The morning started with a team meeting at the mound on Schmidt Field.  After calisthenics and stretching, the position players broke up into 2 groups on Schmidt and Ashburn and ran drills from home-to-first, and first-to-third.  As could be expected, Utley ran the hardest from the start.  Most others started slower.  Ruiz, Asche, and Frandsen kept pace with Utley throughout.  Rupp and Marson hustled but were handicapped by the fact that they are slow.  Cedeno and Revere eventually reached a faster speed.  The rest maintained the same comfortable pace throughout.

After about 15-20 minutes, they paired off for long toss, followed by another meeting with Sandberg at the mound.  Then came some pickoff drills and cutting runners down at the plate ending in a rundown.  All pitchers took part for about 5 reps.  The outfielders were the base runners.  Hernandez was at second.  So far, it looks like he’s third in the pecking order behind Utley and Galvis.  Frandsen seems to be at third behind Asche all the time with Franco behind him.  Rupp and Marson were the catchers for these drills, while the other catchers were waiting over by the mounds for some of the pitchers.  Oh!  I spotted Logan Moore here.  He’s taking part in the drills  He was actually here yesterday, too.  This isn’t too big a deal, they have a need for a lot of catchers before the minor leaguers report.  Last year, Justin Dalles was here early as well as Shawn William, I think.

When they broke for live BP, I found a spot on Robin Roberts Field that at least gave me a view of home plate.  It is a lot closer to the cage, so I had a better view than on previous days.  And then waited to see who I drew as a pitcher.  The first battery was Ruiz-Hernandez.  He pitched to Ruf, Thomas, and Cesar Hernandez.  On most pitches, Hernandez seemed to hit the glove where it was placed.  Most pitches were down.  I don’t have a gun, but the velocity didn’t seem to be overwhelmingly fast.  Ruf managed a soft line drive to right that would have been a hit.  Cesar seemed to have trouble catching up to the fast ball.  He only managed a pop up down the left field line.  Thomas brought some levity to the drill when he lined a ball that missed the screen and would have hit Roberto in the chest if he hadn’t gotten his glove up to deflect it.  It knocked him off the mound toward first.  Larry Anderson came around his screen behind the mound to ask if he needed help getting up.  In a later AB, Thomas lined another ball up the middle off the screen, that startled Roberto.  During his last AB, Ruf crushed a ball over the fence in left-center.  This elicited an “Aye-yi-yi” from Chooch.  He gapped another one to right-center before LA called for 2 pitchouts.  Ruf took a pitchout from each side of the plate, and the next group came to bat.

This time Stutes-Ruiz would face Utley, Asche, Galvis.  In their ABs, Asche  managed a ball to the warning track in left and right, Galvis hit a couple of ground balls, and Utley one ground ball and a towering ball down the right field line.  I couldn’t see if it stayed fair.  For what it’s worth, Stutes was throwing harder than Hernandez.  He also had less command.  Ruiz had to block a couple of balls in the dirt, and Stutes was sometimes high in the zone.  Ruiz had to reach more for Stutes pitches than for Hernandez’ pitches.  However, he got a lot more “attaboys” from Chooch and LA on good pitches.  He froze the lefties at the knees several times.

Soft BP off Samuel was next, so I walked to Ashburn to see if anything else was going on.  I found Giles pitching to Dugan, Franco, and Joseph..  Giles completely overpowered Dugan for the 2 ABs I saw.  He didn’t get the bat on the ball.  Franco had trouble but he did hit a soft fly ball to right and a hard line drive to center that was caught.  Joseph managed a fly ball to center.  I only saw 6 ABs, but Giles was throwing well.  His control was fine, although he did put a couple in the dirt.  The guys were getting around late on him, but there didn’t seem to be any movement on his ball.  But then , I didn’t get to see his whole session.

I went back to watch the soft BP on Carlton.  Castro, Blanco, Gillies, and Nieves were batting.  Off a left-handed coach, they hit a lot of fly balls, not particularly well hit.  Nieves did get a couple over the left field fence.  Then a right-handed coach took over and they still hit a lot of fly balls.  Gillies did hit one out to right-center.  At field level, the perspective is different.  Balls that looked well hit from the stands in Bright House are more clearly just fly balls.

Frandsen, Mayberry, and Howard took their turns.  The most notable thing here was that Howard took a few turns with the doughnut on his bat.  I’ve seen him do this before, but it’s always neat to watch.

Finally, they finished up with the infielders over on Ashburn.  All infielders except Howard lined up at second or short.  The ball was hit to short, the ball was flipped to second, and the throw was completed to Howard.  After each turn the players went to the end of the other line.  They did the same hitting to second and the shortstop completed the  throw to Howard.  Interesting because you had guys like Ache and Franco taking balls and making throws out of position.  There were only two throwing errors during the whole exercise.  Both by Utley on throws to first as the shortstop crossing the bag.  Go figure.

They finished with four coaches hitting ground balls simultaneously.  One coach for each position.  One position completed throws to Dave Hollings at first.  The other two lobbed the balls back to their coach.  The fourth coach hit ground balls to Howard over by third.  The shortstops and third basemen were playing toward second to give him room.  This wasn’t Howard playing third base.  He was just taking some ground balls rather than taking throws at first again.

Cesar Hernandez was with the second basemen again.  I haven’t seen him with the outfielders yet.  It’s harder focusing on just the prospects.  The large crowd prevents easy movement from field to field.  You never know ahead of time who will be on which field.  That’s all for now.