We traveled to Cary, North Carolina this past weekend. We got the privilege to play at the USA Baseball Complex. If you haven’t been there, it is a beautiful complex. It will be the site of the Division II World Series. The Senators finally got the monkey off our backs by picking up our first win on Saturday.  It was a hard fought battle but we prevailed by beating Saint Augustine’s College 7-5. Congrats to Zach McElroy for picking up your first college win (many more to come). The second game was tied 7-7 in the bottom of the fifth when it got called due to darkness.  We resumed on Sunday, and ended up losing 8-9 on a go ahead single. We battled but came up short. The third of game of the weekend got away from us. We were tied 4-4 for most of the game and ended up giving it away 11-4. We played hard this weekend. We showed glimpses of what team we can be, but we still have to work hard to get where we want to be.

Blue Collar Players of the Week:

Week 1 – Evan Gazza

Week 2 – Eric John Doyle

Week 3 – Andy Taylor “Whammer Jr”

Congrats to Andy “Whammer Jr” Taylor. He works hard on and off the field. He is a quiet guy but goes about his business every day. He is one of our Dugout Captains and makes sure everyone is into the game at all times. You have to respect that. He is a good representative of what Senator Baseball is all about.

Web Gems of the Weekend:

Caigan O’Callahan: He made a sweet diving catch in the hole at shortstop. We don’t have video of it. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

Weekly Senator Movie Review:

American Beauty – 3 ½ Stars

If you have not seen this movie, it is a MUST watch! This is one of those movies that stick in your head for a long time to come. Kevin Spacey kills his performance. If you don’t know how Kevin Spacey is, he plays in such movies as Se7en, The Negotiator, Superman Return, and A Time to Kill. This movie won over 90 awards and had another 74 nominations. It won 5 Oscars. Lester (Kevin Spacey) and Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter’s friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father. It all comes together for a beautiful ending. I don’t have to say anymore about it, 5 Oscars should explain enough. WATCH THIS MOVIE!

Shout Out Section:

I went to South Charleston High School, Home of the Black Eagles. One of my teammates  went on to play Division I Baseball at Marshall University, Arik Sikula. He is now pitching for their staff. He started their opener against Akron University. He pitched 5.0 scoreless giving up 4 hits, 2 walks, while striking out 5. He picked up the win. Congrats man. Doing BIG things down there and keep up the hard work.

Happy Birthday to my girlfriend, Bre Tognoli, and by the way, quit bugging me while I am on the road playing baseball. Love Ya.

It’s hard to translate this weekend’s experience into words. Friday was not only the first game of the season, but it was also the first ever baseball game in CSU Bakersfield history. The atmosphere was unbelievable! The air was full of anticipation and nerves as fans quickly filled Hardt Field in a sell out for opening day! The guys on our team were ready to play, but the butterflies were definitely flapping their wings! Mickey Jannis threw the first pitch ever in CSUB history. Our shortstop, Kyle Richardson, garnered the first hit, home run, RBI, and run in one swing of the bat. He sent the sell out crowd into a frenzy when he drove the first pitch he saw over the right field fence. Not only was it important because it was a first hit and so forth, but it also signified that we were ready to play. We were behind 8-3 against St. Louis heading into the bottom of the ninth when we almost pulled off an amazing comeback. We strung several hits together and ended up cutting the deficit to 8-7 with the tying run on first base and one out. However, St. Louis’ closer came on to strike out the next two hitters to end the game. While we lost our opening game, it was definitely one to remember.

On Saturday, we played a doubleheader with St. Louis. In the first game, our starting pitcher, Erik Draxton, threw 8 2/3 innings. He dominated St. Louis and recorded the first ever win for CSUB baseball. We won that game 4-2. In the next game, we sent out freshman left-hander Jonathon Montoya.  He also pitched extremely effectively and was helped by the ‘Runner offense. We ended up winning Game 2 by a score of 8-4.  It was a great day for Roadrunner baseball. We recorded our first win, our first doubleheader sweep, and our first series victory.

On Sunday, we played a very solid UC Santa Barbara team. They are ranked 30th in the nation and have a very good pitching staff. Mario Hollands, a sophmore left-hander for the Gauchos, pitched 8 shutout innings against us. He was dominant and had command of all of his pitches. For the first 5 innings, it was 2-0 UCSB.  However, in the sixth inning, the Gauchos erupted for six runs to push the lead to 8-0. They eventually tacked on two more runs before beating us 10-0. Although rough, the loss was a good experience for us. We played a nationally ranked team and faced a very good pitcher. In order to be where we want to be, we need to beat teams and pitchers like that. It was a good test and we will have plenty more in the near future, starting with the University of Utah next weekend.

In the next couple of weeks there should be an announcement from the Roger Clemens Foundation revealing their 2009 Watch List – an award which has come to be the equivalent of the Cy Young Award for college pitchers.  Yet considering the dark cloud over Clemens legacy and his use of performance enhancing drugs I would think it would be wise to retire the award, or at least sever Clemens connection to the honor.  No doubt Clemens was one of the best collegiate pitchers of all time, but over the last couple of years his name has become more connected to steroids than pitching greatness.  Would you give a Marion Jones Award to a female track star?  How about presenting a Floyd Landis Prize for cycling excellence?  Hopefully you’d have serious reservations about any of those.  Each of these people gave themselves and, in return their sport, a black eye.

There used to be an equivalent award called the Rotary Smith Award which was transformed into the Clemens Award.  Thus changing the name would not be something unheard of.  It is unquestionably time to change the name again.  There are so many more deserving people to have a college pitching award named after.  My vote would go to former Michigan star and College Baseball Hall of Fame member Jim Abbott.  That would be an elementary decision for me.

Abbott twice led the Wolverines to Big Ten, won the Golden Spikes Award, the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation’s best amateur athlete and a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics (in which he pitched the final game).  As a professional pitcher he went directly to the major leagues and had an accomplished 10 season career which included a no hitter and three seasons when he finished in the top 10 in ERA.  Currently Abbott is a motivational speaker and now works for the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, encouraging businesses to hire people with disabilities.

And oh, by the way, Abbott was born with only one hand.  Unlike Clemens he didn’t cheat to perform, he was cheated in life and he overcame.

At this time there has been an official declaration that Clemens used PEDs.  However it seems that most unbiased people believe that he is guilty.   No award, especially one for college student athletes, should share its name with someone who is connected to steroids and cheating.

I appeal for all coaches and media members to not support the Clemens Award.  This should be done swiftly before his name sullies college baseball the way he had his legacy.  Ignoring this is the same as supporting it.

Am I alone in this?  Let me know at nick.herfordt@pingbaseball.com.

I don’t even want to get started on Alex Rodriguez Stadium...

I am casting my vote for wood.

Watching the scores this weekend made me realize double digit scoring is easy.  Hitters are dominating college baseball.  The hit-n-run, sacrifice bunt, and other situational offense have turned into doubles and HR’s.

Pitchers are only pitching to the outside half of the strike zone and throwing a high percentage of breaking pitches, resulting in a low percent of strikes and high pitch counts.  Wood bats would allow pitchers to use more fastballs and pitch to the entire zone.

Playing defense in the infield is now trying to knock down one hop line drives and outfielders playing deep.  Wood bats would bring back the skill of infielders using their feet and being aggressive on ground balls.  Outfielders would be able to move in and have a chance to throw out runners trying to go from first to third or second to home.

As coaches, we claim pitching and defense win games.  Have you checked the ERA and fielding percentage on the stats page?  The numbers that stand out to me are batting average and runs scored.  Wood bats would allow our claim to be true.

$360 for an aluminum bat and dents can be found in the barrel within a couple of weeks.  A composite wood Baum bat is $125 and will last two years.   We are all using wood bats for the fall season and skilled instruction sessions to develop hitters with the smaller sweet spot, so why not continue for the season?  Also consider the success of the summer leagues and professional baseball with wood bats.

Most important, the safety of pitchers.  I think I am correct in stating that in 2011 the NCAA bat restrictions are moving toward exit speeds of wood.   I saw on the Indiana Hoosiers web site that pitcher Wyatt Hoff was hit in the face yesterday.

Can someone tell me what the advantages are of using aluminum?

WIN with CLASS!

Jeff Ditch
IUP Baseball
www.winwithclass.com

When we make and bake our rankings each week it takes a whole bunch of effort.  I wish I could tell you how many hours we spent into setting up our preseason rankings alone.  We don’t just pull the numbers out of hat.  Hours are spent pouring over rosters and stats in an effort to guesstimate who should be ranked where and why.

Initially we were going to see about setting something up like a typical poll with balloters and such.  That would have been a lot easier on this end, but we abandoned the idea.  We were afraid of people judging based on personal agendas and/or unintentional bias.  Furthermore we feared balloters may “mail it in” and not give the rankings their proper due.

The Ping!Baseball rankings are an internal collectively process in which we monitor scores throughout the week.  On Sunday night there is a meeting of the minds with everyone giving their two cents (sometimes up to a dollar…) as to where teams should be positioned.  Teams that don’t make it on the final list are kept into consideration and monitored for the next week.  Thus if someone doesn’t perform as anticipated, teams from that pool are brought in to take their place.  It sometimes puts a delay in bringing a team in, but it also keeps us from prematurely rewarding a team for a fluke good weekend or overly punished someone for a bad week.  You can’t be expected to play twenty weeks at the top of your game.  Especially when you’re talking about student-athletes, not professionals who have some many other things going on in their lives.
We try to be accountable in our rankings and that is why we include a little sentence or two about what the teams did the week before to explain the method to our madness.  With that being said, I don’t care for the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper Rankings – especially the DII numbers (which are the “official numbers).  It’s nothing personal and this isn’t meant to be a shot across the bow or slight against CBN as they are tip top and I enjoy their stuff, but the rankings just don’t make sense to me and its not fair to the players and teams being judged.

Last week Emporia State when from #4 to “other receiving votes” in the CBN poll by going 2-2 in games.  In the preseason rankings the Hornets received 534 points in the poll.  After losing two of three games (on the road) to Regis, the Hornets got 1 point in the poll.  One single, lousy, stinkin’ point.  How can a team go from being on the top teams in the land to barely receiving consideration?  Is a series loss to Regis that embarrassing?  The Rangers were 27-22 last season.  That’s no too shabby.  It’s not like they lost to a little league team. Furthermore Catawba was expunged from their rankings, going from #7 to falling out of the poll completely as well.  They didn’t play great, but not that awful by any means.  They went 1-2 against Lander, a team ranked #27 in their poll.  Additionally Lander had just won a series against a top ten team, but they were advanced only a handful of spots.  Where is the love after winning a big series?

Now nothing against Lynn University, but they have jumped them from number 37 to 9 to 1 in two weeks.  They’ve won five of six from Columbus State and USC Aiken, which are all very good wins, but not “stop the presses” amazing.  Only one of those wins was by more that three runs so it’s not like they are blowing out opposition and demand your awe and respect.   The Fighting Knights are playing great.  No doubt.  But to be #1 this quick seems a little premature.  Sometimes the poll is more of a “who’s hot, who’s not” process instead of an academic breakdown and is worthy of being hosted by Mario Lopez and Perez Hilton.

And to not rank a team like Sonoma State who is 7-0 and played in the national finals last season because they “Did not report”… Seriously…  That can’t fly.

I don’t know what the answer is, but something has gotta change.  There are a lot of DII players, coaches and fans who deserve better.  Something needs to be fixed.

It is clear that their many baseball afficiadanos who take the DII game very seriously and they don’t deserve to have a haphazzard ranking system.