Baseball Team Gets Back to Basics
Cougars foucs on fundamentals, clinch MCC
Matt Boivin
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Features
Going into April the Spring Arbor University baseball team had a disappointing 10-8 record, suffering injuries to four key players. Coming out of April the Cougars are 28-9 and have clinched their conference.
The list of those injured in early April included veteran pitcher Cody "Louie" Sharp who took a line drive to his wrist, junior infielder Jeff Hollister with a knee injury, senior pitcher/infielder Jesse Bachman with a pulled hamstring and junior outfielder Jon Herbig with a concussion after he dove headfirst into an outfield wall in pursuit of a fly ball.
Missing these leaders and entering the most important month of regular season play, the Cougars inched their way past Goshen and Grace in consecutive double-headers. In the final game against Grace they scraped by with a 3-2 win in extra innings.
"We were winning, but not by much," said freshman infielder Justin Forster.
"Everybody was struggling. Our pitching was good but our batting was not."
After the doubleheader against Grace, head coach Sam Riggleman gave a pep talk that changed the team's attitude towards batting.
"He [Riggleman] pointed out that Grace was the worst batting team in the conference, and we had barely beaten them," said Forster. "He challenged the guys, especially the seniors, asking them how they wanted to be remembered. When people ask you how you batted your senior year do you want to be saying, 'yeah I batted a .140 or do you want to be able to say you had the best batting season of your career?' [Collegiate] baseball players are remembered for how they batted their senior year."
The pep talk alone did not turn around the Cougar's batting.
They returned to the fundamentals.
"[Right-handed batters] have a tendency to want to hit the ball towards the left field because that is the shortest distance for a homerun," said Forster." pitchers know this so they mainly throw outside pitches. If you try to pull an outside pitch towards left field you're most likely going to get a weak hit and be thrown out. So it's better to meet the pitch where your swing is strongest and send it back the way it came."
The list of those injured in early April included veteran pitcher Cody "Louie" Sharp who took a line drive to his wrist, junior infielder Jeff Hollister with a knee injury, senior pitcher/infielder Jesse Bachman with a pulled hamstring and junior outfielder Jon Herbig with a concussion after he dove headfirst into an outfield wall in pursuit of a fly ball.
Missing these leaders and entering the most important month of regular season play, the Cougars inched their way past Goshen and Grace in consecutive double-headers. In the final game against Grace they scraped by with a 3-2 win in extra innings.
"We were winning, but not by much," said freshman infielder Justin Forster.
"Everybody was struggling. Our pitching was good but our batting was not."
After the doubleheader against Grace, head coach Sam Riggleman gave a pep talk that changed the team's attitude towards batting.
"He [Riggleman] pointed out that Grace was the worst batting team in the conference, and we had barely beaten them," said Forster. "He challenged the guys, especially the seniors, asking them how they wanted to be remembered. When people ask you how you batted your senior year do you want to be saying, 'yeah I batted a .140 or do you want to be able to say you had the best batting season of your career?' [Collegiate] baseball players are remembered for how they batted their senior year."
The pep talk alone did not turn around the Cougar's batting.
They returned to the fundamentals.
"[Right-handed batters] have a tendency to want to hit the ball towards the left field because that is the shortest distance for a homerun," said Forster." pitchers know this so they mainly throw outside pitches. If you try to pull an outside pitch towards left field you're most likely going to get a weak hit and be thrown out. So it's better to meet the pitch where your swing is strongest and send it back the way it came."
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Michigan Movers
posted 10/14/09 @ 3:45 PM EST
Quote:
"They returned to the fundamentals.
"[Right-handed batters] have a tendency to want to hit the ball towards the left field because that is the shortest distance for a homerun," said Forster. (Continued…)
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