Junior Baseball review

Travis did quite well this year. His team finshed 5-9 this season and missed the playoffs. Which is a shame, because the team really looked better than they played as a whole.

Travis's bat came alive as he had multiple singles, (at least 20 for the year) and the hit of the year was a stand-up triple. With a little more speed he may have made it a homerun. The ball was hit down the third base line and deep past the left fielder. This hit was made with 2 out and no runners on. It started a 10 run inning for his team. Last year his hits were hard bouncers or dribblers to the first or second basemen. This year his hits were bloop or slapped flyballs just short of the outfielders in left and center. The last few games he really started pulling the ball down the third base side. Out of 12 players he started the year batting 11th in the lineup, by the last few games he had moved up to 6th. His base running and stealing skills are well improved from previous years. He played a lot at second base, and made quite a few good plays. The last inning of the season he was playing left field and made a spectacular backpedaling catch. He thinks he wants to play Fallball this fall to hone in his skills some more.

I coached Tyler's Team. We finished officially 8-5, however there was three games we ended early due to weather, or running short on time. We could have played the final innings, but I wasn't really worried about the score. If we had finished them out I believe we would have been 11-2. One of the real losses we suffered was against arguably the best team in our league. We had given them their only loss earlier in the season.

Tyler was one of my goto players. He pitched, played shortstop and 1st base. I thought he would be killing the ball at the plate, but instead he stayed mr consistant. He finished with 17 singles , 3 doubles, a triple and 2 homeruns. He improved steadily on the mound, starting out throwing a 2 finger fastball, then added the four finger fastball. At this age they just need to get it over the plate and he did that quite well. With a little more practice and a larger hand to grip the ball better, he will become a great pitcher. His glove was counted on heavily. I tried to keep him at shortstop for his fielding and throwing, but would switch him to first for the guaranteed glove. This year I moved all the players around to give them a sense of where they can play well. Next year they will be set to 1 or 2 positions. Tyler most likely will be pitching and playing shortstop.