What can be said about a 16-5 loss? Pitching was terrible - it was like a clearing house out there, as Victoria threw no less than seven different pitchers at the Sweets this night. With a couple of days off, coach Rogers took a few more walks than usual to the mound to get some work in for a few stagnant arms that have sat on the bench for a while, giving each of them a chance to stem the bleeding. After Tanner Kiest blew up in the first, giving up a single, walking two, plonking one, then serving up a grand slam, Joe Navilhon came in and actually pitched two shutout innings. Record, Lombana, Russell, and Keller were then all equally ineffective as the Sweets piled on another 11 runs over the next 4 innings, including a 7 run sixth that send many a cold Victoria baseball fan heading for home.
A surprisingly large Wednesday crowd of over 1500 took in "Winning Wednesday", where all beverages were only $5. It started as "Windy Wednesday", and ended up more along the lines of "Whipped Wednesday". The only highlight for the Cats was a wind-assisted 2-run home run by DH Dave Schuknecht in the sixth.
Doesn't get much worse than this folks. Lets hope with a couple days off, the Cats can find themselves as a team once again. Either that, or it's going to be a loooong second half...
Seems that the HarbourCats big on-field success so far this season came when a number of local Victoria and BC boys were in the line-up and now that the "big" name US players are here, the team is struggling. I know many of those early season wins were against Kelowna and other weak teams (who also were probably missing marquee players at that point), but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this, especially since local boy Austin Russell is still playing well.
ReplyDeleteThis is getting to be ridiculous. This team has absolutely no structure, the batting order changes every night regardless of how well someone is doing. AR bats cleanup one night and goes 2/4 gets player of the game and the next night he moves down in the order and they move RN who's batting 152 up in the order to the 4 hole. The defence is are all over the field. A guy plays in the outfield, next night he's at third, next night he's at second? What is going on? You have a starter slotted for Tuesday night SK and you show up to the game and a relief guy is starting BC. He goes 2 innings and they give the ball to the guy who should have started in the first place? Last night CR gets bumped for TK and then it's just a joke from then on. It was like watching little league, everyone gets a turn. These coaches have ruined these kids confidence, they don't know when they're playing, what position they're playing, where they'll bat, get the start then don't get the start, are they a starter, a relief guy. Who are the starters, who are your middle guys, who are your closers?
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday after watching 5 innings without a breaking ball thrown, and then hearing yet again today in the paper from coach that we aren't commanding the zone, give me break, quit serving up fastballs for the first 5 innings and then try and play catch-up after you're down 6 or 8 runs. Let the pitchers call there games, they know what they're doing. Walla Walla pitchers were calling there own game and had and excellent mix of all pitches from the 1st inning on. The Walla Walla team was well structured, the line-up was consistently the same night after night. We are all over the map and falling apart quickly. I don't know if I can watch much more of this.
There is definitely a disconnect between the skill level of the team and the results achieved since the end of the second home stand on June 23rd. You may remember that the HarbourCats took 2-of-3 from the Bend Elks that weekend, a team that is even better than Walla Walla. Our starting lineup on the 23rd of June included the likes of Alex DeGoti, Jordan Ellis, Robby Nesovic, Chris Lewis, David Schuknecht, Justin Burba and Dylan LaVelle -- what you might classify as "big" name US players. I'm not sure that the change in the on-field product can be attributed to the newer players. We'll be discussing this topic in an upcoming blog post, so stay tuned for our in-depth commentary.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I share your pain. Victoria is a savvy baseball market and will probably not support an on-field product like the one displayed against the Walla Walla Sweets this week. Let's hope that things change -- and quickly.
ReplyDeleteBubba, the only other highlight I can think of was the play of Alex Real. He hustled all night and never gave up, registering hits in his last three at bats. The rest of the team could learn a thing or two from Mr. Real.
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