Tigers Minor League Baseball Blog

This week marks the beginning of official (well, not that official) competition against other organizations. Minor league spring training is slightly different from the Major League version because we only play three other organizations. For us, we play; the Braves, out of Orlando; the Nationals, out of Viera; and the Astros, out of Kissimmee. This is the trend throughout the teams based in Florida due to proximity reasons and so that when several teams travel (A, high A, AA, AAA) one complex is not over saturated with games. Everyone is split into teams or “working groups” for games and for the most part this gives you some indication of where you might be during the season, but in no case is ever certain. These games are usually very interesting and can sometimes be a nightmare for catchers, because so many different pitchers have to throw and they have be able to know how each pitcher goes about his job. I finally got to chance to throw against actual competition yesterday versus the Nationals and we will just say it felt good to be back. After doing so many fundamentals and drills I sort of started to forget what my primary job was, pitching and getting outs. The baseball gods were on my side to say the least as I threw two scoreless innings and managed four strikeouts. This was a big step towards me having the season I know I am capable of. For me personally, the more confidence I have, the better I will do. For instance, last year I finished up the regular season very well and then carried that over to Hawaii to have a successful stint there as well. So hopefully this early jumpstart will help my success kick in sooner than four months, and I can just hit the ground running, or in my case, pitching (I apologize for the horrible use of humor in the previous sentence but if you actually laugh when reading that then you really do appreciate the game of baseball).