Another Great Win; some thoughts:
- Terrific performance by Massey. 8+ innings and zero earned runs.
- Great relief job by Simms. After Duester’s effort on Friday night, that’s two in a row. Really needed.
- Tough luck on what started as a great play in the fifth inning to eventually set up the one run. With men on first and second and no outs, UCF tried to bunt them along. Terrific jump on the bunt by Rogers and a quick relay to first by Hope. Cameraman missed the play on that end so I don’t know exactly what happened, so I don’t know if we would have gotten the double play with a good throw. Too bad; great effort.
- Spectacular play later in the next inning by Alemais to throw a runner out at the plate from fairly deep short. When I first saw the play, I thought he was safe. On looking at replays, Rogers clearly had the plate partially blocked and one of the baserunners feet didn’t get to the plate on time. The other? Still not sure. Anyway; big play.
- Two really nice hit and runs executed by Alemais with DeHart running. I’m not sure I’ve seen a successful hit and run all year before this game.
- Speaking of DeHart: he’s started to swing the bat much better. His batting average is still way down (.196), and he’ll have to hit .300+ to get to .250 by season’s end. But he’s making contact now, which he didn’t do at the beginning of the year.
- Staying on DeHart, I questioned the decision to send him home on the short blooper to left by Witherspoon. He was out a mile if the catcher doesn’t drop the ball. But, he did. So there is that. On that play: some odd official scoring. They credited "Spoon" with a sacrifice fly and an RBI but gave the catcher an error and called the run unearned. I don’t see how it could be both a SF/RBI and an error.
- After fanning in the first, Witherspoon got a hit and put the ball in play on succeeding at bats. He’s clearly still struggling, but it was progress from recent efforts.
- Montalbano, Kaplan, and Williams, the middle of our line-up, went 0-11 in the game. Only one hard hit ball among the three. We need more production than that over the long haul. I’m confident we’ll get it.
- Rogers looked much more comfortable at the plate than in the last few weeks. Big HR to give us some breathing room late, but generally good swings throughout the game. And he’s still making great throws.
- Carthon has been out for quite a while. Is he hurt? I know he was slumping a little but I thought he might give Witherspoon a rest during the latter’s prolonged slump; but no. We’ve been playing well the last few games so the strategy has worked, but I’m surprised that we’ve not seen him out there.
- We need to keep winning. Our opponents are not helping us on the RPI front. Even with the win on the road against a 50/50 team, our RPI went down.