Saturday, June 5, 2010

Gateway 17, Crushers 4

We will start with the negatives...The 17 runs were the most allowed by the Crushers in franchise history and the defeat was also the largest in team history...The positives...Another extremely solid performance from Esmelvin Jimenez on the mound...4.1 innings of relief with just one hit allowed and an unearned run...Tracking: At this point last year the Crushers were 7-6 but had also played Rockford and Washington a total of seven times with a record of 6-1 in those games...With respect to those two teams who struggled especially early last year, Gateway is a much improved team and can hit...River City is pretty much the same team that lost to the Crushers a year ago and Traverse City is currently tied for the division lead...Throw in an Oakland County team sitting in the top half of the division and you catch my drift...The schedule is tougher to start this year...The league is as balanced as I have seen in my three years...

But, it is a long season and as Drew Saylor mentioned yesterday on Crushers First Pitch the first third of the year is really just to get into your routine...Consider the season three 32 game segments...Last year the first segment was 17-15...19-13 in the second segment and 21-10 in the last third...That said, I have also seen teams struggle out of the gates and fail to recover, see Traverse City 2007...You certainly can't wint a title in the first month of the season but you can lose one...However, 5-8 is not cause for panic...Let me repeat, 5-8 is not cause for panic...

Random notes from yesterday...Wayne Bond was the first Crusher player to pinch hit in 2010 and came through with an RBI single in the ninth...Andrew Davis, who was a closer in college at Kent State, pitched the eighth with much success...

Not much media from yesterday so I will just post our respective recaps...

TEAMS
CRUSHER RECAP: Grizzlies Homer Past Crushers

GATEWAY RECAP: Grizzlies Crush Lake Erie

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