Cats Pull Away from Mirrors

Blessed with another sublime Summer night for softball, Sea Kittens (1-0-1) met Beer View Mirrors (0-3) at Bowman Park and slowly but steadily rolled away with a 10-1 victory in Madison Sport and Social Club Thursday night upper division play.

While the Cats were paced by four hits apiece from Dan DynamOele and Slash Grutzik, the team once again struggled a bit with its efficiency, leaving 10 runners on base after stranding 14 in last week’s tie, but did enough to post at least a run in each of the game’s first four innings. 

Alex “Puma” Latzka led off the game with a walk, moved to second on a single from Grutzik, and dashed home on a on-out bleeder from DynamOele.  Grutzik scampered to third on a soft roller from Hennessy, the throw to third pulling the defender off the bag in a missed opportunity for BVM. Roadrunner Jami Hauer got Grutzik home with a groundout, and the Cats staked a 2-0 lead in the top of the first.

Beer View Mirrors struck back for a run in the bottom of the inning, but a leaping snag of by Grutzik minimized the damage, and Sea Kittens emerged from the inning with a one-run lead intact.

Slowly the Cats extended the advantage, posting single runs in both the second and third innings while playing almost flawless defense behind starting pitcher Hennessy.  Hennessy dotted the strike mat all game and the Sea Kittens never let the Mirrors’ offense get anything going.

Los Gatitos took a 4-1 lead into the fourth inning, and finally started to striking a few hits together.  Grutzik opened with a double, and Oele and Hennessy kept things shaking with back-to-back run-scoring one-out highly-hyphenated doubles. Roadrunner reached with a hit, and Sweet Thing Harkins moved Hennessy home with the Kittens’ third run of the inning with a grounder to short.

More comfortably ahead with a 7-1 advantage, the Cats’ defense kept things rolling in the fourth, Hennessy, Oele, and firstbasewoman Hilary Dugan ending the inning with a cool inning-ending double play.  Well, one of the runners was called out for leaving first base early, but there was still a lot of stuff that happened to make the whole sequence interesting.

From there the game just cruised along, the teams exchanging zeroes until the Cats tacked on three in the seventh to pull definitively out of BVM’s sights.

Salmon Snacks

• Stephen, for his fist-inning snag and a 4-hit game
• Hilary for the solid and very active game at 1B
• Joe for issuing zero walks again
• Jami for her 3 hits (including career hit #100), and being oh-so-dang-close on both a hot potato play *and* turning two from 2B!
• Laura for working two walks and then running for her life from first to third (twice) as Alex chased her
• Dan for notching 4 hits and 3 RBI and a flawless game at SS
• Aaron, to give him more energy to run out super frustrating popups that sometimes lead to high adventure 🙂
• In absentia, Jess gets a bag of frozen ones to soothe her grumpy knee

Sea Kittens Great Fillet of the Game

You didn’t have to see it to believe it. Vote here for the Sea Kittens Great Fillet of the Game!  Congrats to Joe, who won last week’s for his diving play at shortstop.

Next Up

Game Notes

• Jami notched career hit #100.  She’s the 12 person to accomplish the feat for Sea Kittens.  Her 100th hit came in the 4th inning- fittingly an infield single that left the defense shaking their heads as she crossed first base before anyone even thought about a throw.

• Joe notched career RBI #350 in the 4th and Dan racked up RBI #250 in the 7th.
• Joe made his third consecutive start with zero walks issued, cover 20 innings pitched.  It’s his best stretch since walking none in 21 IP over the course of 4 straight starts in 2019-2021. Dave also made three starts covering 20 inning in 2019 with zero walks allowed.  Note that pitcher strikeout and base on balls data are incomplete for 2010 and 2014, and missing for 2011 and 2012.
• Sea Kittens have played 10 games in 2022 (eight spring, two summer).  Comparing the 2022 Sea Kittens to previous years’ first 10 games, the 2022 Cats:
  • Have been the most patient, selective group ever, taking 36 bases on balls through 10 games, one more than the 2013 clubs’ 35.  Fore reference, the 2021 Sea Kittens walked 37 times in 20 games.
  • Have more hits (215) than any previous group, topping the 2016 Kittens’ 212.
  • Have the fewest home runs (7) since the team hit 4 in MSCR summer league play.  Dan hit three of those and Boom Boom Magyera legged out an inside-the-parked for the other.
  • Tied the 2016 club for most runs scored, with 144.
  • Have the best batting average (0.566) and on-base percentage (0.600) by wide margins.  The previous best team BA through 10 games was 0.544 in 2018, and the best OBP was 0.549 in 2016.
  • The 2022 teams 1.347 OPS through 10 games is second-best, just behind the 2018 club’s 1.409 
    • One should note that Summer 2016 and Summer 2018 were the last two times Sea Kittens were assigned to MSCR lower-division play.

For Fun

You might mistake them for twins on the field and in the stat pages! Career totals for this dynamic duo: