April 8th – Look At The Bigger Picture

In a game where the Geoducks lost again to the Eastern Washington Eagles, this time by a count of 11-1, the trip home was a pleasant one as many positives could be found in the series closing game. If you like finding trends, here’s one that can make fans believe that this team is improving. In the first game of the season, they gave up 28 runs, and then after that they followed up by giving up, 22, 37, 27, 25 22 and now 11. What’s the trend? In the past five games they’re runs allowed as gone each game. “I think guys are more comfortable with each other, they know who can do what and they’re just playing baseball now instead of trying to make the spectacular play as if they’re trying to prove to the other teams that they’re better than the reputation,” said Kip Arney on the way home from the trip. “If I could get the guys to forget about the past and just play ball with the mentality of no scores, there would be closer outcomes because they wouldn’t be pressing and trying to get it all back with one blow of the bat.

“Sunday’s game was by far our best performance of the year, and I told the guys that they just raised my bar of what I expect of them,” he concluded.

The game itself was record breaking as pitcher Gavin Dahl set a single game record with nine strikeouts. The Geoducks also played with a lead for the first time this season as they scored their only run in the top of the first when Trevor Kinahan scored on a Gavin Dahl single. However the Eagles came back with a run of their own in the bottom of the first inning and then three runs (all unearned) in the bottom of the second to take a 4-1 lead. Evergreen State was never able to get a steady offense going and after EWU tacked on another run in the bottom of the 4th to make it 5-1 Eagles, the game turned into a stalemate. Gavin Dahl  gave the Geoducks everything he had while playing a on a sore leg that he injured while pitching against Seattle University earlier in the season.

Because the game was being played 9 innings, the 10 run mercy rule doesn’t come into affect until the after seven innings. Well here was the game going into the bottom of the 7th with only 4 runs seperating the two teams and to this point in the season, it was the longest game Evergreen had been involved with. But the bottom of the 7th came with mental bloopers as the first two batters reached via errors and another error came later in the inning for a total of three before a single out was recorded.

Soon the Geoducks found themselves down 10-1 with the 11th possible run for EWU standing 90 feet away on third base. And  unfortunately that runner scored on a passed ball that got away from the catcher and the runner scurried home for an Eagle victory and series sweep.

After the game, Kip noticed his players were hanging their heads but he said they had nothing to be ashamed of and he’d never been so proud of them as he was during that game.

“It’s games like this that make me remember why I accepted this position as coach in the first place and makes me want to continue with this team.”