Welcome To The Slide

Springfield 1, Chillicothe 0

The last time the Chillicothe Paints faced a team that was from Springfield, Illinois would have to be in the year 2001, as the Springfield Capitals were a mainstay for the Frontier League for a good chunk of time until they moved up to Rockford. Well, what can you say about a game that you had an okay chance of making noise, and yet you couldn't get the hits you needed to win? This game didn't get out of hand because the pitching for the Chillicothe Paints wasn't all that bad this time around, but on the same hand, there wasn't any response from the offense.

A.J. Achter made the start for the Paints, and he did give up the one run, but if you take away that one run, he really did do a pretty good job considering the situation. Achter went 6 innings deep in his start, giving up six hits and two walks, but he proceeded to record 8 K's. I noticed quite often in pretty tight situations that Achter actually pitched better when there were runners in scoring position for Springfield. His pitches had a batter time of finding the strike zone then than when there weren't any runners in scoring position. A.J. held off the Sliders as best as he could.

Blake Mascarello and Chadd Steinborn made relief appearances after Achter's start, and they too did a good job of preventing Springfield from scoring any more runs. So in essence, the pitching was present at the V.A. in this game for the Paints, but the hitting remained to be missing in action. This is just another case of having a few elements of your team ready, but some other elements just aren't there with you yet.

Kyle Galbraith made another start in center field, and he had a single in the sixth inning. New face for the Paints, Zach Leonard, started at third base and had a single and a double. Left fielder Andy Brouse had an infield single. Shortstop Ben Allen had an infield single and a triple in this game, so he was fairly productive. However, he was part of a controversial play in the bottom of the eighth inning as Kyle Galbraith was intending to bunt with Allen on third, trying to get him to score. However, Galbraith failed to get the bunt down. The catcher caught it and tagged Allen out, who was storming towards home. To be honest though, it was a bang-bang play, and there might have been a chance of Allen escaping the tag to score. The out call got Paints manager Brian Mannino heated, but for good reason.

You couldn't have written a more repititive script for the hitting side of things, as batted balls by the Paints kept going right at the Springfield Sliders' gloves. There was no consistency at all in trying to find open spots of the field to get any runs in. We got them on, and we got them over, but we just couldn't get them in, unfortunately. Talking with another Paints fan during this game, I was talking about the possibility of tweaking the lineup for future games, because right now something doesn't seem to be clicking at all with the Paints. I wouldn't call it nervousness, but I would call some of the things that's going on a slight lack of focus. You just have to gather yourself and let things come to you instead of forcing yourself to get to those things. Just relax and have fun. That's all you have to do, in all honesty.

One more thing to note here...

The Springfield Sliders arrived at the ballpark wearing black uniforms on a day that was pretty hot. I was wondering if that was such a wise idea knowing that you have a dark color on with the sun and heat beating down on you while you're trying to play a baseball game. In my opinion, I thought that might have backfired on the Sliders somehow, but to their credit, the black uniforms didn't bother them one bit, as they held down the home team fairly well. I also think it's odd that Springfield's colors include green and yellow, and yet I see black out there on the field. Oh well, that's just another quirk of the game.