Yeah, our season finished exactly 19 days ago and I am left with a slight emptiness even though, when looking back at the whole thing, lows can be found with much ease than highs. Anyway, I thought this would be good time to reflect and write down a few notes which may come handy later, a self evaluation if you will. So,
1. Throwing: Despite my higher ambitions early in the season, the same ol' problems are still there, mainly due to the fact that I never placed a consistent focus at the problem and try to solve it once and for all. In the practice sessions, given the limited time we had, we practiced on many things and we still ran short of time. Other than a warm-up catch ball and occasion infield-outfield drills, we didn't focus much on throwing and neither did I. The only thing that I noticed, which could easily be just random, is that in some days the throwing was better than my average. However these days were not numerous so still, there is a lot, and I mean A LOT of work has to be done. I hope that I will be able to put that on top of my agenda if there would be any sensible practices during winter. This inconsistency in throwing reminds me of my jump shots when I had very random and mostly low percentage jump shot and above all had no control of it for maybe 6 years or so until 'that day' that everything changed for the better. I must admit that I really focused and worked hard on that which yielded good results to a point that, I think, I was probably the only guy around whose jump shot was much better than his dribbling skills! Anyhow, I certainly hope that I'll be able to resolve this issue soon but you never know how long it's gonna take.
2. Fielding and stuff: I suppose I could sing the same song here but thanks to my own persistence and a little bit of practice I improved a bit on the fly balls despite the fact that I am still catching them in a wrong way i.e. one handed but it works OK unfortunately! so why complain much. Same applies with fielding ground balls but since I didn't practice on that equally as much, there are still A LOT of room for work.
3. Batting: I can not possibly emphasize more on how much work I have to put into that. I need more power, more coordination, more effectiveness, I need to hit line drives and what not, I need to face many live pitches, I need to do a lot! My performance in the farm team despite not getting the playing time that I think I deserved, was actually not so bad especially when I did a slight mental adjustment during a game and made a lot of hits. This was by far the highest point of the season and made me proud of myself for once at least. I guess you could argue that the performance of the pitchers in that division are not that good but still I give myself a lot of credit for hanging in there and making that shift for the better, it's not something that I do everyday!
4. Base running: I was picked a couple of times on the 1st, totally stupid. I need to run the bases with more aggression, more concentration and be able to read the plays better and faster. I need to get into shape for that and lose a couple of kilos first.
5. Mental: It would have been an understatement if I just go ahead and say that my head was just preoccupied during the season. There were many things going on, both related and unrelated to baseball. As far as baseball is concerned, I guess I can name 3 essential factors that gave me the most discomfort and hence resulted in unbalanced state of mind at times: a) the 'burden' of being benched: this was felt to an extent that I 'deserted' some games just to skip dealing with this, I really have to come into terms with it one way or another, b) the general lack of self-confidence leading me not to take the opportunities instead of welcoming them and c) the lack of close relationship with other teammates: this is something which has been there almost from beginning and I really don't have a remedy for that. I even tried to take a long trip to South in hopes of that spending more time with them during a journey would make us a bit closer and I took part in the team's party where most get drunk and supposedly more 'open' but I can confirm that not much has changed on that front. I did all these as I had a new born baby at home and leaving her with her mom was on my conscience all the time. There were also times that I felt that I had to specifically ask the coach for playing time and do certain things according to what I believed was right e.g. not wasting time during practice chatting and etc. Since I am not used to these uncomfortable circumstances and, I was left with a stark inner paradox which was not very pleasant to say the least.
All in all, I think I did gain some good experience for better or worse and if I am smart enough, I will be able to use these in the next season. But first, I have to work my butt off...
