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.