- Feb 3, 2011
- 1,880
- 48
It sounds like you've got a 5 run per inning rule to keep things from getting out of hand. I would not take the foot off the petal until the other team has no chance of winning. You never know when you'll have a bad inning and the other team will take advantage.
The other night our team was losing 18 - 9 after 4 innings with only time for one more inning. Even though we had no chance to win (8 run limit) I'm glad the other coach did not suggest that we quit playing or tell his girls to stop swinging. I challenged our team to finish stong and we held them to one run at their final at bat and we scored 4 at ours.
After that inexplicable failure in our first game, I reset our lineup and now I, too, believe we need to get every run we're entitled to until there's no chance of a comeback, at which point we can try some things. We know that if we score 10 runs a game, we're going to win more than we lose, but if we score 15, we're going to win a lot more.
In the last game, after getting the lead, I decided to give a girl a chance to pitch, because she'd been wanting to since our first practice. She has no speed whatsoever, but struck out the first 2 batters, then walked a batter that our #3 catcher caught stealing for the final out. If we did not have an insurmountable lead, it's unlikely I would've put her or that catcher in, but now, it's safe to say that we've got 3 'batteries' on our team, which is fine because 1 of them doesn't need to wear protective gear in warmups.