May
4
D-Day Redux
Filed Under Andrew Walker, Bradley Clapp, Carlos Amaro, Charleston Riverdogs, Erik Huber, Moises Robles, Raphael De Los Santos, Ronald Uviedo
Today’s game against the Charleston RiverDogs started out much like yesterday’s loss, but worse. Raphael De Los Santos got shelled worse than the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. What this means is that the combination of less-than-desirable pitching results and no notable offensive efforts led to a pitiful 8-1 loss at the hands of the RiverDogs. The Crawdads haven’t been shut out this season, but they came close to experiencing that for the first time today. The ‘Dads were down 8-0 going into the bottom of the 9th with two outs. Erik Huber managed to squeeze a single, and then Andrew Walker swatted a double to score Huber, which accounted for the only run of today’s game.
The batters in the South Atlantic League have caught up with our pitching. We started out very strong, but have been slowly slipping into a slump from the mound in the last several games. Raphael De Los Santos pitched 3 frames today, giving up 7 hits and 6 runs (3 earned) while only striking out one batter. Carlos Amaro followed for two scoreless frames. Ronald Uviedo followed Amaro for two frames, giving up 3 hits and two runs (both earned). Moises Robles closed the final two innings without giving up but one hit.
In tomorrow night’s game, we’ll get to see Bradley Clapp start against the RiverDogs. This will be Clapp’s first home appearance since his return to the Crawdads roster last week. His first appearance was against Savannah on April 30th, where he pitched 5 innings, giving up 6 hits and 3 runs (none earned).
How to tell you are having a bad game…
I have started carrying a portable radio to the games with me so I can listen to Mike Janela’s broadcast while I watch after I’m finished making photos. I was listening to today’s game broadcast when I heard an interesting tidbit of information from the booth…
Gary Green is getting ready to hit a milestone in his career as a manager. With two or three more losses (I can’t remember the exact number), Gary will rack up his 500th career loss! His record is something like 417-496. That’s a statistic that wouldn’t likely come up in a broadcast if we were winning ;)
This year’s readers of this blog haven’t had the chance to see me dive under the ‘developmental baseball’ rug yet, but I’m sure you will if you stick around long enough this season :) In a nutshell, winning and losing is only a small part of the experience at this level of the minor leagues. The primary objective at this level is to develop these professional athletes into major league material. In some cases, that means teaching a pitcher how to work his way out of a bad situation rather than pulling him off for a bullpen replacement. Sometimes it means benching a .360 batter for not hustling to first base. Sometimes it means letting a starting shortstop ride the pine for poor attitude reasons.I talked to Gary Green last season about ‘developmental baseball.’ Last year, the Crawdads had a dismal first half of the season and then won the Northern Division in the second half. At some point during the second half of the season, I asked Gary about this. In not so many words, Gary told me this:
“Part of devloping a player IS winning. At that point in the season, these guys should have their kinks worked out. If they aren’t performing at this point, the won’t be playing.”
HERE is that post from the previous season if you want to check it out…
It is still early in the season and there is developmental work to be done… not only on our team, but on all of them. Wins and losses will fall where they may…
John M. Setzler, Jr.
(the guy with the camera)
Hickory Crawdads Photos available HERE.