Welcome back Catamount fans and thank you for tuning into another week of the Potomac State Baseball player diary. Opening day is getting closer and closer and we have been taking advantage of every bit of practice we can get, outside or inside, before we take our road trip down south to start our season on February 22nd.
As I touched on last week, the sun has been shining a little bit more than usual for this time of year here in Keyser and we have been getting outside and, on our field, as much as the weather has permitted us to do so. Monday is usually an off day for us, but with the beautiful day that we had, we jumped onto the field for some three-group batting practice.
Three-group batting practice days have the reputation of being our favorite day of practice throughout the week and since we have not had our fix of outside batting practice in quite some time, we were all extremely eager to get outside for those gameday reps. Here at Potomac State three-group batting practice is quite the experience and there are a lot of moving parts to the system. To be completely honest when we first have outside batting practice early in the fall it really is a big mess, but everyone eventually gets the hang of it and we get a lot of work in. You may have guessed it that it is called three group batting practice because there are three groups of hitters. One group hits live on the field, one gets live defensive work in the field, and the other gets a ton of swings over in the new indoor player development center. While we all love getting swings in on the field and watching the ball fly, the biggest aspect of our on-field hitting is the base running practice. Coach Schafer always pushes us to approach our base running practice with extreme seriousness because base running is one of the least practiced aspects of the game and batting practice days is a great opportunity that we have to implement our base running strategies with some live reads off the bat.
A usual on-field round of batting practice usually consists of one sacrifice bunt, four or five swings, and be sure to remember that you swing the bat on your hit and run! After your round of batting practice, you move (sprint) your way down to first, which is where the base running practice begins. When we are on the bases we extend as far as we can on fly balls, react back on line drives, get a few hard steps in on balls that would be base hits, and then we move on (sprint to) the next base. After you get some work in at each base you end up back at the “turtle” for another round of swings. The process repeats for about three or four rounds and then the on-field hitting concludes with a round of “Base Hits.” During the base hits round you get to stay in the cage and take as many swings as you like, as long as your swings are resulting in “Base Hits.” Once the base hits round has reached an end, all the groups rotate and on field hitters move to defense, defense moves over to hitting in the development center, and guys that were hitting in the center come over to the field for their share of on-field hitting.
When you are out in the field you get to play live balls off the bat, carry out your footwork, then throw the ball into the bucket man behind second base. If you aren’t getting balls of the bat, there is most likely a pitcher hitting some fungos to you. Some of our best fungo hitters on the team this year include Tyler Bradford and Brandon Schaeffer. After the group has finished their on-field batting practice rounds, the groups rotate again and the group of on-field defenders heads over to the development center, where we get most of our swings in on batting practice days.
Over at the development center, we put our Useful Swing Package to work and put ourselves in gameday situations. We work through all the possible counts and practice our approach for any possible scenario you could imagine. After all the groups have gotten their chance for on-field batting practice it’s time to get a nice group stretch out in right field. After stretching, we have to move our “turtle” off the field. Thye turtle is our portable batting cage that surrounds the home plate area for BP. I say portable, but moving the turtle is a group effort that requires a ton of teamwork and strength as the wheels have not worked since the Clinton Administration. We are very fortunate to have some big guys on our team like Justin Stone and Devon Neal that help us move most of the weight.
Improvements in our new player development center have also continued. You may remember that up until now we have been using a couple of jet engine-like heaters to warm up the building on the cold days that we have been experiencing, but recently our new, permanent heating system has been installed and makes our indoor practices all the more convenient. Our bootleg jet engines will be missed, but our new system is far more effective.
This past weekend we were back in the player development center for some live at bats against our pitchers. While sometimes it does get a little crammed with our whole team inside, the at bats are crucial in helping us prepare for the premier competition that we open up are season against. For our practices inside we have a pitcher throwing live at bats in each of the two cages and we get some bunting, defensive, and more hitting work in the large space between the cages. When we’re in the cage Coach Schafer and Coach Kowalo give us situations that help us implement our Useful Swing Package against the live arms.
The only thing better than getting live at bats inside is playing a game outside, and on Sunday we were back outside for another scrimmage. Our field was unavailable because of some unexpected snow, but the sun started shinning just in time to melt the precipitation off the turf of Stayman Field. Moving the pitcher’s mound was a pretty big project however and it took some of the best minds on the team to engineer a solution for transporting the mound down to the field with a truck that was way too small. We ended up simply placing the mound on top of the truck bed and Tobin Cain drove it down with extreme caution. The baseball gods were on our side though and the delicate procedure was a success. Once our field was put together down on the turf, we were set for nine innings of baseball. Easton Petitt, Preston Taylor and Christian Reyes had a strong showings at the plate and Mac Messier and Garret Haggerty worked well on the mound. We wrapped up our game just in time as the sun began to set and the temperature began to drop.
Another great thing about our program here at Potomac State is just how much Rawlings and New Balance spoil us with brand new gear. We truly are grateful for all the good that those two sponsors do for our program. This past week we received all of our apparel and travel duffel bags. Gameday cannot come soon enough as we are officially dressed to impress and ready to hit the road!
Thank you for tuning in for another week of the Potomac State Baseball player diary! Be sure to bring it back next week for the last entry before your Catamounts open up the 2020 season.