Baseball recap: Midland Lutheran

It wasn't pretty, but we got the job done yesterday winning both games of the double header:  11-6, 8-5.  The sweep gave us the series win, and winning three in a row is a great way to start off the year.  Midland Lutheran was a veteran team that finished 5th in the GPAC last season.  While neither team played exceptionally well, which is not uncommon this early in the season, we found a way to win three close games.  We need to take those experiences with us into our series against Peru St. this weekend.  Like most people, I would rather learn while picking up wins as opposed to learning from defeat. 

Having such a young group of guys can be frustrating at times, and some coaches will use that as an excuse for losing games or not playing well.  While those arguments can be valid, I don't really think it is going to apply to this  year's team.  Our newcomers have tremendous playing experience and I expect them to make adjustments very quickly.  You will not here me complain about our inexperience throughout the entire season.

Overall, I was extremely happy with the way our pitchers competed.  We walked and hit a lot of batters, but none of them gave up the disasterous big inning.  While we expect them to better next time out, they really got us off to a great start.  Nick Lanning, Christian Dekker, Steve Johnston, and Mark Blum had solid starts, and our bullpen of Cody Aldrich, Kyle Dupic, and Brandon Pietrzyk did a great job of finishing the games.  In addition, we will be getting two more pitchers back within the next two weeks in Luke Probasco (injury) and Nathan Parker, who is competing in the NCAA Division III Sweet Sixteen this weekend. 

Offensively, we were pretty quiet with the exception of Senior Captain, Jeff Weisenborn who went 6-12 with 6 RBI.  He probably won two games for us with his timely hitting.  With each game, I can sense that we are feeling more comfortable at the plate.  At this time we are only hitting .238, but still managed to score 20 runs over our last three games. 

Defensively, we are going to be solid, it's just a matter of time.  We forced our pitchers to work a little harder than they needed to, but I expect that to improve once we get outside for practice.

So now we look to a series against Peru St., a team that BVU has never played before.  Peru St. plays in a very tough NAIA conference along with regional power, Bellevue.  They finished fourth in their league, and they have some pretty good players that I remember watching in high school.  Regardless, this weekend will be about improving our team rather than worrying about winning games.  If we play better than we did this weekend, cut down the walks, errors, and offensive strikeouts, I will be happy whether we win or lose. 

I am sure I will have an updated weather forecast and plan for the weekend by the end of the week.