baseballdelusions.com

Tryouts went well today for Jacob, Jensen, Vinny, and I. Though everyone but Vinny is signed to a team, he sure did look good in the field from what I saw. He said his BP sessions didn’t go so well, but he had a top three arm in his age division, and looked pretty smooth in the infield, which isn’t his natural position!

I threw a bit on the side today, but didn’t feel 100%, so I cut it short after about 20 pitches. The changeup is better than ever, featuring good arm-side fade, but my breaking ball is maddeningly inconsistent. I’m going to work on it tomorrow with Jacob almost exclusively. I took a few balls at third and second base, and booted my fair share of them; everyone else wasn’t too sharp either, so I should get a pass for now. I looked good in the cages, though, which made my manager pretty happy. I put in a ton of work in the offseason on hitting, and the dividends are finally paying off.

Our team (Mustangs) should be pretty good this year, assuming Jacob and I can go back to back starts and throw a ton of innings. What the team needs desperately is league-average quality pitching, and a lot of it, which is why they signed the two of us. Since we’ve been working out for months - throwing long toss, using wrist weights, SPRI bands, full bullpen work, mechanics analysis - we’re at the stage right now where we can throw 7 innings easily as long as we’re getting guys out at a reasonable rate. Our teammates are very impressed with our work ethic; like I said before, we’re going to hit the cages or the field tomorrow to get even more work in.

It’s good to have workout partners that are as dedicated to the game as I am; without them, I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to hit the gym every other day and to really step up my game. It stems from the fact that none of us are naturally gifted athletes, and that we all need to work extra hard to put us at the level of an average player in these divisions. Without hard work and sacrifice, we are nothing - so it is born out of necessity.