Local baseball fine-tuning for playoffs

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- Both the Minnesota Valley Lutheran and New Ulm Cathedral baseball teams will start their "second season" on Thursday with the beginning of playoffs.

MVL will trek to St. Peter to take on the Saints in their first playoff game while the Greyhounds of Cathedral will entertain the Cleveland Clippers at Johnson Park.

Both games are 5 p.m. starts.

Charger coach Jeff Schoenherr has his team gearing up for their meeting with the Saints on Thursday and hopes that the Chargers can play consistent baseball both on offense and defense.

"At times, our bats will spark, but we really need to get them going better than they have been," he said. "And on defense, at times we simply fall apart.

"It seems that when an error happens, the entire team contributes and it snowballs," he said. "We need to make sure that we take care of that."

Schoenherr feels that the errors by his team are mental.

"I sat down with my coaches and the seniors, and then I met with the rest of the team soon after that," he said. "I just wanted to point out that we are starting from scratch, and whatever we have done in the regular season does not matter now. We need to get positive again."

The Charger bats need to get hot and Schoenherr feels that "if one or two players come out and hit the ball, it can be contagious and the rest of the team will follow.

"It is between the ears right now. Hitting is a mental thing - they need to have that confidence to hit the ball," he said. "I hate to put pressure on one or two players, but that is just my observation."

Schoenherr said that the Chargers have played well at times, but at other times, not played well at all.

"And that stems from that confidence thing. There were a couple of games where we lost 1-0 and played an excellent game but then come back the next game and struggled," he said. "Part of that may be our pitching -- we have one person who is pitching well and the rest struggle."

Going into the playoffs, Schoenherr is concerned with what his team does and also with what St. Peter does.

"I have not seen St. Peter play, but looking at some of their scores, it seems like they play pretty decent defense -- they do not give up a lot of runs," Schoenherr said. "But on the other hand, they do not score a lot of runs.

"I think that at this point of time, we need to take care of our own business," he said. "We need to execute the fundamentals to win."

Mark Rolloff will start as pitcher against the Saints.

GREYHOUNDS TANGLE WITH CLEVELAND: New Ulm Cathedral is on the right foot entering their first-round game against Cleveland Thursday, upsetting Sleepy Eye St. Mary's to break a two-game losing streak.

"We beat MVL on Monday and then lost two close games (to Wabasso) on Tuesday," coach Bob Weier said. "We did not play that well, but the win over St. Mary's, we played well.

"It was a nice way to end the regular season, with a win over a team leading the (Tomahawk) Conference and an arch-rival," he said. "It showed our kids that if we do play good baseball, we can beat anyone. This win should give us a boost going into the playoffs."

Weier said that this year's team has been a "Jekyll and Hyde team," playing well in one game and then poorly in the next.

"We have been up and down -- being consistent has not been something that we have done this year," he said. "When we play good ball, we can play with anyone. We do not have a team that can play sloppy and expect to win."

Weier said that the inconsistency "is something that worried me at the start of the season, worried me when we were in the middle of the season and worries me now as we enter playoffs. I had hoped that we would overcome that problem but it is still with us."

One of the things that Weier feels that his team has been inconsistent on is is bunting.

"We have not been a good sacrifice bunting team," he said. "Everyone in the park knows when you are going to bunt, so it is a matter of execution. When we have bunted well, we have had success."

Against St. Mary's, Weier feels that his team started hitting the ball well.

"We hit the ball well early in that game -- we scored four runs after there were two outs -- those are clutch hits," Weier said. "In the first couple of innings, we moved runners over by using the bunt, stealing -- that was nice to see especially after the struggles that we had (against Wabasso on Tuesday)."

Being consistent is something that perhaps is mental, but he also chalks it up to the team's inexperience.

"At times, we will start four sophomores," he said. "They have to be considered rookies and are not used to the varsity level of baseball quite yet. They need to gain some experience."

Weier doesn't know what to expect from Cleveland.

"I think that a scouting report is not that important in baseball as a team," he said. 'You still have to execute and play your game -- you need to stay with your strong point. It is your team and how you execute that matters most."

Ace pitcher Dusty Wilfahrt will start against the Clippers.

SENSKE FEATURE MOVED BACK: The feature on New Ulm High School baseball coach Jim Senske that was to air on "Rosen's Sports Sunday" has been moved back a week to May 25.

"With the success of the Wild and the Minnesota baseball team, we ran out of time," said Jeanine Gocha, a spokesperson for WCCO TV. "But it will air next Sunday."