the MAC. He pitched well, but we had him on the ropes multiple times and couldn’t get the clutch hit to break it open.
Credit to them. They made the pitches they needed to, when they needed them. They’ve burned up their 2 best pitchers in game 1, so lets see how the remaining 3 games go.
Hudepohl was good. Hale Sims was superb! All of our pitching yesterday was very good. Need to get the bats going! Defense was good. Base running hurt us a few times too. Much to look forward to this season.
I agree with the bunting. Around the 6 th inning it became apparent that runs were going to be hard to come-by. In games like this, you may have to steal a base or move a runner with a scrifice. I guess steals were out because their catcher may be tough to steal on. But you can move a runner with a sacrifice and squeeze him in. But it is just first game. No need to get alarmed. The bats came alive on Saturday.
I doubt that we spend much practice time on learning to bunt. Guys can’t just turn on and off the ability to do it. We seem to have the ability to “steal” bases by knowing the strike zone very well, which may be the result of hours spent taking pitches from a pitching machine set to miss the strike zone slightly. BTW, I personally enjoy the traditional “get 'em on, get’em over, get 'em in” approach. I don’t get a vote on how the game is played, however.
We better practice bunting, individually or team. Bunting is baseball. 15 stranded base runners and we scored one run in game 1, it happens. It should not happened regularly if a team moves runners with an out. We have a great coach and I doubt he thinks bunting is useless. He might think he has enough studs to swing away. I thought I saw a video of them with a bunt during practice, but maybe I am too old.
