WE PLAYED BASEBALL WITH A HOCKEY SCORE; NO SHOOTOUT REQUIRED.

HURTIN' UNITS VS. THE DUSTY CLEATS...

Game # 23- August 27,2012

Hurtin' Units tie 3-3

Team Record - 8-13-2

Keogh Park - Last season the Dusty Cleats were the talk of the town, with a record of 19-0-0, going undefeated until August 15, 2011, when the Hurtin' Units finally burst their bubble. In game # 20, for both teams, the Hurtin' Units, with a 8-12-1 team record, beat the Dusty Cleats by a score of 15-14 to end an incredible run by the Cleats.

The win by the Hurtin' Units was a highlight of a mediocre season and probably a real disappointment for the Cleats who were very close to a perfect season. The Hurtin' Units actually came close to a win over the Dusty Cleats in their first meeting (June 15) losing by a single run, with a score of 20-19. The Cleats would go on to lose one more game and end the season with a 22-2-0 record...The Dusty Cleats would breeze through the playoffs until the finals, where the Grisslies would beat them, in a close game, to win the championship...

The 2012 edition of the Dusty Cleats is not the team of 2011, but they still have a good looking (baseball good looking) squad, lead by Scotty Barton with the league's best on base average, Mark D. and Radar. I now understand how a team with a solid core of players can underachieve; the Hurtin' Units have been going through the same issue this season, a really solid group of players, but just not playing up to the potential of it's players.

Going in to this season, I thought this was the best looking team the Units had ever drafted; I'm basing this on our drafted players previous seasons and how they have played in the past. In the Units first season, we had chemistry and a great group of guys, not the most talent, but everyone seemed to play their hardest and the winning made our bond stronger. The playoffs are about to begin, can the 2012 Hurtin' Units become that group that goes all the way?

The weather for this game was humid and it had rained a good portion of the day, making the batter's boxes a Keogh very muddy. The fields were a little damp, and with this dampness comes a soggy ball. Nobody likes soggy balls.

At game time we were missing, Gord (3rd), Jamie, Anicete and Davey. We picked up Don Booth and Gord Dol as subs for the evening. 

Boxscore:       1     2      3     4       5      6      7      Total  

Hurtin' Units    0      0     0     0       1      2      0         3     

Dusty Cleats    0     1      1     0       0     1      0         3      

The boxscore tells most of the story. This had to be the lowest scoring game of the season. The Hurtin' Units hit 13 fly ball outs and the Dusty Cleats hit 11 fly ball outs. This also had to be one of the fastest played game on the season, approximately 50 minutes to play.


Since there wasn't a lot to really talk about (did I mention Mark struck out?), I thought I would look at what we have done over the last 9 games we have played. In the last 9 games we have scored a total of 50 runs with an average runs per game of 6.25. On the defensive side, we really have been quite good allowing a total of 81 runs against, with an average of 10.12 runs per game. This number is probably close to the league average.

The really concerning numbers have to be the games where we only scored one run , I don't recall a team, in this league, scoring only a single run in a game, and we did it twice in the last 9 games. We also went 6 games scoring 5 runs or less. Only twice did we get into double digits. When I looked at the hitters we drafted back in May, and the hitting we did at our first practise, I never thought we would be struggling to score runs... The second season is almost here, maybe we just need a reason to score.

Our defense has been excellent all season long! I struggled with pitching at the start of the season, which probably accounted for the higher runs against on the season, but from just before the HTKP tournament, I thought I was throwing much better. The 10.12 runs against is probably around the league average and when you look at our numbers over the last 9 games they really don't look that bad. 5 of the 9 games were in the single digits, hold most teams to single digits and you're going to be in the game, unless ya can't score runs.  The worst runs against in this stretch was against the Dusty Cleats, with 14 runs against.  We also played a really good game against the 2012 league champs, in fact we lost both our games against the Brew Jays by a single run.

Speaking of single runs...I have mentioned it before, but I think we have played decent this season, we have lost 5 games by a single run and 2 games by two runs, winning half of these games would have put us in 4 place in the standings and winning all of these single and two runs games would have placed us in second place. Missed it by that much.

We have one more game remaining, if we can come out strong for a win, we will have been undefeated in our last 3 games going in to the playoffs...we could sneak up on a few teams.