Something that I have had to contend with in the past are field conflicts with high school teams. Yesterday, for the first time since Senior League, I arrived at our practice field to find the girl’s JV softball team of the local high school practicing. Apparently, a game was being hosted at the high school, which relegated the girls to using our field in the local park. It is something that often occurs with their girls teams as I have arrived at practice before to find the field hockey or lacrosse teams practicing in our outfield. Our permits overlapped and I had to defer the field until the girls were finished with their practice.
The convenient thing was, however, that the girls were doing the exact same drill that I wanted to do with the Marlins once the field became available. For those who arrived at practice early, I told them to watch the girls and to see how they reacted to how the ball was hit with runners on base. I emphasized to the Marlins that everyone has a responsibility now, especially when it comes to backing up bases. Balls that are not caught are going to be more and more costly as they move up in leagues and baserunners are going to be taking advantage of misplayed balls. For the first half of practice, we did the baseball instincts drill to hone everyone’s situational awareness. What am I going to do if the ball is hit to me? How many runners are on base? Are they forced? How many outs are there? Baseball is a thinking man’s game. You need to be aware of what your responsibilities are before the ball is hit. Depending on the situation, that may change.
Something that is new this year is that I am giving responsibilities to the pitcher and the first baseman that I had not normally done in the past. The pitcher is now responsible for backing up plays at home and third. The first baseman is now responsible for backing up the play at second. Again, the base that needs to be back up by the pitcher depends on what the field looks like. If the runner is at second, then there is a good chance that the play will be coming home and the pitcher will need to back up the base as needed. If the runner is at first, the pitcher is probably going to back up third base. A few of them took better to the situational awareness than others, they just need more exposure to the exercise. I have a feeling that this is what we will be doing moving forward at practice. The Marlins need to realize that they have responsibilities even if the ball is not hit to them.
For the second half of practice, I took aside a few additional players who had expressed interest in pitching. Two of them had told me that they wanted to pitch in the past and one of them got that opportunity last Fall. The third would be completely new to pitching. As we stand right now, we do not need any additional pitchers unless one of our regular pitchers gets hurt. If these three players continue to practice and improve, though, they may get to see time in a blowout game. None of them were truly game ready and were having difficulty finding the strike zone. I re-emphasized to them that it is more important to throw strikes than to throw hard. If you do not throw strikes, you do not pitch in games. No questions asked.
Saturday’s weather looks discouraging, but then again, so did last Wednesday’s. I hope we can practice this coming Saturday.
The Marlin Way 