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9U Generals win championship, finish seventh at states
Like the Bad News Bears, manager Jon Estridge had a bit a of dilemma heading into the 2009 baseball season: how do you get a losing team to win?As an 8U team, the Virginia Generals just weren't good one year ago. The boys would be trounced by sometimes 20 runs in a game as part of a team with a 2-7 USSSA record and they went winless in the playoffs.
Now, they're champions. The 9U Generals brought home the Old Dominion Baseball League trophy two weekends ago and earned a No. 4 seed when they headed into states this past weekend.
The Generals earned seventh place in Newport News with a 2-1 record, losing to eventual runner-up Virginia Beach.
But for Estridge, the turnaround it took just to get to states is remarkable.
"We decided that we want the coaches and boys to commit to excellence and just see how much we could improve in one year," wrote the manager in an email.
A common thread for travel baseball teams in western Prince William County is to bring in high school coaches to train the players in the fundamentals. Battlefield coaches Dave Carroll and Eric Campbell stepped in to guide the team since a majority of its members live inside the Battlefield High School boundaries of Haymarket, Gainesville and Catharpin.
Former professional player Mike Colanglo came in to train the boys as well and with the parents on board, the Generals decided that the team needed to work harder and practice more.
The results did not pan out well at first; the 9U Gainesville Cannons dropped the Generals 15-1 on opening day, but the Generals rebooted and finished the spring season with a league record of 10-1-1, going 25-10-1 overall.
Pitching turned around thanks to an entire roster of players who could actually throw the ball across the plate consistently for strikes. As a whole, the Generals pitching staff combined to strike out 202 batters during the spring, compared to walking 149 batters. And though the pitching staff allowed 205 hits, the Generals batters smacked 302 themselves, including 56 for extra bases.
Part of the winning formula for the Generals included solid defense. Pitcher Spencer Petty-Kane (4-1, 22 IP) ended up with the team's third-best record on the mound simply by stranding runners on base. For just about every strikeout (23) he recorded, Kane gave up a base hit (22) and for every two strikeouts, he gave up a walk (10). But those runners were left on base so often, he ended up with team-best 2.45 ERA. His 10 walks were also the team's best among its six usual starters.
Of those starters, Kane, Joseph Pashiardis Kameron Casey, Hunter Bowman and Damian Geris all struck out more batters than they allowed to reach base with a hit or a walk. As for the one that didn't, Austin (AJ) Estridge still managed to have the only flawless record on the team at 4-0. Only Pashiardis (5-1) had more wins.
Pashiardis, in fact, lit up by the end of the season as a whole. After throwing a two-hit shutout in the ODBL semi-finals, the Generals staff decided to ride him through the championship, which resulted in a 5-0 victory.
"There were tears of joy across some of them," Estridge said about the win. "Some kids hadn't had success. It was a little bit indescribable from last fall, to see those eight [returning] kids enjoy that."
First-year recruit Jacob Evans (.543 average, 27 RBI) led the team at the plate while AJ Estridge (.500), Pashiardis (.431) and Ryan Powell all checked in with batting averages over .400. Five players -- Estridge, Geris, Brandon Lee and Matthew Phillips -- played in all 36 games this year while Bowman, Kane and Evans each appeared in at least 32.
Geris and Bowman showed perhaps the most growth on the team compared to the start of the year, according to Estridge.
"They became more mentally tough throughout the season and you could always get (a few) innings out of them whenever you put them out," said the manager.
Geris went from throwing wildly to being second on the team in strikeouts at 40, trailing only the "flamethrower" Bowman, as Estridge said, with 44.
Players stepped up on their own too, even when injured. Bowman had an eye problem early on in the spring season where he simply could not see well at short distances, causing him to become prone to strikeouts at the plate.
But he found other ways to contribute in big ways. In 30 innings pitched this season, Bowman recorded a team-high 44 batters while giving up 31 hits in 30 2/3 innings pitched. Once the post-season came around, and his contacts ended up working out, Hunter rebounded in the stat book with a .428 (3-for-7) performance at the plate in the ODBL playoffs, which included two triples. He even clubbed a rally-starting two-run homer in the second game of states that propelled the Generals to victory.
At that tournament, the manager's son AJ battled through Osgoode Schlatter syndrome, which inflicts pain in the knee and shin. The younger Estridge insisted on going out on the mound though and brought back a W for the Generals by pitching 2 1/3 innings and tallying a 2-for-3 performance at the plate.
"One should have been a home run but it took him all day long to hobble to first base and it was only a single," wrote his dad.
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