[Barkeep49]

Before Practice

As of yesterday Steve and I have not heard from JF’s family. I am off at a meeting all night and so Steve does the calling. He calls and leaves a message at 6:45ish. He is a commodities trader and so he wakes up very early and is lying in bed ready to fall asleep when his phone rings at 9:30 and it is JF’s mom. Following the conversation Steve leaves me a message which basically boils down to “Did you know about this **** with JF? I know if you knew about it you’d have let me know. I have the biggest ******* right now because of this. Call me in the morning.”

I call Steve and he is extremely pissed at JF and at Libby, the Park District coordinator of the league, as it seems that JF has conflicts because of Softball and Hebrew. Oh and there is something about soccer which he doesn’t understand. The whole conversation was rather incoherent but he’s really upset with Libby so I tell him to write her an email and we talk about what the email will say, essentially that JF is rather unfair to us, and I hang up confused.

Fast forward several hours. I am on jury duty this week. I am assured that only in the strangest cases due people in the jury pool get kept beyond 5 o’clock. Well I guess when you get Judge Dickweed strange cases happen, as he started assembling a jury 2 and a half hours late. We don’t get out until 5:50. Practice started 5 minutes ago and I’ve been unable to call Steve except to warn him I’m going to be late several hours earlier. The bigger problem? I am the bunting expert and that was what we wanted to start practice with. Oh and I have all the equipment.

I find out later that Steve adapted to another idea we had tossed around besides bunting and essentially they make do by Steve hitting grounders to a theoretical shortstop who throws it to a 1B. The throws are not surprisingly off, but he said the actual fielding and catching was better then expected.

I arrive to the practice in record time, with most of the way it seeming like the sea of cars had parted perfectly for my purposes. I arrive just in time for us to take the field for our second half of practice.

Infield Practice
So my idea was to get a sort of game situation going here by taking our players and putting them in the field, calling ones up to hit, and changing every 2-3 batters each position. This went very well in helping cement our views on players. I’m going to do a rundown of each of players in a second so the important observations from it will go there.

After Practice Talk with JF

JF was, to my surprise, at practice. After practice I talked to her mom and got the scoop.

The Park District states that in order to play travel you have to play in the house league. However, as JF does not play softball, but rather baseball, Wednesday is a common day between both leagues, with it being their practice day. So JF’s mom and Libby have been emailing and the basic resolution is that JF will come to all our games, but have to miss all practices either for Hebrew or Softball. JF will also, unfortunately, miss several of our games on Saturdays. Basically it seems like she will be around, about 40-60 percent of the time. Steve is considerably less fine with all this then I am. But it is what it will be.

Setting the Line-Up
After practice Steve and I set our line-up. You are only allowed to do this twice during the season and so it’s rather important. It’s also continuous so if you have a terrible player sandwiched in between good players, as we had last year, you learn to expect a lot of potentially big innings being killed. Since we have had 3 practices, rather then 2, I feel that this is going to be less of a problem.

As the league is a development league it also has strict rules that ensure that all players in the six inning game get at least 2 innings in the infield, including at least 1 inning of the first 3. Further, no player may sit out twice until everyone has sat out once, and no player may play any position, except catcher, for more then 2 innings and a catcher may catch for 3 innings.

There is also a rule that says that pitchers may not pitch more then 5 innings a week. Last year this was very important, but Steve made a brilliant observation: this year we only have 2 games a week until the play-offs. This is great, because it removes the problems that can be created when you have to have a kid you had planned on pitching 1 or no innings come in for relief and basically means you don’t have to plan pitching for the week and can do it more on a game to game basis.

Steve and I want to see a lot of people at a lot of different positions. It likely means we will lose and I am ok with that. No kid, except JM who catches for 2 innings, plays the same position twice. We also made a conscious effort to sit some of our best players in the earlier innings to show that everyone will sit. As the game has a 90 minute time limit, it is unlikely because of bad pitching, that we will get past the 4th inning.

Here’s the quick version before a detailed look at it:
JS
TG
ES
BS2
JM
PW
BS1
FO
AK
EG
KS
JF

The Detailed Look at the Line-Up
So here’s our line-up.

JS – Frankly this is a bit of a risk as he’s really not all that great of a hitter. Steve and I feel, however, that he will be patient at the plate. And so he will get on base because even our travel pitcher, TG, had a hell of a time pitching low enough to him. He’s got pretty good speed for his size and so we feel he’ll do a nice job of setting the table. At worse, he’s simply become thought of as the bottom of lineup instead of the top. I mentioned before that he said he pitched last year. Today he looked much better and of the pitchers we looked at today was BY far the most consistent at getting the ball over the plate. I feel he’ll be a strong role pitcher for us: someone who won’t be one of our go to pitchers, especially with the relaxing of the pitching rules, but someone who will see an inning every 2 or 3 games. Come play-off time having someone who can take innings is huge so, this is great.

TG – TG will be our starting pitcher and our workhorse. He can really fire the ball in. He also has a very nasty rising fastball that he over used today in our game. High strikes simply are not consistently called in the league, so I will be encouraging him to use it as more of a “strikeout pitch” as kids will swing at it. As a batter he’s certainly one of our best, but does not overly impress me.

ES – Continues to be our best hitter. Hopefully TG and JS will setup some good situations for him. Funny aside: I had a chance today to visit the guy I student taught for today during lunch. When I went into the cafeteria I went into the lunchroom and looked for him. After being literally swarmed by kids (it was really touching considering I hadn’t seen many of them for 2 years and never taught any of them) I found out that ES was in the “quiet room” aka the elementary school version of detention. So at practice I tell him “I hear you’ve been a bad boy” with a smile, of course. He got SO flustered, it was clear that he was upset that I thought this and so I had to reassure him I was only joking and didn’t think he was a bad kid. It was really cute, actually.

BS2 – Will be our #2 catcher behind JM and shows promise as a catcher. There is a big drop off in talent we perceive between ES and BS2. He does not have very good plate discipline/eye but he can make contact with balls outside the strike zone, which in this league can often turn into errors.

JM – Our #1 catcher. Really gets the leadership aspect. He kept saying to the team to encourage the pitcher today. It was great. He and TG clearly have clicked already as a battery which is great considering he is the only one I am sure can catch him, with BS2, likely being able to as well.

PW. – I’ve been underwhelmed with this supposed travel kid. He’ll keep getting opportunities for the moment but I feel very good about the decision to put him here in the batting order.

BS1 – Had an extended chance to pitch today and could not locate the strike zone with a live batter in there, though he did fare better against righties then lefties, so he’ll be getting an inning Saturday. He muffed an infield groundball and an outfield ground ball. Not good.

FO – We’re in the dregs of the lineup here. Continues to want to catch, despite not really having very good skill so he’ll get a couple chances early on, but for Saturday’s game is scheduled to catch the 6th inning so he’ll likely not see action.

AM – This is the biggest question mark. If he had been around, as a Hebrew kid he’s only been to 1 of 3 practices, he could have earned a higher spot. He’s going to be pitching the second inning so he’ll have an early shot to impress us.

EG – Couldn’t hit TG even when he was lobbing them in. Needs work in a million areas. I can’t decide if keeping his eye on the ball, or “dancing feet” (he’ll literally spin himself around, despite wearing cleats) is the bigger problem. Dancing feet is the more important one though so it’s where we’ll start. Also has huge focus issues in the field. He literally took off his glove during the “game”. This will not be good. Not good at all. I wish we could make him last, but sadly that honor, based on skill, goes to:

K.S. – Poor kid has no hand eye coordination I think as his mechanics have improved a lot already and he still can’t hit anything thrown to him. It’s a shame we didn’t get to bunting.

J.F. – She really deserves higher, we think, but since she won’t be around a lot it’s another one of those “she could be though of as the start of the end of the lineup” decisions. She’s clearly talented, but without ever being at a practice it will limit her opportunities on this team.

Our pitching order goes as follows:
TG
AM
JS
BS1
ES
PW

If people are interested I can post the whole chart we do which shows their positions for each inning. I am very excited about Saturday and hope to win, despite knowing that isn’t our first goal for the game.

Thanks as always for reading, and I promise that things should get shorter when I start recapping games.