Friday, August 12, 2011
The Hits Just Keep on Coming
Wow. Was my last post about pool play on the money or what? Top seeds dropped like flies today around the country, and I'm sorry it hurts the Little League World Series when it happens. In the New England region, it hurt the most. Undefeated New Hampshire and 3-1 Connecticut each had to play their final pool play opponents for a second time in two days. Both New Hampshire and Connecticut pounded the top pitchers of their two respective opponents while not throwing their best hurlers, I might add. The games meant nothing to them, but they still won handily.
Now, they're both eliminated from the tournament.
Maybe we need to go back to the stone ages of the early 90's and go back to single elimination. At least everyone would be on a level playing field then. I agree that double elimination worked better than they would now if the regions weren't split into eight. Six team tournaments would be kind of lame. Maybe the answer is inviting two teams from bigger states ala Texas and California to make it 12 per region. I'm not sure, but something needs to be done.
If Little League is married to pool play, then they need to get rid of the semifinal round. Just allow the top 2 teams to advance and play a full round robin. Goffstown, New Hampshire, the best team in the entire East Region has been perfect from game one of its district tournament. One game of follies (EIGHT ERRORS!) after committing just one error in the four pool play games should not eliminate a team, especially when they lost to a team they easily beat, who happened to lose two games in the regional already (fair and square), and also lost in their own district tournament. It's not right.
Fairfield, Connecticut blew it in a different way. Did they lose to an inferior opponent who they already beat? Yes. However, Connecticut can only blame themselves with some really poor coaching decisions. Hitting for its most dangerous hitter (twice!), and its second most dangerous hitter once, was mistake number one in a game you're losing especially in a bases loaded two-out situation. Add the fact that they pull their ace at 35 pitches while losing 1-0 is even more ludicrous. I feel bad for that group of boys. Fairfield will probably be back next year though. They have a really strong group of 11-year olds.
Hello, Nebraska!
Kearney, Nebraska is another 2-2 team (seeded third) who took it to a higher seed today. Nebraska will play for its first region title ever now. That's huge for Little League in Nebraska, but whether they deserve it or not is another story. I'm assuming that Nebraska threw its ace in the semifinal being the underdog and South Dakota should be a heavy favorite in the championship. While we're still discussing pool play and its issues, fourth-seeded Bend South, Oregon just upended undefeated North Bothell, Washington. Another one bites the dust.
This Blog's For You
Let me know in the comments if there is anything you'd like me to touch on or discuss more. I'm looking for some blogging ideas to keep this as fresh as possible over the next couple weeks. Please continue to share the blog link on your facebooks, twitter pages, emails, etc...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
29 comments:
if both Delaware and pa fall tmw they definitely need to change it
It's 100% a possibility too. New York will have its ace on the mound, and despite being 4-0, Delaware is a very soft 4-0. I can see a scrappy NJ team beating them.
Basically, the entire week was a waste of time in New England after today. If NY and NJ win tomorrow, the entire Mid-Atlantic region will be for nothing as well.
Thank you so much for reading.
u should of also talk about the Louisiana walkoff
and also did u no that only Lafayette la and Warner robins ga are the only two teams that are undefeated left in the country ... how insane is that
You are truly an idiot. Andover has only lost when it could afford to lose. They were clearly superior to Goffstown when it mattered. The previous game didn't matter, it was already 98% certain the two teams would be facing each other again the next day. You wrote: "Both New Hampshire and Connecticut pounded the top pitchers of their two respective opponents while not throwing their best hurlers, I might add." That is ENTIRELY incorrect. Andover threw 3 pitchers 20 pitches or less and used the game as an experiment, came back the next day knowing what they could get away with. Andover's ACE recovered from a couple big hits in the first inning and SHUT DOWN and overmatched team. Connecticut was a dangerous, but seriously flawed team. NH had some hard throwers, but not much command and not a very deep lineup. If you're going to have a Blog, know what you're talking about. Andover has a team full of kids with a ton of experience at high levels. Trust me, we expected to win tonight.
dumbest blog I've ever read. Unless you've watched these teams several times during the course of the tourney you have no way to know who "the best team" is. LL is all about the pitchers. Sure one team can be great when their ace is on the mound, but very average (or worse) when he's not. If a team comes in with only 1 pitcher there's no way they'll advance.
The Andover fans have come out.
I've seen enough Little League and I've seen enough of Andover to know what is what. Newsflash... Goffstown had equal the amount of hits as Andover last night. The problem was EIGHT errors. That's not caused by fantastic play from Andover.
Massachusetts lost Game 1. That's not "winning when it counts" That's flat out losing a game. You're exactly right it comes down to pitching, and New Hampshire's kid imploded on the mound after his defense killed him and then he lost command. He asked his way out of the game. Before that he was the best player in the tournament.
CT's flaws included its pitching after their #1, and their coaches. If CT faced Mass and lost, I wouldn't bat an eye. Mass and CT are right there with each other. Mass just lacks a ton of HR power. I don't know how all those guys were hitting jacks through the Mass. tournament. But, CT is much better than RI and blew it.
The semis are where you are going to see upsets. Every team at that point has at least one good pitcher, and unless they needed to use him to get into the semis, it becomes a metter of which teams "ace" is better that day. And my best may just be better than your best, even though your overall staff is better than mine.
Was CT's #1 pitcher hurt? Just going by the box scores, he never threw more than 35 pitches in a game and after the first couple games, never seemed to play defensively in the field. He was replaced every game; the only run he drove in was his himself on his long home run, he batted less than .300 and lost 2 games on the mound. You'd think your #3 hitter/#1 pitcher would have had a better performance overall.
Nebraska/South Dakota could be interesting. SD won the first game 3-2, and Nebraska has only allowed 8 runs in 5 games in Indy. I know the regional's not the strongest, but that smacks of a decently deep pitching staff, at least as related to the other teams in that regional. the question will be can they generate any offense (they've only scored 15runs).
Any of you Louisiana folks have Lafayette's district scores? I know they are in a pretty small district, so they probably only played 3-4 games at that level. I always like to see who teams played along the way and what score the scores were.
One of the nice things about the Central Region's website is they list who teams beat to get there. I'd like to see the other regions do something similar on their sites.
NH commits 8 errors in a semi-final game and they should advance? Sorry man I don't agree with your logic here. Each of these teams understood the set up before they got up here. Maybe NH should have stepped up when it counted. Same goes for CT and Delaware.
Obviously everybody knows the set-up before they get there. It still doesn't make it right. It's not like these are sour grapes. I said this before this epidemic of 4-0 teams started dropping.
Obviously, keeping it together is a big part of succeeding, and its part of what makes a good/great team, but you can't tell me that a team which made one error in four games is bad defensively. They booted balls in ways you can't even make up.
The Goffstown SS fielded a hard hit ball, and while running to step on second base tripped fell and the ball sprawled all over the place. I mean, come on. Obviously they were shook in the big spot.
Like I said, that's part of being a good team, but they're 12 years old. Once one wheel fell off, they obviously were all going to come off.
You may not be able to track down Lafayette's scores, but the website with more results than you can think of is
htpp://www.unpage.org
State tournament results can be found by clicking on the region.
LL has already got rid of poolplay in it's biggest stage. It should trickle down sooner than later. Unless the regions need people to continue to come to pay for the facilities. Willy is paid for by ESPN and EASton so it was easy to give up on pool play.
Section1Guy, you seem right on the mark with most of your comments. ive been following it intently as well, and i gotta think that mass is in better shape for saturdays game than rhode island, no ?
Little league has nothing on the level and quality of pitching/fielding and hitting power as what is seen at Cooperstown Dreams Park tournaments. Franklin Square Colts who make up the majority of their Little league tournament team should have won District 5, would have been the NY Regional winner easily had they won against Staten Island.They make ZERO fielding errors can hit with authority down thru the lineup. Saw them play up in Cooperstwon week 10 and they made it all the way to the end against hand picked teams from Florida/North Carolina/Georgia kids. My kid doesn;t play for FS, but played against them in the tournament.
Let me get this straight, the Cooperstown tournament teams are far superior to the Little League teams, yet this FS team that did well in the Cooperstown tournament couldn't even win their Little League district in a weak NY area. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
the Hess , the won there district 29 title they lost to staten island in the section 5 final
they lost to staten island, it doesnt matter if their better on paper. Staten island was more successful and better team.
Franklin Square lost to SI 13-12, at Cooperstown tournament, they hit/pitched/fielded on larger fields 50/70 against Texas California Florida teams that allowed on average 1-2 runs per game and won. Tell me they weren't contenders for MidAtlantic regional?
They won District 29.
Franklin Square was a very good team, but they gave up a ton of runs to a Great Kills team that just got one hit by Keystone, and also struggled at the plate against Paramus.
They also hit Great Kills' number 3 or 4 pitcher, just like a lot of teams did.
The Great Kills folks have told me that Franklin Square was the best team they played in New York, so that's a nice little feather in your cap, but you can't tell me that CDP is great when FS performed that well there.
Of course CDP has high quality teams. They're from all over states, not from one little town. It costs 12,000 to go there. I'm assuming you would want to send a good team.
I'm also guessing FS had some ringers in their group up there as well.
No team from Long Island has ever been successsful in Bristol. Ask Merrick.
As for Rhode Island/Massachusetts... Massachusetts has far superior hitting, and very good pitching. Rhode Island's pitching is slightly deeper, but their bats have been quiet beyond belief in Bristol.
Expect Andover to come out on top.
Rhode Island team bats were not quiet today. As far as the above Cooperstown strength versus/Little league strength, this particular Rhode Island team makes up a majority of Blackstone Valley Spinners, they placed 71 out of 83 teams in Cooperstown week #3 with one win out of 7 games. FS had 6 wins and 3 losses.
Again, I have no kid on FS team, they beat the team that beat my sons team.
I was just blown away in Cooperstown at the quality/level of these teams and some are "just" local town teams.
Watch a championship game every Thursday at 9pm on line @ Cooperstown and compare.
section1 guy I was on that merrick team we performed the worst ny team in the 10 year history of the mid Atlantic going 0-4 but three out of our 4 games we were winning in the last inning we were two outs away from beating the later champions from newtown pa and lost on a walk off to toms river nj but we were there for experice we had 4 players including me returning the next year and losing in the state finals to the later mid Atlantic champs from staten island
section1 guy Wat about Rockville centre 1977 they went to to LLWS
RVC advanced 35 years ago. That was well before Bristol.
Merrick-North Merrick's problem in Bristol was that they weren't the best team in NY that year. I thought Great Kills was.
I saw Merrick again in 2006 when they lost to Mid-Island. That team was definitely solid as well.
And there is no need to compare. Little League teams are from populations of approx. 20,000. CDP is teams full of mercenaries.
Ahh but you see if one is a participant in travel baseball, one knows who the kids are and what teams they play for see the dominant little league teams are all travel baseball teams that are all 10 month a year ball players. Im not comparing just stating facts. Nothing wrong with it, just the other kids don't stand a chance when facing teams that are practicing 10 months of the year for a few years prior to Williamsport.
Blackstone Valley is RI team
PAramus Elite is NJ team
Beech Creek Wildcats is PA team
All of these boys have played together as a team since the age of 9/10 as a unit not under Little league organization.
Georgia has done it for years, that is why they dominate in the Southern area
every competitive all star team in the world plays together from the time they are 8, 9, 10 if they plan on being successful in 12s. teams just dont come out of no where.
I live on long island LI is more no for travel baseball then little league most kids give up little league by 10 to focus on travel because travel baseball is rthe bigger thing on long island then little league
Re: the silly Cooperstown Dreams Park v. Little League argument
first of all, the RI Williamsport team was NOT predominantly the BV Spinners, they had 2 Spinners and 5 players from the RI Red Sox in the Diamond Division, the better players being from the Red Sox.
but, yes, Cooperstown is a FAR more talented field .. half of the Andover team went to Cooperstown after losing in Bristol and went 2-4 .. had we had the entire Andover National team we probably would have gone 4-2 and advanced a couple rounds in the playoffs, but no way we would have done any better than Sweet 16 .. but what's the point? We were one half of one town and not even the best from that half, whereas the team that reached the final was a collection of all the best players we've ever faced in New England AAU (including one player from Andover National and another from Andover American). Cooperstown teams are not playing by the same rules as Little League teams so it's a silly comparison. Also, Cooperstown pool play performance is a complete crapshoot depending on who you draw.
Rhode Island team was a combination of RI Red Sox and BV Spinners and Andover was a combination of Firebirds and Nor'easters .. a small sample of pool play results may have led people to believe the semifinal results were "upsets" but these two teams were very prepared to play in this environment. Andover had several players who had already won and lost New England Championship games (Bristol made two NE finals losses in two months) and both Rhode Island and Mass. had previously won "state" titles as 10 or 11 year olds. This is definitely the formula to reach Bristol and Williamsport. Little League caters to the lowest common denominator, so AAU/travel is the only way to develop your real talent. In our cases, the kids and families still cared enough about Little League, but I fear eventually that worm will turn and AAU will become more important than Districts and Little Leagues will be exposed by being left with the team they truly developed.
Post a Comment