Guam v Canada and Ca v NY

To tell the truth, I wasn't too impressed with either Guam or Canada. Canada's #1 was a good pitcher, but certainly not great, and when he got tired, it was all over. Guam pitching wasn't much better and it looked like if Canada had another decent pitcher, they would have lost that game.

The 12 run inning Guam had was one of those things. The other pitcher was tired, they'd see his best stuff twice and one they started hitting and things got rolling, it turned into a feeding frenzy! We've all seen those things. Once it starts, you could bring in Randy Johnson and he'd get pounded too. Japan should eat them alive.

The Aptos/NY game was pretty good though. Both teams had their #1s going and they did fine for a few innings, but the overuse was showing on both kids. The boy from Aptos didn't have nearly the command he did the last time he threw and consequently threw a lot of pitches early. 54 after 3.

The kid from Harlem also looked much more ragged than the last time he threw. He was doing fine until he had to throw 31 in the 4th. That slowed him down quite a bit, but he managed to keep the ball around the zone and got away with it.

In the inning where he threw those 31 pitches, I think he got shafted by a "no" call. With no outs and a runner on 1st, a ball was "dubbed" just to the left of the 1st base line and about 15 from home. The pitcher got the ball in time and made a decent throw to the 1st baseman, but he had to throw it over the batter/runner.

Even during the live play I could see the batter's foot landing inside the foul line every time he took a step and was really surprised when neither up called him out. instead, it was called an e-3 and a subsequent FC and double became unearned runs that should have never scored.

I'm looking forward to something as a result of these games though. It seems that Mark Eihorn was the father of the kid from Aptos and he happens to be a friend of my son's PC. I was telling him today that I was really surprised that after being in the ML, his dad would insist on calling pitches. The PC was surprised too and has promised to bring that up the next time they got together.

The Canada pitchers:

34 batters

Earned runs - 12
Strikes - 62
Hit strikes - 21
Balls - 42
Strike % - 66% 83/129
1st pitch strike % - 86% 30/35

The Guam pitchers:

32 batters
Earned runs - 1
Strikes - 25
Hit strikes - 29
Balls - 31
Strike % - 64% 54/85
1st pitch strike % - 66% 21/32

The NY pitchers:

25 batters
Earned runs - 0
Strikes - 61
Hit strikes - 13
Balls - 32
Strike % - 69% 74/107
1st pitch strike % - 72% 18/25

The Aptos pitchers:

22 batters
Earned runs - 5
Strikes - 45
Hit strikes - 14
Balls - 30
Strike % - 66% 59/89
1st pitch strike % - 68% 15/22