Lost 2 straight tonight. As winners' bracket champs we were in great shape; win once and we win the tournament. But we got beat twice in a row.
Lack of offense was by far our biggest problem. I busted out of a slump by going 4 for 5 over two games, but I only reached 2nd base once. Complete lack of team hitting.

I was happy with my defense. Our opponent had a fast little leadoff hitter who relies on left side ground balls almost entirely. He's speedy and over the last 5+ years I've seen him get lots and lots of infield hits. But tonight he grounded to me 6 times and reached base on only one- I bobbled it for about a second and that was enough.

So I played pretty good. We stunk as a team, though. It's a lot more fun to complain about my own bad play after a win than it is to have the whole team moping after two straight ugly losses.

Two more Monday nights and 10 fall games and I'm done for the year. I've never looked forward to the off-season more. I need it.
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Batting slumps drive me nuts. Every time I'm in one it baffles me. And every time I get out of it- eventually- it's because I realize I'm doing some very basic thing wrong. Sometimes I realize I'm not really, really concentrating on seeing the ball as I hit it. Sometimes I'm just jumping out at the ball way too early. Sometimes I'm trying to force hits in a certain direction.
After a bad game or two I think about it and try to diagnose what I'm doing wrong, but sometimes it takes weeks before I figure it out, even though it's a simple problem.
This time I realized I wasn't swinging hard. How much more basic can you get? I was trying to aim hits into locations and neglecting to swing the bat like I meant it.
I've had a great year, but after three bad weeks I finally realized that very simple thing. So tonight I put zero emphasis on where the ball went, and concentrated completely on swinging the bat hard. The result was 4 hits that really zipped, and one hard line drive out. Duh! Simple stuff.