Each of the last two springs, I’ve played intramural softball here at UNC on a team mostly full of other grad students. It’s always a lot of fun, but it occasionally gets frustrating for me because a large portion of the team has never played baseball or softball before and so they have no idea how to hit cut-off men, track down a flyball, pay attention to the situation on the bases, etc. Last year one of our players, ostensibly an outfielder, charged hard on one or two sinking liners, failed to catch them on the fly, and misplayed the short-hop he’d created into a home run (we play intramurals on soccer fields with no fences, so the ball rolls forever). After this happened once or twice, he began playing 350 feet away from the batters and charging every ball, turning every flyout and single into a double or triple.
You can see where this story is leading, because Ryan Doumit plays outfield similarly to a fifth year grad student with limited baseball experience and his inability to make routine plays shortened James McDonald’s night and possibly cost the Pirates a win. (Also costing the Pirates was the continued existence of Chan Ho Park.) Or if you’re feeling positive, he catapulted us into first place in the Anthony Rendon sweepstakes.
Anyways, you can check McDonald’s PitchFX to see that while he was pretty good before hitting the wall after Doumit’s gaffe in the fifth, he wasn’t nearly as good as he was against the Rockies. He didn’t get any swinging strikes on his changeup after he got seven against Colorado and he got just one on his curve. He was still very effective, throwing a lot of strikes, racking up six strikeouts in 4 2/3, and only issuing one walk, but he didn’t quite baffle the Padres the way he did the Rockies. It’s still an encouraging second start, I think. His fastball clocked in about the same as it did last week and he was able to throw all three of his pitches for strikes, mix speeds well, and he probably hit the wall a bit late in the fifth (again, it’s just his second start since mid-July), but it just wasn’t enough for the Pirates this time.
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