The Demon Baseball team opens up their week with a conference match-up against Fairfield. The Demons are 8-6 on the season.
Fairfield comes into the game 4-11-2 earning a tie with Albia after losing five straight before.
Head coach Nathan Miller says despite the record and stats, his boys are ready to play a conference game as hard as any other.
“They’re focused on that it is a conference game, and we try to go into each game having the mind set that we are going to see each team’s best, and specifically their pitching,” Miller said. “We have to be able to score some runs first, and then hold the other team from scoring. That will be our focus tonight, just play our game, be aggressive on the bases and do some bunting. Just control what we can control and go from there.”
Fairfield comes into the game hitting just .198 as a team with a .373 on base percentage, and in 17 games they have just 54 runs.
Their pitching has 110 strikeouts to 63 walks and a team ERA of 3.21. Opponents are hitting .271 off of them. Miller said their pitchers are the greatest threat, because they have a lot of them and that they can switch it up often during the game.
The Demon offense is hitting .321 and has an on base percentage of .434. Washington is also almost even with walks and strikeouts at the plate, with just nine more strikeouts. The same can be said for their pitching with the team throwing 55 walks to 58 strikeouts this season.
Miller says throwing strikes is a key to winning tonight’s game.
“Throw strikes, our pitchers need to throw strike one, that allows us to get ahead of batters which means we can throw some off speed, and then secondly just have the right approach at the plate,” Miller said.
Jared Henry will pitch game one, he has one of the better walk to strikeout ratios with nine walks to 15 strikeouts, a 2.10 ERA and holding opponents to hitting just under .200. Colin Steele will pitch game two.
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