Monthly Archives: June 2013

Frustrating times

Looking through the stats from the games versus Alby it is kind of frustrating on several levels. Check out the average that the Sharks got. That’s not bad numbers! For some reason the numbers just don’t work for us! A loss five to four away should have been the other way around. The second game illustrates the pitching problem that the Sharks has right now. Not the pitching in that game in particular, but that number of games that we had against us over and over again. Frustrating. To make it more than frustrating we can’t blame anyone in particular. Five games was lost in the seventh because we failed to score more than three runs! Only 14 games of the entire season did come up with a winner not scoring double digits.

That said, one must be impressed by Alby players such as Demond Wiltshire playing second base, third when visiting Gothenburg. Almost taking as many walks as at bats. His six errors during a hundred innings (perfect at third base) is impressive! The youngster Emil Sahlin got a bright future. Already pitching at a high level. His ERA of 9+ is leveraged by the number of walks. (Walking over two per inning). If the coach could align to the rules of how many innings a junior are allowed to pitch, this guy has a bright future (He pitched more than he was allowed to when the team was visiting Gothenburg) We won that game however. When Alby was visiting Gothenburg I was also impressed by the stamina and stubbornness of Raul Lozano. From where I was standing I could not see that he was born 1960 when pitching a nine inning game.

Today I must recognize a true fighter! A guy that stands up for the Sharks regardless if it is for a Elitseries game, the regional team or for our youngsters. He is a role model for any team! Thank you Joe Lankford.

The Acadamy impressed Shark fans

The Acadamy, the high school students specialized in baseball got one team in the highest league. The Sharks was supposed to open against The Acadamy in April. That game got postponed due to field conditions. What more could one ask for but 20 centigrades and sun mixed with some clouds and dry field conditions?

The Sharks started immediately to gain ground and did their first scoreless inning in the fifth. The Acadamy showed an impressive moral and did not give in. They scored no less than eleven runs in the three last innings of game one. The Sharks failed to respond to that massive run party but got up on the board on the last two innings.

One could feel the dropping moral of the Shark players in the end of the first game. Did they have it in them to turn the game around? The Acadamy wanted the second game and wanted it bad. After a fly out start they started to grind runs for the next four innings. The Sharks took some time to get up on the board and had trouble scoring runs. They managed to score two runs and got them late in the game. Simply wasn’t enough to threaten the Acadamy and to keep the game until more than seven innings.

The Sharks will head to Alby for a double header on Sunday. Afterwards it’s time for some well deserved vacation to recharge the batteries, do some extra batting and fielding practice to get some good momentum going into the second half. It it is obvious risk that we’re heading towards qualifying games for staying in the Elitserien at the end of the season. We do need to get something going prior to that. There is plenty of time for that though.

Akademin @ Gothenburg on the National day

The Gothenburg Sharks are proud to welcome the future of Swedish baseball to Gothenburg. The Acadamy is youngsters from all over Sweden who study in Leksand and specialize in baseball while studying. The former Shark Erik Earnest used to study there. He also played for the junior Team Sweden, before leaving for collage baseball in the US. He represented Leksand when they did visit us two weeks ago.

The game starts at 1300 on Thursday! Bring a friend and cheer for the Sharks! Two games will be played. The second game is preliminary scheduled to 1600, but will start about 20-30 minutes after game one ended.

 

A day to get past

The double header versus Stockholm today exposed Shark baseball where it is today. My predictions that we were past easy mistakes and being stressed out at plays was wrong. Stockholm got us right where they wanted us. They showed off a good defense where the Sharks did not get anything easy. Stockholm offered almost no mistakes and what could be called a solid defense which the Sharks failed to go by.

I tried to argue that there was something going with the Shark offense that wasn’t really out there yet. That did not show today. Stockholm Baseball almost shut us down completely. The solid pitching of Stockholm was too much for us. One can’t really blame the bottom of the Gothenburg batting order that got struck out looking too often. The other parts of the team wasn’t there to threathen the pitchers nor challenge the defense. That combined with almost no mistakes from Stockholm produces the offensive figures of the Sharks today. Two runs after fourteen innings. Stockholm scored 30.

I’m not sure there is anything to learn from todays games. The team just need to step up defensively and back up one another. When error situations do occur, be there to backup the plays. Take the full defense job and run the extra meter to be the back up. I guess it all comes down to practice more together. Minimizing the errors and when all else fails, score runs!

Checking around what happened around baseball today in Sweden we got two victories from the Karlskoga Bats playing Alby away. The first game ended 3-15 (7). The other game was probably rain shortened 1-8 (5). Leksand and Sunbyberg shared one win each. First game to Sundbyberg 7-10, then Leksand bounced back winning 8-4.

Todays most surprising moment was when I realized that Leksand made it to Twitter! I’ve been looking for updates from that part of Sweden for over two years and I seriously started to think that they didn’t have internet. We applaud them and are looking forward to more updates!

The Gothenburg Sharks needs to get todays losses off their shoulders quickly. On the national day of Sweden, on Thursday we are welcoming the Akademin to Shark Park as the last game before the summer vacation. Subscribe to the calendar to make sure you are up to date!