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Baseball Journal

giles

Cull buck specialist
Supporting Member
Maddy has decided she loves softball and has dedicated herself towards getting better. We have supported her and given her every opportunity we can justify.

She practices 2+ hours EVERY day. And has improved...I guess I didn't realize how much. As the High School coach came and has a talk with us during her game today. He pointed out some things that she is doing way beyond her age (12). Proud parent kind of moment.

She's a catcher and loves it. Her and her best friend are a perfect pair. Catcher and pitcher. Kate goes to special coaching once a week over an hour away and Maddy goes with her. Kate's dad is also her coach and treats Maddy as one of his. The two smallest girls hold that team together amazingly. Really fun to watch.

Not sure where I'm going with this, just rambling I guess and giving her an atta-gurl. Anyways, here she is being lazy sitting on her savers. (Drives me nuts when she does this and she did it on purpose when I went to take the pic. Fuggen with me...she must get that from mom[emoji23])
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brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
Yep, finished Rec leagues last night. I put together a team to play a tournament this weekend. I think we are just playing one tournament, but it should be a pretty decent team even though they have never played together.
I didn't do a very good job keeping Masons stats for pitching this summer. I lost track of Ks, but it was a bunch. He pitched about 38 innings, walked four and hit one batter. At this point, that's pretty freaking good. He's fielding and batting have been solid but he has room to improve... and that's what makes it fun.
 

jagermeister

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
18,060
223
Ohio
4 walks over 38 innings of work... That's a little better than "pretty freaking good." Lol. That's flat out stellar Brock.
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
It really is. He has always had really good command until this spring. He lost velocity and was unable to pick his spots as he always has. It really frustrated him. Which is good because he doesn't take direction well until what he is doing isn't working. He worked at it, got it fixed and never looked back. It's funny though, even though he wasn't hitting his spots, it never sunk in that he wasn't doing everything just right until I whipped out the radar gun. He went up 7mph over a thirty minute practice by doing things correctly. I never was a pitcher but see some similarities to shooting bows. Some days while shooting things just don't feel quite right. A close self examination will usually fix it with archery. I suspect good pitchers are able to sort things out on most "off" days too.
 

cotty16

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
Heck yeah Brock! I hate walks! Can I have Mason??? Lol

My boys have had a summer of learning. Right now Post 33 is 22-11. They hit a rough patch on the NC trip. We saw some amazing teams down there. Teams that draw from a whole county as opposed to two schools like ours. One was the defending legion World Series champ (forgive me if I mentioned that, forgot to go back and look).

So, the record is a bit misleading. The losses were against very good competition.

My boys have spent most of the summer watching and learning. They still hit and field daily (Fridays only day off).
Kody has gotten so much smoother behind the plate just by catching in the bullpen while warming up the starting pitcher and relievers. He looks like a different kid back there. During the games, he leaves all his gear on the entire time and hustles his ass out on the field to warm up the pitcher between innings giving the starting catcher more of a break.
The negative is the lack of game at bats. But, we knew going in this was going to be a "pay your dues" season.

Klay, who is a year younger, has gotten a lot more playing time than Kody but it's because he's more versatile. He's been a courtesy runner for he catcher when they were in tournaments and he's filled in as a sub in the outfield a considerable amount. He's also made a few appearances at second and on the mound.
He's in the same boat as kody for at bats though.

I simply ask the boys, "are you having fun?"
Their answer is always "yes".

That's all that matters!!!

They both feel that this has been very beneficial and both feel they've improved just by the tons of practice before games.

This Saturday starts the district tournament in Coshocton. If they win that, they go to the state tournament in Lancaster the last week of July. So, it could end real quick this weekend or it could last quite a bit longer. The team has the talent. Not sure they have the pitching depth though. We shall see!