Learning the Game

One of the things I really appreciate about SFL is that you can learn a lot from watching the other players. I find that most of my attention is focused on hitting, and my hitting approach has changed drastically over the years. To my generation of players, Chris Hall is the pioneer of opposite field power hitting, and I decided to give that a try after watching Cid and Zach run down too many of my long flies to left center.

By late 2009, opposite field hitting had caught on everywhere. This is around when Freddie Melendez became a regular, and me & Zach both developed the ability to hit hard liners on the RF line. I should also mention Derek Martinez and Dave Sommers' ability to hit for power to both foul lines. When your team gets burned by something a couple of times, you look for a way to add it to your own bag of tricks.

Most of the other opposite field guys, while they're great hitters, aren't exactly patient. I watched Havelock and Gil and Don Weiss working deep counts, and I tried to do the same.

While Phil Ciccone is a great hitter, there wasn't much I could learn from him. I'm not that gifted a hitter. Not many folks are. Watching him field, I took away this: The most important thing a fielder can do is to be fundamentally sound. Always know where you're going with the ball. Never throw it before you catch it. That sort of thing. You lose games on the failure to make routine plays. Phil makes highlight plays, but he makes the routine ones too.

Of course, you learn from negative examples too. Best if I don't name names in this section, but there are batters who don't run out their hits, baserunners who make all sorts of easily avoidable mistakes, fielders who get tight on important plays. There are pitchers who try to dominate hitters instead of throwing strikes. I'm only learning how to pitch now. Once, a few years ago, I struck out Brian Hernandez swinging. I can't tell you how many times since then I walked him, or gave up a long home run on a 3-1 count, trying to strike him out again. Hard heat means nothing if you can't work ahead of the hitters.

It might have been our current rookie crop that made me think of this. Chris Pun is a guy who has impressive physical tools, though he has a tendency to play out of control sometimes. I played with him in Brooklyn for a few seasons before this, and SFL is an interesting test for him. There are a lot of guys here with great physical tools, and it can be hard to impact a game that way. Pun's a thinker, but also a cowboy. I guess that sounds a bit like Cid.

Greg Hilska already seems to be a much better player than the guy who started showing up in April. His outfield play is much more confident, and he's developed an interesting hitting style that consists mostly of bloops and liners to the exact same spot in shallow left center. He isn't letting Pun walk away with the award, and it will be interesting to see if Greg's game will continue to evolve.

I try to learn something every Sunday. I think I took away two things today. One, don't throw hanging changeups to Sam Magnus. Two, if you're hitless in five at bats, and you brought two bats with you, it's time to change to the other one.