GFS' Garrett Melby sizes up the pitching on Wednesday. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

Last Wednesday couldn't have been a nicer day for a baseball game, but that's where the list of positives both starts and ends for Germantown Friends School baseball.

The Tigs hosted North Pocono—whose team and fans traveled around two hours south from around Scranton—and got wallopped, leaving more questions than answers before they head into their spring break trip to California.

“It's tough early on,” said GFS head coach Tim Gunn.

The 14-0 skunking on the scoreboard said as much.

To be fair, the Tigs were missing a couple of their better players, but the output Wednesday was generally uninspired regardless.

“The beginning of the year has never been good for us,” Gunn said. He doesn't know what it is, but he's “been here for five years, and we've never started out well.”

“I think it's a bit of a lack of focus for the guys,” he said. “The spring trip usually does a good thing...but it's just frustrating right now.”

They headed to Los Angeles on Monday, and will play a four-game slate before coming back and delving into conference play. Questions are abound for the Tigs—namely, who's going to play where on the field, who's going to step up, and who's going to start hitting. They'll have a couple days in sunny SoCal to figure it out, but time's winding down.

“We're not the same team we were last year,” Gunn said. “We don't have a lot of speed, so we've got to rely on other things.”

When Gunn pointed out that when they did make contact, they hit the ball hard (just right at guys), he wasn't wrong, but it's tough to string together runs when a team isn't very fleet afoot or putting the ball in play that much.

GFS struck out nine times in seven innings (one-third of its plate appearances) and managed only four hits, so they're going to need to develop a knack toward finding holes, something that just wasn't there against the Trojans Wednesday.

Gunn's a fast talker—he's not nervous, but he puts his thoughts into words and spits them out fairly quickly, so it's not entirely surprising that he expects things to come into place for the Tigers in a rapid manner while they're in California.

“We're trying to find some leadership out of these guys,” he said. “We've got two captains who are juniors, and that can be difficult when you've got a very small senior class. We've got to find out who's going to step up.”

On the mound, he is somewhat assured, despite the lopsided Wednesday finish, that the team will be in a good place come league play. Thomas Primosch, easily the team's number one, wasn't around to face North Pocono. When he comes back, it'll be a big plus.

Joe Block threw against the Trojans, as did Sam Istvan, each getting valuable experience against a talented opponent.

“If these guys continue to throw strikes in our league,” Gunn said, “we're going to be competitive regardless—the Friends League doesn't have the kind of juggernauts we've faced.”

All of this doesn't even scratch at the team's most glaring problem: its defense. With a lot of kids playing new and unfamiliar positions, the Tigers made seven errors Wednesday.

“It's been rough every game so far,” Gunn said. “I'm trying to figure it out.”

Having a set shortstop, which GFS doesn't have so far, would help.

Gunn said that Garrett Melby is probably going to end up at short, despite being perhaps a more natural fit in the outfield. He's athletic enough to make it work, but the rest of the field is still up for grabs.

“Once we get a full roster, we can move the guys around,” Gunn said. “It's about getting these guys a lot of reps, and building up a lot of confidence from it.

“If I had answers to the defensive stuff. I'd have them out right now...so far it's boggled my mind. We've got to pound it out practice-wise. We don't give them days off—we go at it six days a week...as long as they've had the right attitude and effort, we've always gotten better.”