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Thursday, November 03, 2005

season-ending thriller

This past Saturday Will’s Dodgers won another thriller, in the bottom of the last inning. He had a big hand in the victory, pitching four innings without allowing an earned run. Seven of the twelve outs on strikeouts (against only one walk and two bloop singles), and 70% of his pitches were strikes, the best he’s done all year. At the plate he collected two hits, including a double, and stole a base and knocked in a run. He scored two of his team’s six runs.

Will played the first two innings at shortstop, fielding the only grounder hit to him, throwing out the batter to end the first.

In the bottom of the first and a runner on second, Will drove a two-strike pitch deep into center-field. The outfielder made a nice catch, but the runner was easily able to tag up and advance to third.

Will came on to pitch in the third and struck out two, and got the other out by fielding a bunt and throwing the runner out at first. In the fourth he retired the side on ten pitches, including one strikeout.

Down three to one in the fourth, Will led off and lined the ball into the left-centerfield gap for a stand-up double. He scored on Christian’s double, then Christian scored to tie the game.

The Dodgers committed two errors in the fifth, again falling behind by two runs. With time running out, Will got all three outs with strikeouts in the sixth.

Allen led off the bottom of the sixth with a hit, and Will’s grounder knocked him in. The left-handed pitcher had a great move to first (earlier he had picked off two other Dodgers), and he threw over several times to hold Will, the tying run. Will broke for second when the pitcher finally went home with the ball. Even though the pitch was a pitchout, Will was safe at second. He advanced to third on a passed ball, and scored to tie the game on Christian’s double.

After Alex reached, Kurt singled to left, driving in Christian to win the game. After the game we had a pizza party, then another father/son wiffleball game…Matthew got to play this time.

The Dodgers finished the year with twelve wins and one loss. Will was the winning pitcher in eight games, including this last one. His pitching stats were the best of his career, allowing an average of only ½ of an earned run per inning pitched…29.3 innings pitched, 38 strikeouts, 58% strikes…and only 4 wild pitches out of a total of 499 pitches thrown. He pitched exactly half of the innings the Dodgers played, after having hardly pitched at all the last two seasons.

Offensively, Will also put up some good numbers…
…leading the team in times reaching base, plate appearances, and stolen bases.
…tied for the team lead in walks, triples, and assists,
…second on team in doubles and total bases
…third on team in runs scored.
He also struck out less than anyone else, except one.

You know I enjoy writing those things up, and I’m filing them away as well. Wish I had thought more about the timing of Saturday’s game, and we could have tried more to get Ben and Rusty to come in early for the game…as well as the Halloween Carnival Saturday night, they could’ve gone with us to the Thrashers game, as I had tickets.

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