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[Say Hey]

There hasn't been much Bay Rivers District baseball chatter this year compared to the past few years. I have nothing to complain about, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on a topic I have been thinking about for years.

I truly believe that all levels of baseball up until college focus too much on offense and not enough on defense. Good defenses win games the same way an RBI single does. Lafayette's win last night was proof. The final score was 6-4. Jeremiah Antle was outstanding at SS and prevented at least two runs from scoring by making plays out of the ordinary. Solomon MCray (CF) saved a run by hustling to back up his Leftfielder on a missed diving attempt. Three runs were saved in a game decided by two runs, yet nobody ever talks about defense. All-District Honors are awarded based solely on Offense and it becomes even more troubling when scorekkeeper's inflate these stats. I scored a game last year where an opposing player went 1-5. The scorekeper for his team had him at 4-5. He was selected First Team All-District. In addition, game recaps/articles very rarely mention great defensive plays.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on who the best defensive players are in Bay Rivers, by position.

There are obviously more pressing issues in life to iron out, but I just thought this was an interesting subject and hoped it would generate some constructive conversation.

[BRD Sports Fan]

I'm surprised you haven't had any comments to your post yet. I agree with your thoughts, but I imagine one reason that defensive excellence is not rewarded or commented on in articles (as much) is that it is harder to evaluate and compare players on defense. DP could try to get feedback from coaches/readers and post defensive players of the week like they do for football, in addition to offensive players of the week. However, since DP usually can't get to but one game each game night, they would have to rely on game reports sent in by the coach or fans. Normal box scores/reports don't give stats to highlight great defensive plays.

I really appreciate all the articles you post about each game you attend. You do a great job giving game replay details for everyone who couldn't go to the game. I'm sure the players and their families enjoy reading and saving your articles too. Wish we could clone you to go to every game! Our son is at a different BRD school, but I enjoy reading all your game posts to get a picture of how the game went. Great job!

One problem with keeping discussion going may be that the DP has all their articles marked to stay at the top of the page. This is fine for current articles, but about 50 of the 60 or so articles in BRD Baseball are from 2011. Most people may not realize they need to scroll down past all those articles to get to current comments from non-daily press readers. Daily Press: If you read this, can you take the marker off all the old DP posts so they are put in date order, so that current posts by readers/users can show up higher on the forum?