The Warriors held its first scrimmage against the Hurricanes earlier tonight. It was a good start to the season with the Warriors scoring eight times while allowing just two runs in seven full innings of play.
Here's how the Warriors graded out during the scrimmage:
Overall (B)
Overall, the team performed better than I expected for its first outing.
Pitching (A-)
The 2009 Warriors pitchers rely on mixing up speeds and locations to keep hitters off balance. The Warriors used seven different pitchers in this scrimmage: Jason Waner, C.J. Brucki, Tim Prendergast, Dennis Bresingham, Ryan Novak, Ryan Tannebaum and Sam Marc. These seven pitchers walked just four hitters in the contest. The pitching staff held the Hurricanes to two runs despite recording only four strikeouts. The pitchers let the Hurricanes put the ball in play and the defense stepped up to the challenge. One item of note is that Jason Waner retired the Hurricanes on just ten pitches in the first inning--thanks in part to two assists by Tim Carroll at shortstop.
Here's how the Warriors graded out during the scrimmage:
Overall (B)
Overall, the team performed better than I expected for its first outing.
Pitching (A-)
The 2009 Warriors pitchers rely on mixing up speeds and locations to keep hitters off balance. The Warriors used seven different pitchers in this scrimmage: Jason Waner, C.J. Brucki, Tim Prendergast, Dennis Bresingham, Ryan Novak, Ryan Tannebaum and Sam Marc. These seven pitchers walked just four hitters in the contest. The pitching staff held the Hurricanes to two runs despite recording only four strikeouts. The pitchers let the Hurricanes put the ball in play and the defense stepped up to the challenge. One item of note is that Jason Waner retired the Hurricanes on just ten pitches in the first inning--thanks in part to two assists by Tim Carroll at shortstop.
Tim Carroll (Photo courtesy of Ann Bresingham)Defense (B-)The Warriors' defense did an outstanding job playing the ball. The team did not make a single error in seven innings! The infielders were aggressive fielding ground balls. The outfielders caught all the routine fly balls. Relays were flawless. The opportunities were in the area of back-ups and moving into position once the ball was hit. For example, our pitcher needs to be moving to cover home plate as soon as the ball gets past the catcher. And, the outfielders need to move quicker to back up bases on attempted steals.
Hitting (B)
The team did a nice job putting the ball into play. Several hitters hit the ball hard, but right at a fielder. An opportunity area for hitters is to be sure to pick up signs before stepping into the box. Also, some of our hitters had slow, long swings against the power pitchers. Hitters need to assume a proper stance (i.e., bat at a 45 degree angle and not laid out flat), proper grip and step back in the batter's box against faster pitching.
We also need to guard against extending the arms too early in the swing. Lead with the elbow...or drive with the handle of the bat...or keep the hands inside the ball, are all ways of thinking about not losing speed and power by extending the arms too soon.
Baserunning (D)
Aggressive baserunning must be a trademark of this team. One of our greatest assets is speed! We ran ourselves out of two very big innings by not getting good jumps off the pitcher. Players are generally not getting a big enough primary lead. And, the secondary leads are far worse.
There were a few examples of good baserunning during the scrimmage: Jack Lebert scored from third when the Hurricanes attempted to pick a runner off of second base. C.J. Brucki scored from second base when the Hurricanes had trouble fielding a thrown ball in the middle of the infield. Tim Carroll extended his lead off second base and then easily stole third base with one out.
Another opportunity area with baserunning was not running through first base on batted balls! The few runners who did go hard through first base prompted the Hurricanes to rush and make fielding errors. If the Warriors baserunning was improved, the team would have scored 13 or 14 runs rather than just 8 runs. In a closer ballgame, this will make the difference.
Coaching (C)
My coaching is still in its Spring Training stage! Signals were not always timely to our hitters and baserunners. And, pitchers were not always able to get enough warm-ups prior to entering the game (mostly because they happened to be batting during the previous inning).
H2 is not an ideal set up for seeing everything from the dugouts. As coaches, we have to figure out a more effective way to communicate with all the players on the bench to accelerate the learning curve when it comes to our baserunning and defensive opportunities.
