Author Archives: Marcus

Final game of the regular season

It is time for the final game of the regular season! The Sharks are heading towards Sundbyberg to wrap up the season. Sometimes the games matters everything, sometimes not. This is one of the latter games. Even with two wins the Sundbyberg Heat can’t pass Leksand since they are on the same amount of wins and the tie breaker is the winner of the last game between them. Sundbyberg won the first game in the double header and Leksand the one that matters, the last game.

The Gothenburg Sharks could pass the Akademin with two wins. The Sharks are one game behind but the Akademin won the last game between them. The Akademin ended their season with the double header in Gothenburg on the national day, June 6. They play half the season. Regardless, that will only affect the position in the series. The Sharks will still have to play quallifications games to stay in the highest league.

Gothenburg did not catch any breaks in the games versus Karlskoga home, nor Leksand away. They were closer the first game and lost big in the second, both times. Since Kerry got injured after pitching 120+ pitches in one game early in the season the Sharks have had problems with pitching and releaf. The bullpen is simply not deep enough to go two full games in a series this season. With that said, I’m happy to see that both Ted and Hiba are going to Sundbyberg tomorrow. Ted (18 yo this year) have been too eager to pitch and play and haven’t caught up with his basic training and have been injured back and forth the entire season.

Hiba Nabi. Photo: Dennis Rosenqvist

Hiba Nabi. Photo: Dennis Rosenqvist

Hiba is another of the younger pitchers available (20 yo). Hiba started the second game versus Karlskoga two weeks ago and pitched six full innings. He did have some trouble commanding his pitches but overall I was impressed by Hiba. He did last six innings, he did strike out batters and he do got a few different pitches availble to him. Just get some more coaching during the games, some more innings pitched and he will become one of the corner stones in the Shark pitching. Ted pitched 1.2 innings in the second game versus Leksand last weekend. He started the first game away versus Stockholm May first, pitching three innings. He also pitched two full innings in the second game versus Sundbyerg almost a month ago. I hope that Ted could start taking care of his training and continue to develop as a pitcher and of course at bat so that we could see Ted play more games with quality pitching and no injuries. Those are the two I will follow closest tomorrow!

Best of luck in the last double header of the regular season!

Pre game Karlskoga @ Gothenburg Shark – Shark Park.

We’re looking at a double header this Saturday. First game starts 1300. What can we expect from the games? What are the stakes?

Gothenburg got one win versus Alby and one versus Leksand with six games remaining of the regular season. The Sharks ended the 2010 season with six wins after 22 games. There is still a chance to not score a all time low for the Sharks. WIth double losses the upcoming weekend the chances will be close to none to not set a new all time low.

elitserien after 16 games 2013

Elitserien after 16 games 2013

Karlskoga Bats on the other hand is on the other end of the series. Only one game behind Stockholm and they are looking for the number one spot with home game advantage in the final. Stockholm played Sundbyberg last night in a game that was cut short due to darkness. Stockholm was ahead 11 to 5 at the time. A new game is scheduled by tomorrow. Karlskoga is probably looking for two easy wins to stay alive in the run for the number one spot. Could it be that the strong Karlskoga could underestimate Gothenburg?

This game will be Karlskogas first game since Sundbyberg away on June 8. Karlskoga won game one 2-7 but lost game two 11-10. Their import Shawn Hetherington pitched six innings (max for an import) of game one (ERA 2.02). Kent Karlsson pitched game two and gave up 18 hits and 11 runs in seven innings. Paul Waterman who has been very good the past seasons pitched only 2.2 innings in game one. His ERA is a solid 2.67 with 30 innings pitched. Could we suspect some injury that prevents Waterman from starting? He started versus Alby June 1 but pitched only three full innings before Kent Karlsson re-leaved.

What could we expect from the Sharks? We have struggled with the defense for most of the season. From time to time the defense works excellent but that feeling has mostly being punctured during some part of the game letting a bunch of runs. Offensively the Sharks has the capabilities to get on base versus any team this year. There seem to be some sort of hang up when players reaches base that prevents the team to capitalize on the possibilities in the extension a fan would appreciate. The team haven’t earned the extra little things that makes it all fall in place for some reason. But there is still time to make that happen. A must when the team heads to the qualification series to stay in the Elitserien.

Good luck on Saturday! Make the plays and fire up your bats!

Four home games ends July

There are double chances to catch a Shark game the upcoming two weekends. The Regionslaget will face Malmö in a double header on Sunday 21st. Game starts at 1200. The Saturday after (27th) will be the last home game of the regular season for the Elitserie team. You are not far away from Shark Park!

The Regionslaget have had a tougher time than the Elitserie team this season and is still looking to pick up their first win. They got double double (two double headers) chances away versus Sölvesborg and ends the season home versus Malmö once again on the 18:th. The team really struggled early in the season when facing Malmö away. Have the summer practice trimmed the defense and lit their bats on fire?

We’ll look more into the details of the games vs Karlskoga Bats next week! The games could be very important for the Bats, protecting their position from teams below and also a chance to advance to first place and be guaranteed extra home games in the entire play offs.

Sundbyberg visiting Shark Park on Saturday

Sundbyberg Heat has two fewer games played than Stockholm and are four games behind. Two wins would take them a bit closer. Sundbyberg needs to take the upper hand on Gothenburg to advance further. They have Gothenburg, Stockholm, Alby and finally Gothenburg in the remaining eight games.

Sundbyberg has wins versus all teams in the top teams (Stockholm, Karlskoga and Leksand) this season and is currently holding third place in the series. The Sundbyberg pitching has been their best weapon and worst enemy. They kept Karlskoga from scoring early in the season and Michael Andersson only allowed five hits in that game. When their defense somewhat failed them, the offense has been there to pick up wins. They have scored ten runs or more in six of the seasons 14 games this far. In half of them, they allowed five runs or less.

Gothenburg needs to get a good feeling in the team before the play offs to stay in the Elitseries start. In theory Gothenburg could get a play off spot with back to back wins in the remaining eight games and Sundbyberg may not win more than two games in their double headers vs Stockholm and Alby. The same thing works vs Leksand but Leksand must not win more than one game in the four games vs Alby and Karlskoga. It would be wonderful, but with the Sharks track record for this season unlikely. Starting with a win in game one vs Sundbyberg would be a great start to the remaining eight games!

Joe Lankford had some extra practice this weekend when playing with the Elitserien Allstars in Nordic Baseball Classic.

Best of luck to the team the upcoming weekend!

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!

Stockholm visiting on Saturday

We got the leaders of the series visiting this Saturday. Stockholm is seven wins and two losses for the season. The Sharks are on the opposite side of the table with the opposite numbers showing two wins and six losses.

Stockholm has from time to time shown really good pitching. But when the pitching doesn’t work perfect, the offense is there to take them to the front seat. The Sharks scored three runs in top first in the previous game between the teams. Stockholm answered quickly by scoring five in bottom one. Stockholms two losses came versus Bats after extra innings and Sundbyberg.

The two losses that the Sharks had in the beginning of the season vs Stockholm was exactly a month ago on Saturday. It was the first time on an actual field of the season. The defense which the Sharks had struggled with the entire season has only got better since. We lost with big numbers last time. One could not really expect the same results on Saturday. These game are completely different.

Even though my heart would like to say that we’ll grab both games, I hope for one game even though I realize that it will be tough to get that. By watching the previous home games I think that the Sharks offense played better than the numbers on the board shows. They are giving themselves chances inning after inning missing the little extra something that makes you score them. That will turn in favor of the Sharks some time soon, why not on Sunday?