Titans seeking an identity
By STU MERRY
It’s homestretch time for the Garrison-Max Titans American Legion baseball team.
With just a couple weeks remaining in the regular season, it gives the players and coaches time to work on a few things that have been holding the team back from being better than its 6-6 region record shows.
The most needed improvement, according to Coach Ramsey Crawford, is limiting strikeouts. Against Renville County, the Titans fanned 12 times in two contests. Against Surrey, there were 14 whiffs in two games.
"When we strikeout, it’s basically giving the defense a free out," Crawford said. "Whereas if we put the ball in play it puts pressure on the opponent’s defense and that leads to mistakes, which gives us more base runners and more opportunity to score runs."
Like their high school season counterparts, errors have plagued the team all season. Crawford said he doesn’t want to sound like a broken record, but ….
"Like I said before, (it) gives their offense more opportunities to score runs," he said. "It also puts more pressure on our pitcher and forces him to throw more pitches."
In four contests last week, the Titans committed 11 bobbles.
The last area Crawford would like to see improve is the number of walks given up. In the four games, Titan pitchers issued 27 free passes.
