Dutchmen drop ‘Cats in exhibition
Amateurs top pros 3-2 at Joe Bruno Stadium
TROY, N.Y. » Pretty much every Tri-City ValleyCats player had spent the entire baseball season to that point in Florida, working with the Astros’ extended Spring Training. This was unlike their younger, less celebrated opponent, the Albany Dutchmen out of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League. They’d been playing games together for a couple of weeks.
And even though the two teams matched up in a relatively meaningless exhibition on Thursday, it was the amateurs that beat the professional players at Joe Bruno Stadium in front of thousands of school children. The Dutchmen took down the ValleyCats, 3-2, in a morning contest at The Joe.
“When you’re not put into the fire. When you’re not in that situation, there’s no way to practice it,” ValleyCats manager Moran Ensberg said. “We can try to put pressure on you in practice, we can try to make it difficult for you. But until you’re really standing there with the lights on, there’s not much you can do.”
The Dutchmen jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning, and wouldn’t score again before the eighth inning. The ValleyCats worked their way back with two solo home runs. The first came from Troy Sieber on the first game pitch he’s seen all season. The second was by Luis Payano. It looked as if they’d have a third with a walkoff homer in the ninth, but a monster shot landed just foul.
The Dutchmen were playing without their manager, who wasn’t able to attend the exhibition. The Dutchmen also played a 5 p.m. game later that day at the home field at Siena College. But even though that game will count and the ValleyCats victory will not,
it was a good way to make a statement that this team can compete with players who have accomplished what the Dutchmen team only hopes to do.
“It was pretty cool. It shows that this team is for real,” said Justin Decker, who scored the game-winning run. “It’s pretty cool to come out and beat a team us local guys grew up watching. It shows us where we need to be at. I think as a team, we’re probably one step ahead of them.”
Decker scored in the eighth inning after doubling down the line to lead off. He was at third, and score by himself on a wild pitch. It was the only offense necessary the rest of the game.
For guys like Sieber, winning wasn’t the important thing. He spend the last few days driving up from Florida. He was just happy to be out of the car playing a competitive game.
“It was beautiful,” Sieber said. “It was good
to get out here in the nice stadium, a lot of fans today a lot of young kids. This is our first time playing together. We played a little bit in Florida. Just trying to get the cobwebs off.”
But the manager, Ensberg, a rookie to leading his own team, saw legitimate flaws with the crop of players currently on the roster. Many will change in the coming days as new players come after signing contracts following the draft. But he just wanted to evaluate the players that were there today. And they didn’t do too well.
“I think our pitchers were nervous,” Ensberg said.
“They were very nervous. We had five walks and we had four hit-bypitches. That’s unbelievable. We had nine free bases right there. I think offensively, we had a lot of soft outs. A lot of soft contact. Guys were jumpy, guys were chasing offspeed in the dirt. When pitchers were elevating fastballs, they were chasing it above the zone. I think what you saw here was guys just getting accustomed to pressure.”