Hello, and welcome to Battles and Murds, the Baseball Podcast with a British
twist. I am your host again, Russell Eason. You are here again
with me and Gave on the game day of the next game against Columbia,
and we are in the press box giving you our thoughts on yesterday's game against
Canada morning Gave. How are you feeling. I'm feeling better than I was
when I left the ground yesterday. I felt quite deflated. But yeah,
I'm feeling good. I'm raring to go and I think that this is the
one which GV are gonna win. Well, that's positivity you want to hear.
Yeah, I think yesterday was mostly draining for a lot of people.
It started off with high and ended up with I think such a load that
it was. It was a hard game to go through. But we'll start
I think off with the good points. That first three run inning was.
I want to say that's British baseball at least under this iteration of guys,
the Bahamian players, the Caribbean guys that we have, the way Drew Is
instilled them. It was get on base, it was steel, it was
made chaos and they engineered the first run a double steal, which I basically
said in the press box out loud, they should just let Caperniac steal because
or defensive indifference, because if they throw, Chavez is gonna do something,
and he did. Yeah, it was fantastic that you actually predicted that,
or you you suggested what Canada should do. They should just let him go
to a second And yeah, we saw the first ever steal of home base,
didn't we first ever steal of home base in World Baseball Classic history and
you picked it. Fantastic and you know so it does show almost like the
naivety of some of the teams in this sort of competition that they must have
realized. Naylor, I don't know he should he should have known what was
going to happen. But yeah, anyway, lovely start for GiB and then
sing followed up. Yeah they so they tacked on a couple more in that
innings, three zip up, as we tweeted out, it was it was
the dream start, like how Quantrell didn't even make it out of the first
inning. Like I really suggested in yesterday's pod that he would be the toughest
picture that they might face. Maybe that was my guardians bias. Maybe that
was a little bit harsh and Adam Wainwright, but no, I thought he
was going to be a very difficult guy to go against. But he just
didn't have it. And maybe when he didn't have it, we should have
realized that something was going to be up. Because Akim Morris started for GiB
and watched his first pitch go four hundred feet behind him. Yeah, it
was. That was fantastic start this first time. Obviously, I've seen Edward
Julian and I've read a lot about him, and yeah, he just came
out first pitch swing and it was effortless. The guy is going to be
a star. But it had a lot of the London Series feel to it,
didn't it, Because Yeah, Morris, he just couldn't find the strike
zone and when he was pulled in the first inning, I don't I don't
know, it's it just it felt like we can't blame the stadium in Stratford
or the conditions or anything like we did for the London series. But something
was up yesterday. Yeah, whether it's you can't talk about collective yips or
something like that, that just seemed to be maybe there was an energy from
both of the players ning that they needed to kind of do something that day,
and there was a little bit of trying to force it a little bit
too much. There wasn't. I don't know. There were too many bad
calls for balls like GGB god against the USA, So I don't think it
was that kind of made misdifference. I think later on in the game there
was some bad stripe calls, I think because the umpires expanded the zones more
than people getting squeezed. But yeah, we were sat here. It was
forty eight minutes for the first innings GB we're five to three down, and
then in the second innings they gotta run back and you just felt okay,
yeah, this is this is when you know they were down against Spain in
the qualifier, but you were like, no, this this team can hit.
We saw them hit, so it was like, okay, yeah,
we can get this runs back. We know we're going to get more than
six runs in this game, on more than five runs in this game,
so we know we're gonna get back in front if we could just shut up
shop on the pitching wise, and it just didn't happen. It was just
we'd score one kind of would score one, who scored one, Canada scored
three. We scored three, Canada scored six. And there are obviously some
key moments kind of in that play, but without basically GB ever manning Jing
to put a zero up on the scoreboard. From the pitching perspective, it
just meant that all the momentum that they would get from a half inning of
hitting was was dissipated, like immediately afterwards. Yeah, I certainly there was
a bit of the GB Spain vibe about it, because you did feel that,
yeah, maybe they would they they weren't. I think even though Canada
were they ten five up at one stage, Um, he still felt,
yeah, GB are in this. And then when Harry comes on and yeah,
that was the moment of his career so far. Yeah, you know,
as his dad said, you know, Harry announced himself that his arrival
in the tournament. Yeah, I think he'd had a he'd had a poor
game like the day before, probably for him, he'd struck out a couple
of times, he didn't do too well in his focus. A couple of
the bats today and once he deposited that one into the into the over the
fence, and God, his God, his jew coronation maybe a bit a
bit earlier, but yeah, it was a moment and that was ten eight.
Then there was yea ten and I really fancied our chances then, but
we just needed we needed someone to be able to I don't know, it
gets through some quick innings, gets through some clean innings, but it just
didn't happen. Yeah, there were a few defensive mistakes. There were a
few kind of like misplays, but also I'm not I'm not trying to say
as a reason why t be lost, but there was a bit of luck
that went against them, like a few of those infield hits just missed,
or soft infield hits are just missed an infielder. When Benoir came in and
probably got the perfect groundball double playball, and it bounces off his foot and
evades every single in It's just sometimes when it's not your day, it's not
your day. And then and then that really seemed to affect him, didn't
it. He he just didn't. He seemed to lose his focus after that.
I don't know if he just lost his focus where he had been injured
a little bit by the ricochet, but you know, he's handy a youngster.
But and this will be great experience for him for future, But what
do we do after it hit him on the leg? We conceded five runs
I think in that inning. Yeah, and just obviously walked in a few
more badders and kind of left it as as as it was. It's like,
it's a tough way to kind of finish a game. So yeah,
there are there are and obviously I think from then onwards, I think once
they conceded the sixth in that inning and Canada had a one two three for
the first time at the top of the fifth, I think that once that
happened, I don't want to say the heads like went down or kind of
like they gave up, but I definitely feel that there was kind of like
a choice of like, this isn't today as in our day, Like let's
just kind of move on. This seemed to be a definite, um lack
of enthusiasm after we went so far behind. The players showed it, the
crowd I think felt it. Um Yeah, I think everyone was just a
little bit distort that the game had gone from such a great start. There
were a couple of pretty major incidents talking points. We have to mention the
first one being the desh knows still yeah, and we're gonna I'm not gonna
sit here and say that I think it was like I still think it was
safe. I've watched it multiple times afterwards and all the TV options that we
have, Like I don't want to be coming across as the devil advocates or
apologist, but we know that the replay review guys have some different camera angles
that we don't see in to us. But from from what we saw that
he was hand was on the bag by the time we saw any defamation of
the glove. Now if you would see it from the other angle, does
the glove touch him before it deforms? Don't know because don't see that angle.
So we just can't work out whether for any reason. And I think
from like speaking down to the GB guys, are some of the coaches this
morning, like they're all still of the opinion that they don't know why it
wasn't overturned either. So it's a big moment I think obviously, like when
you look at it, what comes afterwards that you linking to just say,
like it definitely did change like the outcome of the games. You've lost the
runner on third when that was one or two run game at that moment,
so it really makes a difference. So what were your thoughts on that play
A GAF, We've just been interrupted, so we had to stop the podcast
and now completely lost track of where we were. We're talking about them the
stolen base. Yeah, yeah, well I was down in the crowd then
and there is a massive Angels fans, all probably Deshaan Knowles's family, and
they're sitting just behind the GB fans, and the replay came up on the
big screen. I don't think anyone, not even the most biased Canadian thought
that the term the decision wasn't going to be overturned. So I haven't seen
the replays on the TV or social media or anything, but yet the feeling
in the crowd was that was an incredible decision not to go out away.
So that was the first kind of bigger talking point. I feel like the
second talking point for me was a couple of bad bits of base running at
key moments. Yeah, that was that was extraordinary because we saw Donnelle Sweeney
really clover of the ball and it looked like it was going dead center,
and it's hard to hit a home run dead center. And we had seen
one earlier in the day. But yeah, it was going and it didn't
quite make it. And then when my eyes went back to the diamond,
I could not believe that he was only jogging up to first and it was
Murray, wasn't it Murray. Murray had decided not to put the burners on
and it should have been a home run standing up and Donnelle should have been
I don't know at third, But yeah, it was very disappointing. We
didn't get one run from that. It was an eight ten game at the
time. That could have made the difference. And it's surprised, surprising because
it hasn't been a lack of hustle from the players. The players have shown
incredible hustle. That's what got them here. And yeah, Murray, he
acknowledged that it was his mistake, but still it was. It was frustrating.
Yeah, and once again it's just like the little key things. Yeah,
like we took about there was a few mistakes with the nian field.
There was obviously the pitching wasn't on it. There was a couple of bad
breaks when you from the hitting side against them, So you can't make those
sort of mistakes yourselves on top of that, Like when I used to talk
to Liam about like the TV and how you used to talk about things.
It's like small wins is how like you can go about baseball like if you
can't if you win on the small wins and these are kind of things about
like getting first a third one like singles, kind of doing all of these
other things, not giving up areas kind of maybe even like hard hit outs
and stuff. Isn't like those little tangibles that you could talk about a game
that isn't you might not see like in a box score. Usually will win
a game if you kind of win the small winds kind of aspect. And
so yeah, it was just it was a little bit disappointing to see.
Obviously Camp kind of pushed too much against them from from a hitting perspective,
like they did. They put eight on the board and it could have been
nine, it could have been ten. I think obviously what happened as the
game got away from GB is I think Canada got they got that zero,
they got a little bit of their mojo back and then seeing does it Ax
would come out and it is what is he in his forties quite feen about
two or three weeks. Yeah, coming out with the gray Beard pitching like
I think better than I've seen him pitching probably like five years, and you
were just like, oh yeah, like this is like a major league pitcher.
And then Matt Brash, who was some people might regard as just a
middling reliever for Seattle, was then just liked out to finish the game.
Like it just shared the difference of what was needed. I don't know if
you could say that we could or should have changed the game plan mid game,
like they did a pretty standard thing of Okay, the pitch the starting
pitcher doesn't work, I'm gonna put in like a mid or lever, gonna
put in then McKenzie mills, who will hope we'll go a little bit longer.
Maybe it could have been a game where it's actually, you know what,
this is the time to put in like Fananda or or put in Gibo
in the middle of this game to try and get a zero on the board
and change the way that like the game is playing. But I think Drew
stuck to his kind of game plan, his idea, which means that they're
still in a good position to go out today. They've got Tyler as a
starting They've still got probably two or three of their best bullpen arms. I'm
not even thrown yet. Today they'll get Cooper back, Michael Peterson will will
be honor full day's rest as well. So I think there's nothing to worry
about from actually all of that usage that they got yesterday, even though it
was a lot. Sure, well, yeah, they've got some arms which
haven't been used at all, haven't they. So I'm looking forward to seeing
visa. Do you think do you think that Drew should change the team.
Do you think he should ring the changes in the infield because the imfield has
been suspect or do you think he should just stick to the game playing because
that was a game plan that stock. Yeah. I think Drew has has
taken an approach of he knows who his probably top eight nine ten hitters are,
and I think he's going to put them on the field. We may
see some slight shifting in positions, but I think Drew Is and the whole
team they've kind of decided like this is how they're going to play the tournament.
They're not going to think that one bad outing, one bad game is
going to change their opinions on these players that they've watched for months, years,
They've got thousands of hours, so probably like watching what this team can
do in certain positions. So I think one bad day won't change that.
I think we might see like a few changes, but I wouldn't be surprised
if you kind of see a lineup that's fairly similar to yesterday. Right.
We'll hope that you all enjoy this pod and you will all get to where
cheekily watched this game on a Monday afternoon as it is in the UK,
Well probably Monday evening. It's all after work. You want it took me
seven o'clock. What have I got? I've got it completely wrong. Well,
we hope you're all watching this game. There is a chance that GB
can do something today, so we're all have our let's go GB caps on
cheese once again, and please listen to more about for Sinners