It’s baseball season again and Christian is playing for the Echelbarger Phantoms minors club. It’s the same sponsor from last year, but he’s going by Echelbarger Properties instead Coldwell Banker. I brought back Coldwell assistant coach Jeff Tilbury and Hans Landel from the Dodgers and Padres teams.
What a great day for baseball and it was an exciting game! It felt like a game in late May. Our team definitely has firepower behind the plate. We had an inside the park home run by Jordan, 3 triples from Chris, Christian & Caesar, 3 doubles by Jordan, Alex R & Sean and several singles by Chris, Christian, Reilly & Jack.
The top of the order is in fine form and we were able to capitalize on runs early in the game. The middle and bottom of the order is a work in progress at this point. Many of these kids moved up from super 9’s and haven’t been in kid pitch for a whole season.
Christian went 2 for 2 and got walked during his last at bat. Both of his hits were 1st pitch hits and he got a triple in the 3rd inning!
This years team is a little light in the pitching department. We had 6 strong pitchers last year and we are going to need to mold our staff this year. The bright spot was that Christian started real strong with 1-2-3 strikeout to their lead off batter, but the ump didn’t call the close ones for him and he struggled to find his control after he walked a batter.
We should have won the game with 14 hits to 3, but the walks killed us. We walked 15 Sparta’s batters, where the Phantoms only had 5 walks for the game and they took advantage of our team not taking care of the ball. I’d rather have the other team hit the ball and put the ball in play for our fielders to get the outs rather than letting them walk.
My starting fielders are going to be pretty strong, but as we rotate players through the field positions we have some holes. This will get better with more practice and games.
The MVP for this game was Jordan for the HR in the 1st inning.
The Phantoms are an exciting team and will be a great squad. We have a fabulous cheering section and we have great assistant coaches working with the kids.
Our next game is Wednesday, 3/24 at 7:00 pm on Field 2 against team Windermere. See you then. Go Phantoms!
Final Score: Echelbarger 10 – Sparta’s 14
