Thurston has the inside track to the crown

The leaders are in a tight pack as they round the last curve at 190 mph.  Marist is 9-2, Sheldon 9-3, North 9-3 and Thurston 9-3.  Look to east Springfield to find where the MWL trophy is likely to land.  The Colts couldn't have set the table any better. 

Thurston hosts Marist in what I hope lines up the Colts Tyler Johnson and Kyle Watson against Marist's Zach Eyster and Kevin Haskin.  All four should be available for this Battle Royale.  If the Colts can pull out a win on their home field they will be tied with Marist and possibly Sheldon and North Eugene in the loss column.  (Sheldon could gain a half game league lead if they beat South Eugene) The schedule then favors the Colts as they finish with Willamette 4-8, Churchill 5-7, Springfield 5-7 and Marshfield.  Willamette can throw Waggoner or Svennson at Thurston Wednesday.  Churchill could throw Lessel, but he likely won't be available Friday.  Springfield has Bates.  But I have to believe these teams are going to be maximizing their pitching for wins against other middle of the pack teams.


Pitchers

Speaking of pitching, it's the time of year for pitchers to get dialed in for the playoffs.  It looks like the weather is getting better and those arms should be getting livelier.  Unless a pitcher is pushing 90 mph, he needs to toss at least three strikeouts for every walk, with four or more likely to get a pitcher deep into the playoffs.  Our league's a little thin on pitchers with control this year so far. 

Andrew Moore's is tossing over 7 strike outs per  walk.  That's a Wow! Kameron Bates is over a  4 to one ratio.  South's Joe Schindler is a bit of a pitching anomaly.  Schindler is striking out batters at almost a 4 k to one walk ratio, but he's giving up a lot of hits.  Sheldon's two lefties, Nielsen and Cunningham are 7-2 in the win-loss column, but are walking a thin line in the walk column.  Churchill's Jake Lessel has a 3-1 win-loss record, yet not quite 2 k's to every walk.

Thurston' opponent Monday has a steady-eddie pitching duo in Eyster and Haskin.  They are a combined 6-1.  They're not dominant strike out  pitchers, although Eyster is averaging 6 per 7 innings.   The two are masters at not walking a lot of batters and sprinkling mostly harmless singles through out a game.  Marist counts on solid pitching and backs it up with a stellar D and a good offense.  In Thurston's 8-5 first round win, frosh Aaron Clift started for the Colts and Eyster for Marist.  (The game was 5-5 after six, and the Colts took it in the top of the 7th, in a game Marist's D stumbled.)  I'm curious who will get the nod tomorrow.   

I've been lucky to see several pitchers when they are on for entire games.  I've also seen most of them struggle in other outings.  Moore has been the only consistently dominant pitcher and has been on every game.  The others I have enjoyed when they are on - Lessel from Churchill, Schindler from South, Eyster from Marist, Cunningham and Nieslen from Sheldon and Bates from Springfield.  I've caught TJ of the Colts looking great in long relief.    Four of these eight will be back - Moore, Lessel, Schindler and Nieslen.  And there are lots of others returning next year who I haven't seen much; Watson, Alie, Stiles, Clift, Evans, Woods and Clayton.  We should see scores go down next year.

Hitters

Coming into the year, I thought this might be a huge year for hitters.  We've had quite a  few dingers so far, but I actually expected more. We had lots of batters returning who had good power years last year, Goddard, Bates, DeHaven, Watson, Long, Harople, Dudley, TJ and Ryan Helfrich to name some.  My logic was that there weren't a lot of dominant pitchers returning and these guys should do very well at the plate feeding off of the youngins on the mound.  I thought it would take just a couple of guys on each team to step up at the plate, get on base to set up rbi situations for the veteran power guys and then we would see a lot of high scoring games.  The batters I've mentioned are doing quite well for the most part.  But I think the high number of pretty good lefties is getting to the younger batters.  High school players just don't see enough high quality left handed pitching in their early years.  New power players have been Bryson Jones from Churchill, Will Swindling of Marist (new to us anyway), Stefan Drake of Thurston and Jalen Drath of Willamette.  The league does have three clutch soph RBI collector's in Watson, Joe Schindler from South and Cooper Stiles from Sheldon.

It's time to sit back and enjoy the dual playoff run.  We've got the big four fighting for the title.  Then we have the next batch of four fighting to stay out of play in  games or just trying to raise their RPI.  And don't forget, with the everyone in playoff format, it just takes a five or game win streak to take it all.  Just like North did last  year out of the number three seed spot.

League scoring
Team              For   Against Differential
Marist             8.4     4.9        3.5
Sheldon           7.7    3.0        4.7
Thurston          7.5     4.4       3.1
North Eugene  6.4    1.6        4.7
South Eugene  6.2    8.5       -2.3
Willamette      4.6     5.8       -1.2
Springfield     4.0     4.4        -0.4
Churchill        3.6     5.1        -1.5
Marshfield     1.8   14.3       -12.5


Photos

Got some great weather at times last week and some took really great photos.

Caught up the photos galleries for one or two games for each of the following teams:

Link to Sheldon Photos

Link to Willamette Photos

Link to Churchill Photos

Link to Thurston Photos

Links to all teams photo pages

Good Luck to everyone this week.  Everyone gets at least a playin game, so just keep on getting better.  Let's get at least one team to the state championship game for the fifth year in a row!  How about one in each classification?!