Category Archives: Baseball

Now the season is really over

The Sharks left the season semi early by winning the series versus Alby. We don’t know what would have happened if we lost that game. We do know that Alby lost two straight games to Sölvesborg and by that lost their Eliteseries status.

We welcome Sölvesborg to the Elitseries! Karl Knutsson lead Sölvesborg through the playoffs and finally to a spot in the highest league. Something the Sölvesborg team have been longing for (2:25 into this clip).

In the other end of the series we do have a winner! Stockholm did take one win away vs Karlskoga setting the score 1-1 after two games. When the series moved to Stockholm, the Stockholm team took no chances! Back to back wins where the first game saw no more than seven innings. We congratulates Stockholm for the 2013 title! Also, the Stockholm cadets took their fourth subsequent title! Very Impressive!

We’re keen to see what the Elitseries will actually look like the 2014 season. Skövde won a spot there some years ago but decided to not take it. In April 2014 we know for sure when the schedule is set, what to expect.

Very good position for the Sharks

Gothenburg won the important game 1, 16-11. The second game got a bit tighter and had to be interrupted in the top 10 due to nightfall at 6-6. They will continue the second game today. If Gothenburg wins that game they have succeeded to defend their Elitseries spot. If the lose, they will have another chance in todays scheduled game.

Two qualification chances

The Sharks are heading straight into the qualification series to stay in the Elitseries. The first chance is a best of three games series versus Alby, away.

The team is heading to Alby on Friday for a double header on Saturday. If no team win both games a third and directly decisive game is played on Sunday. The winner of that series will stay in the Elitseries.

The team who loses that series gets a second chance towards the winner of regional series play off in a best of three games series. The games will be played at the home park of the Elitserie team. The team who wins that series will get the Elitserie spot.

We wish the Sharks the best of luck this weekend!

Post season games scheduled

The Gothenburg Sharks are going to play Alby away to directly qualify to stay in the Elitseries. The games are already in your calendar if you subscribe to it. The games are scheduled to 31 of August with a double header. If no team win both games a tie breaker game will be played on the 1st of September. All games of that series are played in Seagull Park.

The teams that wins the series end the season there and then. The other team will get a final chance to stay in the Elitseries in a three game qualification series versus the Regional series playoff winner in mid September.

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!

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.

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!

Double losses in Karlskoga

Karlskoga was too tough for Gothenburg this weekend. The Sharks failed to take any of the two games to nine innings losing 11-1 and 16-5. We don’t have any more details of the games as of now, waiting for heatstat to get updated with the game details.

Gothenburg will have to consecutive home games the upcoming two Saturdays. Leksand this Saturday (25/5) and Stockholm (1/6).