Players:

I told myself and the coaches before today's game that I hoped to maintain the multi-man pitching rotation I had drawn up though the whole Reds game.  They were 2-0 coming in and we knew they would give us a game.  We had 6 different kids slotted to pitch to see who could do what.  We would stick to that plan unless it was a close game late where we held the lead.  That turned out to be the case and Isaac and Tom A. got bumped out of the planned rotation for the 6th and 7th.  I wanted T.E. to close out because of his pick moves as much as for his arm.  It should have worked to get the win but it didn't, no fault to T.E. for his effort, we just didn't get it done behind him.  Yeah, Garde's run shoulda counted in the 5th, too, but we really let that team off the mat.   Sigh - this one really bugged me. 

Thing is...some folks would say by not doing the Disney thing and letting the game play out as laid out, the good karma that  had us come back against some tough pitching got lost with the bad karma in changing focus, even if we had chatted about doing it ahead of time.  In the playoffs, I will do whatever it takes to win....but today, I brought on bad karma.   We had a plan and it was working.  I lost a  chance to show confidence in some players early in the season and so I probably lost their respect - I apologize to Isaac and Tom A.  It would have been so much cooler to beat them with 6 pitchers to their 2......in hindsight.

Anyway, as for the game - well, we managed to rip all of 4 hits in 7 innnings, so with only 2 walks and an error thrown in, we scored 5 of 7 baserunners.  Moral of the story is we get on, we score.  Following Tom A's knock which gave us the lead in the 5th, 7 of the next 8 outs were by K.  We had 12 K vs 2 BB in 7 innings.  9 of the 12 were swinging which is a heck of a lot better than the other way around but it's time to work on little ball.  The number that killed us was our 4 Es to their 1.

Practice tomorrow 9:00 AM, we expect 9 of you... 

Jim