After Monday's joint workout with the Mod Squad, we'll return to our regular practice routine today. We'll have some BP and run our fielding drills to tighten up our defense. We also need to cover some baserunning issues to resolve some of the rally-killing mistakes we've been making.
Just to be clear, the baserunning matter isn't about blaming our finding fault. Some of us have very little or no prior experience playing competitive softball so it's natural that some avoidable mistakes will occur. Those who have considerable experience wish to share their knowledge to reduce those mistakes for the benefit of the team.
With a couple of walk-throughs at practice and some occasional reinforcement, our baserunning will improve. We will preserve more of the precious 21 outs we get per game which will allow us to stay at bat longer and score more runs.
We had a pretty good workout yesterday. Everyone got lots of swings, chased fly balls all over the outfield, and fielded grounders from different positions on the infield. Just when it seemed we were out of gas, we put in an extra round of batting practice before we called it a day. Everyone who made it to the park worked really hard. If we put out that kind of effort Thursday, we will be tough to beat.
ReplyDeleteWhat's really key about running the bases is watching the 1st/3rd base coaches>>& the coaches need to be paying attention to instruct the runners. There is sooo much noise & confusion at times that both the runner & coach can be easily distracted. As a runner, always look for that extra base & watch where that ball goes, esp if they miss the cutoff throw. The base coaches are key to equaling more runs which really count by game's end. GO BRICKS!
ReplyDeleteCarlos is absolutely right -- and we did talk about that yesterday. Unfortunately, we had less than half of the team present. I hope there will soon be a time when everyone is available to practice together on the same day.
ReplyDeleteThere are skills to be learned such as when to run straight through first base and when to veer to the right in anticipation of advancing to second base (or beyond).
Also, our base coaches need to be demonstrative like the old time traffic cops. A quiet base coach with his hands in his pockets isn't going to help us. Our newcomers may not be familiar with the signals for stop, go, and slide. It's important that we know these things. I'd like to cover this part of the game ASAP.