Observations from CPC Softball practice (27 April 2016)

After returning home from Erie after an interview and getting blue and yellow balloons for my neighbor Kristina David at Party City, I drove in my Jeep back to Holy Trinity Field near Speedways for tonight's CPC Softball practice.  During tonight's practice, I observed the following things from my view from behind the plate:

As I mentioned in my previous post, Jacob Albright tends to swing ahead of pitches, which hearkens back to his baseball playing days.  Taylor Robinson reminds me of Pedro Alvarez.  Like Pedro, Taylor is a power hitter.

Now I shall take a look at some of the players who joined us for the first time this season:

Julie Norris, our catcher, is working her way back from an offseason injury to her throwing arm which she has completely recovered from.  When she is at bat, she almost reminds me of former Pirates catcher Jason Kendall.  Like Kendall, Julie is more of a singles-hitting catcher and not much of a power hitter.  When she is behind the plate, she can be a quick study.  During games, she should signal orders to the pitchers to call for their pitches by slapping her throwing hand on the palm of her glove.  One slap calls for the pitcher's bread-and-butter pitch.  Two slaps call for the pitcher's secondary pitch.  Three slaps means she is calling for the pitcher's third option pitch.  And finally, four slaps means she is ordering her pitcher to throw their fourth option pitch.  She should mix them up during every at bat by opposing batters because the most number of pitches that every batter will face is four (each batter begins with a count of one ball and one strike).

Matt Durisko, one of our three power hitters along with Robinson and Jeff Newell, has a tendency to either pull his hits or send them towards the opposite field.  He can sometimes get away with those things as long as he hits them where opposing fielders are not.  These tendencies are a reason why he had an OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) of 1.025 during last season's tournament.

Sean Zippie tends to pull his line drives.  His .688 OPS during the tournament last season will need to be better as the 2016 season goes on.  He is not much of a power hitter, however, what he lacks in power he more than makes up for with speed.

Ryan Zippie has a tendency to hit a lot of ground balls which leads to him being thrown out on a frequent basis.  His .473 OPS from last season's tournament means that he needs to be more aggressive when up to bat, which is something that our head coach Jim Bombeck is trying to instill into the team this season.

These are the insights from tonight's practice.  The next practice is Monday evening, however, I will miss practice on May 2 because I have a Knights of Columbus council meeting at the city building that evening.  I will give more insights on the 2016 squad at next Wednesday's practice.

And that is the end of this blog post.