Villians surprise against a sloppy Macaws

Dec

2018

VOB were on the road to take on the Villians in Durbanville on Saturday. The Macaws up and down season continued against a team that they should be beating, but this time sloppy fielding killed any chance the Macaws had of continuing their upward trend.

Villians started with Stuart Baron and Macaws countered with Derick “Boy” Bayliss.
VOB immediately jumped to a 2-0 lead in their first batting turn through hits by Luke November and Lance Gordon, only for Villians to come straight back and score two of their own. Macaws and Villians traded runs before Macaws sloppy fielding came to the fore. Two routine errors turned into a 5 run fifth inning. Macaws then scored single runs in two innings and restricted Villians to zeroes to bring score to 9-6 in the 7th inning. Game on?? Instead, VOB again allowed themselves to gift Durbanville 4 runs and pretty much playing themselves out of the game.

A few dubious pick off plays called outs by the Durbanville umpire had VOB fuming, but overall it was the Macaws own sloppy fielding that was the difference in the game.

Bayliss (5IP, 10runs not many earned) was replaced by Damian Perkins who threw 2 innings and conceded 4 runs before he tired. Jesse johnson threw the 8th inning (1 hit, 2 K’s).
Best hitters for Macaws were Luke November (1-3, 2B, BB,HBP), Lance Gordon (2-4, 2B, K), Damian Perkins (1-2, BB, K) and Jesse Johnson (1-3, K).

Back to the drawing board for Macaws
Final score was 6-14

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Thistle give Macaws a big scare!

Dec

2018

Young teams usually have one problem – being consistent. And the Macaws showed against Thistle that they are very much a young team still and will need to learn how to play at their level and not at their opponents level.

Thistle came out firing, scoring 2 unanswered runs in the first inning against a Macaw side who probably took this win for granted. VOB only got their first hit in the third inning and were being frustrated by Keegan “Gazza” Watson, the thistle starter.

Derick Bayliss was on the hill for VOB and settled down after the first inning to keep thistle quiet until the fifth inning when they scored another 2 runs to lead 4-1 only for the Macaws to score 2 of their own in the bottom of the fifth to make it a 4-3 game. After sitting Thistle down in the 6th inning VOB tied the game at 4-4. Thistle immediately scored one in the 7th to lead 5-4.

With one out in the 7th Marvin Mahoney was brought in to pinch hit for Damian Perkins and lined one into centre field to score 2 runs to put the Macaws ahead 6-5. Michael Scritten then replaced Bayliss and kept thistle scoreless over the next two inning to get the save.

Macaws win 6-5 and continue on their short streak, albeit by grinding this one out.

Two wins over the weekend has VOB putting some distance between the bottom teams and themselves in the race for top 6 spots for when the league splits in January to top 6 and bottom 7.

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Long balls move Macaws past Mavericks. 21-4

Dec

2018

Macaws visited Mavericks in Milnerton on Saturday with the intention of continuing the upward curve. And it did not take long for VOB to show they were serious by scoring 5 runs in their first inning via a 3-run bomb from Derick Bayliss and a 2-run shot from Lance Gordon.

Jesse Johnson started on the hill for VOB and he sat Mavericks down without scoring. A 2-out error by Mavericks followed by a hit by pitch put runners on 1st and 2nd with Jody Burch up. Burch then launched one for another 3-run bomb for VOB and an 8-0 lead after 2 innings. after an uneventful third inning Jesse Johnson opened the fourth inning with his second long ball of the season. A few more hits and the Macaws were up 10-0.

Then Johnson got sloppy on the hill and walked two before unnecessary sloppy baseball allowed Mavericks to score 3 runs to stay in the game at 10-3. Damian Perkins was called in to replace Johnson and immediately shut Mavericks down.

The floodgates opened for Macaws with Johnson hitting his second homerun of the game (a 2-run shot) and Lance Gordon, not to be outdone, hitting his second long ball of the game himself. By the end of the 6th VOB had scored 9 runs and needed 3 outs to finish the game. Two quick outs followed by some unnecessary base runners lead to Mavericks scoring one more run before Perkins struck out the final batter to give VOB a 21-4 victory and continue on their winning ways.

This young side is scoring plenty runs and need to continue working to clean up their overall game if they want to start competing with the top teams, but they are on the right track.

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MaCaws beat down VDS with the next gen on show. 10-6

Nov

2018

Derick Smiling after his long homerun

The Macaws made the longest trip of the season down to Stellenbosch to face Van der Stel.

I was keen to see how this young team would respond to last weeks big loss to Bothasig.

Derick “Boy” Baylis got his chance to start and did not disappoint. Boy went 5 innings throwing only 71 pitches allowing 3 runs. Jesse johnson took over for his second ML pitching stint after his successful debut against Tygers two weeks ago. Not enjoying the big hole in the mound Jesse let that affect him and threw way too many balls in his 3.2 inning relief spell, but managed to keep VDS from coming back with some timely K’s. Jesse will have to learn how to handle the different obstacles if he is to be successful at this level as everything will not always be perfect. With two outs in the 9th Jesse was replaced by Zubair Larney who finished off the final hitter of the day with a K, proclaiming “why do pitchers make pitching so hard” LOL.

Talking about aggression and choices just before the bomb

On the hitting side what was very pleasing was the hard contact that was being made by the majority of the hitters, even if it did not always end in a hit. We also saw 3 homeruns in the game. Lance Gordon snuck one over a shortened right field before the fence was immediately moved further out. Jesse then followed with a long smash over left field for his maiden senior (not just ML) homerun. Not to be outdone, Derick followed his up double by launching one over the lengthened rightfield boundary. Luke squared (November and Budler) also got doubles on the day.

This very young team will learn every single week what they need to do if they are going to be successful in the majors, but they have already shown that they have the ability.

Our scorer Judy Beukes doing her selfless job brilliantly

The hard work continues this week in the hope of becoming consistent at this level.
Thanks, as always, to our behind the scenes scorer Judy Beukes for being the one constant scorer at VOB seniors.

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ML vs Bothasig 0-17

Oct

2018

Our home opener and the boys just never rocked up to play. From the very first inning we gave away walks and made errors and it never stopped till the end of the game. Macaws started with lefty Damian Perkins hoping to have a few pitchers stretched out over the next few weeks and hopefully make Bothasig something different. However walks, errors and one or two hits cost us big time today.

We faced SA pitcher Jared Elario who has been preparing for months for the French series and it showed. He mowed down our hitters with pace and precision. When we did get on base we could not capitalize.

With a very young team we will have good games and bad ones. Today was one of the latter. Now for our young boys to show character and start all over again next week.

Kevin Mullins and young Luke Budler got their first taste of ML baseball with Mullins also getting his first ML hit. Budler was comfortable in the outfield and ended the day playing all three outfield positions between u18,MLR and ML today.

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VOB pull off the unlikely with a stunning win vs Bellville.

Oct

2018

ML VOB vs Bellville 20-10-2018

Our opening game of 2018 was a road trip to PP Smit sports complex to face Bellville Tygers. Tygers have been a force over the last few seasons, but have not planned well for the future and I have seen the cracks started showing over the last two seasons. However, with the Macaws in their rebuild phase, Tygers would still be the favourites, especially at home.
Tygers had their SA pitcher, Kevin Townend, on the hill while the Macaws surprised by giving the ball, and his ML debut on the hill, to Jesse Johnson. Townend (3 IP, 3 hits, 2 BB’s, 2 K’s) and Johnson (3.1 IP, 2 hits, 1 BB, 2 K’s) had a good duel going for 2 innings before the Macaws exploded for 5 runs in the 3rd inning to rattle the Tygers.

Tygers replaced Townend with young Marcel Steyn, but he could not stop the bleeding and allowed a further 3 runs in the 4th inning before settling down. Steyn (3 IP, 3 hits, 4 BB’s, 3 K’s) was later replaced by Russel Olivier (3 IP, 6 hits, 2 K’s) who also gave up two runs in his stint on the hill.

The Macaws, meanwhile, looked to stay ahead and cause an upset. Johnson was replaced by newcomer, Damian Perkins, who happens to be the first lefty pitcher at VOB since Ruan Klink many years ago. Perkins (2.2 IP, 1 hit, 3K’s, 5 BB’s) managed to only give up 1 run, but was not as economical as he could have been. He did, however, manage to hold the lead before handing over to another newcomer, ex-KZN player Derrick Bayliss. Bayliss (3 IP, 5 hits, HBP, K) gave up 2 runs, but saw out the final 3 innings to give the Macaws a valuable opening Day win.

On the hitting front the Macaws surprised even more by outhitting a Tygers team ,that was minus a few players, 12-8. Bayliss had a dream debut going 3-3 (BB, SH, RBi) while Zubair Larney (2RBi’s), Jody Burch (RBi), Luke November (RBi) accounted for the runs scored in this game. As great as the result was VOB will have to be more clinical when runners are in run-scoring position as they left 13 on base.