Similar routine as yesterday – meeting at the mound with Sandberg, stretching exercises, and then base running.  Today, home to second, and second to home.  There was more effort from more players, but 3 or 4 still look like they are taking it easy.  One or two might be going easy due to injuries last year.

Continue reading 2014 Spring Training, Day 8 →

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. Continue reading 2014 Spring Training, Day 7 →

First full squad practice. You would think that there would be more to write about, but I really don’t have much.

After all their preliminary stretching, calisthenics, running, and long toss, the players split into 4 groups – a handful of pitchers went to the “Seven Mounds” (apparently this is their official designation for the mounds between the buildings), outfielders went back to Bright House for batting practice. the infielders and outfielders split into two groups on Schmidt and Ashburn Fields to practice fielding bunts.   Rupp and Marson rotated at catcher.

Schmidt Field included the 6 infielders we expect to be on the 25-man roster – Howard, Utley, Rollins, Galvis, Asche, and Frandesn.  Rollins and Galvis rotated at short, Asche and Frandsen rotated at third.  The pitchers were – Buchanan, Biddle, Diekman, De Fratus, Garcia, Hollands, Lincoln, Jimenez, Martin.  I think Rosenberg, Aumont, Gonzalez, Lee, Kendrick, and Papelbon were also part of this group. Continue reading 2014 Spring Training, Day 6 →

Tomorrow the full squad begins working out at the Carpenter Complex.  As of today, the only guy I haven’t seen in camp is Michael Martinez.  You don’t know how good it feels to finally be able to type that.

Okay, I watched 3 BP sessions  on Saturday, Sunday and today.  Here’s what I saw from the prospects.

Tyson Gillies – First, this guy shows boundless energy.  He seems to run everywhere.  He chases down a lot of fly balls during BP, and does it at full speed.  Saturday, he continued to make good contact, swinging well though the ball with lots of line drives as the result.  He reached the RF Berm on a couple swings.  He’s the only guy I’ve seen bunt after the two mandatory bunts each batter has to lay down at the start of his turn at bat.  I missed his BP on Sunday.  (He was part of a group that batted after shagging fly balls from Samuel).  Monday, he was still making good contact on most of his swings. Continue reading 2014 Spring Training, Day 5 →

I arrived at the Carpenter Complex early and found out that the position players who had already reported would be taking batting practice in Bright House Field at 10:30AM and that it would be open to the public.  I checked the schedule for the Carpenter Complex fields (each guard is issued one each day) and found that the pitchers and catchers would be following the same regimen they followed on Thursday.  So, rather than watch PFPs and strugglung to get a peek at the pitchers thowing off the mounds, I walked over to watch BP. Continue reading Spring Training 2014, Day 2 →

Spring Training 2014 began officially this morning when the pitchers and catchers exited their locker room in Bright House Field and entered the outfield in Schmidt Field for calisthenics.   For those of you who haven’t been to the Carpenter Complex, I have attaced an overhead shot of the area below.

Continue reading Spring Training 2014, Day 1 →