Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Intra-Squad Game I

I have to issue a warning to those who I advised that the intra-squad games would start shortly after 9:00. I based that statement on last year......apparently, this is another change Bochy has made. The intra-squad game didn't start until 11:00 am this morning......and it only went 3 innings. They were done by noon. There was a lot of down time before the game, as the regulars worked out on the practice diamond. The players who played in the game took infield and basically sat around and waited until the 11:00 start time. I don't know if Bochy was trying to simulate the nerve wracking nature of waiting for game time or what exactly was going on....but there was probably only 30 minutes of activity in the 2 hours before the game started. I probably won't get there until 10:00 or so tomorrow.

The game was a little different in that instead of either having the pitchers hit OR having a DH.....both teams went with an eight man batting order. No DH AND the pitchers didn't hit. Even so, because of the short, 3 inning game, of the 16 position players, only 9 of them got as much a two plate appearances. So that was a little disappointing. I reviewed player performance in the photos, so I won't rehash that in this narrative.

Lineups
Team 1....................Team 2
SS Ochoa.................2B Velez
3B DeLaRosa .........CF Timpner
RF Scheirholtz........LF Martinez-Esteve
CF Ortmeier...........3B McClain
1B Santos................1B Ishikawa
LF Copeland...........RF Horwitz
2B Bergolla.............SS Figueroa
C Jennings..............C Holm

Pitchers..................Pitchers
Palmer....................Lincecum
Montero.................Matos
Sadler.....................Hedrick

Team 2 wins 3-2 in 3 innings

As disappointing as it was to be at the park for 3 hours to see only 1 hour of baseball. It was REAL baseball. Live pitching, no batting cage and even umpires.......so it was a great time. Watching the workouts is fun........no doubt about it. But there is nothing like watching REAL baseball. The competition and stimulation of a game........nothing like it.

Normally, I don't post this many photos in one day. It just takes too long with this blog software that Google has going. Most of these players have been practicing on the other field and have gotten no coverage at all, so I wanted to get a photo of everyone. I will probably do the same thing tomorrow. Once the games start on Thursday I will probably cut it back to 8-10 photos a day. Hard to believe Spring Training games start day after tomorrow. Where did the year go?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great reporting, Hank. After you decided not to report on the AFL, I stopped looking for you. I thought I'd look again now that it's Spring. It took me a few days, but now I'm all caught up. I knew your insights would be good, but I had no idea you were such a good photographer and writer. Keep up the good work. I'll see you on Opening Day.

Giantfan9 said...

Hey Bruce......good to hear from you. See you April 3rd.

Anonymous said...

GF9

GREAT WORK.... love the detail and the tons of pics....

You get your first ST game of the year tomorrow, hope you enjoy.

I will be there for Fri-Mon games.
Will hunt you down and say hi in Scottsdale....

Giantfan9 said...

Not much of a "hunt" Merk. You know exactly where I will be, in Scottsdale anyway.