I just arrived back in El Paso after last night's 10 hour bus trip back from Fort Worth. As usual, the ride consisted of listening to my iPod and watching a movie here and there. I woke up just in time to see the sun rise over the mountains in West Texas, which may I add was a very beautiful sight.
As for the series against the Cats, things did not go exactly as planned. We dropped the first game but came back on Friday night and evened it up 1-1. The series ended with two consecutive losses on Saturday and Sunday night as we finished the series 1-3 and fell to five games back of Fort Worth in the South Division.
I threw Thursday night and through the first four innings, I was on top of my game. A two-run homerun and a single with a man in scoring position would run me off innings later as I finished the game in the sixth inning. I struck out four hitters and walked just two in six innings.
I have gotten to the point in my baseball career that I can now see how the smallest of mistakes can hurt you. On the two-run homerun that I gave up in the fifth inning, I had two outs and had the hitter 1-1. I threw a slider, which bit over the outer-third of the plate, but was left it up and the Cats cleanup hitter took it opposite field over the right-field fence. John Allen is a tough hitter, does not get fooled much, and will make you pay for mistakes. The good thing is that I am learning to how to pitch hitters at a much better rate than ever before in my life. I am understanding how to learn from mistakes such as these.
Neitz threw a gem on Friday night and a big homerun by my roomate TJ Johnson capped off a big win for the Diablos. Unfortunately, we could not keep the momentum going as we dropped the final two games of the series.
We open up a three-game series against Grand Prarie tonight at Cohen. The AirHogs are managed by one of my favorite players of all-time in long Philadelphia Phillie, Pete Incaviglia. There has been some sickness on the team as a couple of guys have passed around a flu like virus and it looks like tonight's original starter (Mark Michael) is not going to be able to throw. Joe Klein appears to be the guy picking up the start, which is the first of his career.
I am scheduled to throw tommorow night's game against the AirHogs. I will be throwing a short box (15 pitches at 55 ft.) before the game to get ready for tommorow.
