Mental mistakes costly for Blues
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Emporia Blues could make excuses for losing 12-5 to the Wichita Red on Wednesday in Wichita.
For one, Wichita used several pitchers from its older team, preparing them for a tournament this weekend. The pitchers were better than any the Blue have faced this year.
So were the Blues outmatched?
“Physically we were there. I thought physically we played pretty well — we did have three errors — but mentally, these guys didn’t come to play again. Like my assistant coach said, physically it was a good game, mentally it was bad.”
The biggest mental mistakes came in the sixth inning when Emporia walked one and hit three other batters, allowing Wichita to score four runs and pull away.
“It was one of those bad innings where we just fell apart,” Emporia coach Jerry Cook said.
The Blues’ offense managed to put together an attack that would be good enough on most days.
Matt Fry gave the Blues an early lead, opening the game with a single in the first inning and scoring on Ethan Hall’s single.
Ryan Huth hit his first home run of the season in the fourth, a two-run shot to right field.
“He has his times where he can get into a ball and just absolutely crush it, and he got his pitch,” Cook said. “The guy left a fastball up and he made the pitcher pay for it.”
Hall drove in his second run of the game in the fifth when James Rodriguez reached on an error and came around to score.
Brett Lechien drove in the Blues’ final run with an RBI double in the eighth.
The Blues, 21-8, play this weekend at the Mike’s Tourney in Emporia. Since they already have an automatic bid to the state tournament, they added two games against El Dorado on Tuesday and Friday next week since they will not be playing in the Zone tournament.
The Blues open Mike’s Tourney on Friday with at 11:15 a.m. against Olathe South.