Little League: 2012

Chas

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Well, I was hoping there would be some other coaches out there. Anyway most of my ASL time for the next several months is gone. Baseball is a 7 day a week adventure.

Rattlers: Normal 11U Minors Little League team. Very inexperienced but good group of kids. I have one kid who is a stud OLB but hasnt played much baseball. Tons of athletic skill and ability, but not much experience. Most practice time thus far has been focused on defense. I feel if we can make the plays and minimize mistakes in this area we can stay in games. Pitching is a weakness. Right now my 8 year old is the #2 pitcher, but there are two older kids that may be able to jump over him. If Roman (8) becomes my #4 pitcher because of the others' skill, we could have a good year.

Roman got scouted and asked to play on 9U travel team (Sliders). They then asked me to be a coach as well. Much nervousness. First tournament starts in a few hours, and we are playing up (10U) tourny. So he will not only be pitching way up age wise, but against all-star type teams. If he can strike anyone out, or even keep it together for a couple of innings he could be dominating in normal LL. I see it as an opportunity to quickly gain game experience.

So between both teams there is practice 7 days a week and games in there. Today Rattlers practice is 1230-2, then we leave to drive to the tournament which we have to be at by 3. I may not be posting a whole lot in gamesquad for the next few months except where I get some quick opportunities and to update this thread.

Chas
 

Kevin Kenneally

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We, in Texas have been practicing baseball since the Superbowl.

But today, is a "wash-out". 100% chance of rain and it is only going to reach 47 for a high...

We NEED the rain.
 

Chas

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Day 1 over. Roman played CF and SS and played great defensively. Unfortunately we drew not only the best 10U team in the area, but a team that has won at the national level. The leadoff and advanced rules were a little too much; however, he made two great pickoff moves. On the first one the 2nd baseman dropped the ball. On the other the other team argued because he faked the throw to third. The ump then afterward, incorrectly called a balk because you CAN fake to 3rd. He threw some balls by batters and had several at 2 strikes but couldnt finish them off. They only got one solid hit off of him and it was a ground ball. Several walks and a couple of errors led to 5 runs. As I explained to him, he will not pitch against a better team than this in 2012. Now, the other teams pitcher was sick. We heard he throws no hitters almost every game. Apparently we had them worried because we kept it close at 13-0 in 4 innings; they are used to winning 20 or 30 -0 in 3 innings.

Tommorow play starts early AM and we go until we lose. Hopefully he will have the opportunity to pitch again.
 
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Chas

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Nothing significant for day 2. He came in with bases loaded, 2 outs, 3-0 count, and got a pop up out on the first pitch. Because of only 1 pitch allowed him 40 pitches against batters on Monday and he looked great. Some of the good 11 year olds hit some rockets, but that is OK. He was throwing strikes, and started to effectively use the kid friendly sinker.
Looks like we will have 1-2 scrimmages and one tournament before the regular season starts, so he should get a few more game innings in.
 

Chas

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Little League team had first scrimmage tonight. Was able to get 5 pitchers in, each for an inning. They did not score until the last inning. My #1 pitcher struck out the side on 10 pitches. Roman struck out 3 with a walk on a 3-2 count. We made some errors, but not dramatic and the outfields immediately got the ball into the cutoff, so some things are working. Even hit some rockets into the outfield. Major weakness was waaaaaay too much hesitation running the bases. This is pretty easy to fix though.
The parents wanted to do it, and even though a rec team, we are playing in a tournament this weekend. With 3 guaranteed games should get big improvement in numerous areas.
 

Kevin Kenneally

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Just tell the parents to encourage their kids and not try to make the kids be perfect at this stage of life....

Kids need to enjoy being kids, while still learning to play the game.
 

Chas

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The tournament was a great experience. What we found was that there were two straight up travel teams in it, and no other team was a "rec" team in the sense that we were. Even so we hung in there, losing 7-3 to a travel team, and after a terrible 1st inning losing 9-6 to another team. Sadly, the game ended on a very sour note of unsportsmanship. I was more into getting practice out of this than winning, and didnt realize how close the score was. We had runners on base, threatening, and they were starting to collapse defensively. As our runner was trying to round 3rd base to score, not only did their 3B stand on the bag without a play (first obstruction), he then put out his arms in an effort to hold the runner. Sure enough our runner was called out on a play at home that could have went either way. The ump refused to call the obstruction. My disapproval of this unsporstmanlike conduct was clearly delivered to the opposing coaches. I got the impression he may have been "coached" to do this, but could be wrong. Should have been 9-7 with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Oh well, if we didnt make so many errors early would have been a completely different game.

The oddity of the weekend was that the travel tournament, only 10 minutes away, ended up getting cancelled due to rain. Go figure. We drew the best team in the area again for the first game, but our team's improvement showed as we stayed in the game the distance. I am still in disbelief that the next team we played was a 10U team. 5 kids in a row came up to bat, all around 5-4 140+ pounds. Our first pitcher was getting hit hard and Roman went into the game, but while warming up lighting caused a delay which eventually led to the cancelling of the tournament.

The rec team played a practice game Monday and we did OK. Roman's pre-season pitching totals are 3 innings, 8Ks, 4 walks, 1 run allowed. Hopefully he can keep that up for the regular season. We have an odd schedule. Games Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and then no games for 2 weeks.
 

rdw5150

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The tournament was a great experience. What we found was that there were two straight up travel teams in it, and no other team was a "rec" team in the sense that we were. Even so we hung in there, losing 7-3 to a travel team, and after a terrible 1st inning losing 9-6 to another team. Sadly, the game ended on a very sour note of unsportsmanship. I was more into getting practice out of this than winning, and didnt realize how close the score was. We had runners on base, threatening, and they were starting to collapse defensively. As our runner was trying to round 3rd base to score, not only did their 3B stand on the bag without a play (first obstruction), he then put out his arms in an effort to hold the runner. Sure enough our runner was called out on a play at home that could have went either way. The ump refused to call the obstruction. My disapproval of this unsporstmanlike conduct was clearly delivered to the opposing coaches. I got the impression he may have been "coached" to do this, but could be wrong. Should have been 9-7 with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Oh well, if we didnt make so many errors early would have been a completely different game.

The oddity of the weekend was that the travel tournament, only 10 minutes away, ended up getting cancelled due to rain. Go figure. We drew the best team in the area again for the first game, but our team's improvement showed as we stayed in the game the distance. I am still in disbelief that the next team we played was a 10U team. 5 kids in a row came up to bat, all around 5-4 140+ pounds. Our first pitcher was getting hit hard and Roman went into the game, but while warming up lighting caused a delay which eventually led to the cancelling of the tournament.

The rec team played a practice game Monday and we did OK. Roman's pre-season pitching totals are 3 innings, 8Ks, 4 walks, 1 run allowed. Hopefully he can keep that up for the regular season. We have an odd schedule. Games Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and then no games for 2 weeks.
Back when I played LL, if someone got in our way (like by standing on the base), we bowled 'em over. But I find that things (at least in our league) were way less competitive then as compared to now. The competitiveness has just ramped up a lot since the early 1980's.

No one would have stood on the base (as they would have gotten bowled over) or tried to grab runners (at least in my leauge). Things like that just sort of worked themselves out. That 3B player had to step into the batters box again eventually.:devious::laugh:

Peace

Roger
 
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Chas

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Yep, totally agree. I dont want to teach my players to hurt the other kids. Unfortunately we were nieve ones thinking everyone would play by the rules. What I didnt tell you was that my son was the runner. I didnt tell him to do anything, but based on his quick learning I would not want to be the next guy that intentionally attempts to obstruct him.
 

Bret Hildebran

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Creating contact in that situation is likely the only way to definitively get an obstruction call on that type of play unfortunately. Unless you have a really heads up ump anyway.

We had a situation last year when in a key game (winner goes to the playoffs) they had runners on 1st/2nd or bases loaded & hit an easy grounder to short. Their runner on 2nd bowls over our SS while he's fielding the ball - major contact causing the fielder to do a 180 after getting blind-sided - ump refused to call runner's interference claiming it "wasn't intentional - he didn't mean to hit him". 'Course that doesn't matter as the rule reads "any contact and the runner is out, if intentional the runner and batter may be called out". I kept my cool & told him he was wrong, but he didn't change his mind.

Later I double-checked the rule, but I'm still 2nd guessing myself if I should have insisted on stopping the game until I found the rules to show the ump or not. Still not sure if a spectacle would have been better to (hopefully) get the call right.

Sad, but sometimes umps are going to blow calls like this which are blatantly obvious, but they either don't know the rule or didn't see the play.
 

Chas

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Bret,

Unfortunately many people, including umpires, do not understand the difference between obstruction and interference and how to apply the rules.

You really only had one way to resolve the situation.

1) Calmly explain your case to the umpire that made the call, and then request he get help from the other umpire. They could conference and make the right call.

2) If they did not overrule, then get the home plate umpire and the official scorer and claim you are filing a protest at this point based on the misinterpretation/misapplication of the interference rules. The game continues, and within a certain amount of time you would have had to make it formal, and the committee running it would have to rule. In this case you would have likely won because it is not a judgement call, but the rules were played incorrectly and you noted it. The game would have recommenced at the point with the runner being called out.

I have had parents ask me to protest games because of bad calls, but you cannot do so based solely on judgement (ie balls/strikes, out at third, etc.)
 

Chas

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Well, headline for opening night is we won 14-12.

Hit the ball great and had a big lead. Then, exactly what pitchers hadnt done, the consecutive walk streak started. Mix in a couple of errors and a 12-4 lead became 12-12. Roman came in the game in the second inning and got us out of a jam, but then struggled in the third which started their rally. But in the last inning we hit again, and then before we took the field made a comment to my pitcher that I was thinking of bringing someone else in. He said no coach, I got this! And he did - 3 up, 3 down!
 

Bret Hildebran

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In 9U last year we only had 1 umpire, so there was only 1 guy to convince & he had it wrong. This year we're going to 2 umps for 10u so that makes it less likely they'll both get a basic rule wrong I'd hope.

In this case it was also the last day of the regular season so there would not have been an opportunity for a protested game to be replayed from the point of error. IIRC we'd already given up 2 or 3 at the time of the play and only scored 1 in the bottom of the inning so we'd have likely lost anyway (if everything plays out the same) so in the big scheme of things it likely didn't affect the outcome, although psychologically being down 2 or 3 is far different from the big deficit we were facing after the blown call.
 

Chas

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Yeah, Bret, always a problem when only 1 umpire is on the field. I cant complain about them though. Joe West gave me two brand new MLB balls on Saturday.

Little Rattlers played two games. The hot bats did not continue. We won 5-4 where Roman got a double with RBI to tie the game, then later scored on an infield grounder. We lost the next game 7-5. Terribly sloppy conditions as we played right after a thunderstorm. Roman pitched in that game and did not do as well as he had done previously.

Travel team (Sliders) playing much better. Lost games 9-5 and 9-6. At least we are competitive at this point.
 

Chas

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Spring Break and CRCT week in GA. Killer of many teams.
Everyone flatfooted, forgot how to play, etc = losses:(
record now 2-3.

Going with a pitcher tonight who can barely throw 30mph, but throws strikes. Should be entertaining:)
 

horseshoe

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Spring Break and CRCT week in GA. Killer of many teams.
Everyone flatfooted, forgot how to play, etc = losses:(
record now 2-3.

Going with a pitcher tonight who can barely throw 30mph, but throws strikes. Should be entertaining:)
Make sure all the kids in the field are nice and loose...................should see a lot of action..:whist:
 

Bret Hildebran

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Going with a pitcher tonight who can barely throw 30mph, but throws strikes. Should be entertaining:)
Last year we struggled the most against teams that threw slow, but strikes. Drove me nuts watching the kids whiff against meatballs literally lobbed in there. Very odd. Kids were so used to a quick bat to catch up to heaters, it totally through their timing off...

We've gotten in 3 scrimmages now, but hope to play our first game tonight. Going to be close if the weather permits - had our opener rained out last Saturday so hopefully we get it in tonight w/o freezing...
 

Chas

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The weather up north has not be great for baseball. Unfortunately we are starting to get into the 90s here.

Very interesting game last night indeed. Bottom of last inning, runner on 2nd, Roman crushes what is essentially a walk off line drive into the outfield to win the game 9-8. The pitching strategy worked well as our #1 pitcher dominated the top half of the last inning and then we scored to win.
 
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