Tonight the Streaks defeated Limestone by a 7-4 margin. We improved our record to 9-2 with the non-conference victory. While we are happy about the win, this game like many others, illuminated things that we need to get buttoned up before heading into the bulk of our schedule.
We used a plethora of pitchers in order to get them ready for our conference game on Saturday. Tyler Farrell got the start and he performed exactly the way we expect him to. Timmy Rossell came in and did well giving up just one run on a win swept homer over the center field fence. Logan Scott entered the game in the fourth and did a good job, running into some tough luck with Limestone hits coupled with errors on the GHS infield. Nick Milligan shut the door in the 6th and 7th recording the final four outs.
While I am always looking to find ways to improve defensively, another issue has developed over the last couple of games. Instead of jumping out to a quick start offensively, we seem to struggle early in games. Some of this is due to our approach of gathering information on the pitcher, but we need to do a better job of maintaining pressure on teams early in games as well. It almost seemed today that we didn't wake up until Limestone pushed across a run to go ahead 4-3. It wasn't until the 6th that we strung a few hits together to produce scoring threats. Brock Bush was the offensive hero today. He belted his first home run of the season as well as recording the go ahead RBI in the sixth. Andrew Steck, Luke Ryan, and Dalton Davis contributed RBIs as well.
While close games are entertaining for the fans, as a coach, we want our guys to realize that we wont be able to count on late inning heroics all the time. A team of our caliber should be able to jump out and "bury" teams in the early goings. The longer we allow teams to hang around, the more they feel able to beat us. We have told our guys that after the run that we had last year, we have bulls eye on our backs. Teams really want to beat Galesburg this year. Game in and game out, our guys need to rise to this challenge. I am confident that they will.
Well, a couple of much needed practice days are coming up for us. Come out Saturday at 11 as we play United Township High School in our first conference double header of the year.
