Andrews baseball searching for consistency on diamond

    Andrews – It’s been a bit of a perplexing season so far for Andrews baseball.
    The Wildcats who are 4-3 so far in 2021, have had only close wins and blowout losses. For the rest of the season, Graves is looking for more consistency.
    “We’re not where we need to be but we’re trying to get there,” Graves said. “We’re just going to slowly work in it, and hopefully these areas where we need to make improvements, we’ll be better in the last half than we were at it in the first half of the year.”
    For Graves, the biggest improvements can be on defense. He likes where his team is hitting wise, as the Wildcats are scoring 9 runs per game. Defensively is a different story. Andrews has given up 12.3 runs a game, including 23 in both a loss to Hayesville and win over Hiwassee Dam, 16 in a loss to Robbinsville and 12 in a loss to Swain County.
    “Batting’s easy, batting’s fun. Everybody wants to hit, get in the batting cage and hit the ball,” Graves said. “But defensively that’s not fun because you gotta take ground ball after ground ball, take them off the chest, chip a tooth, that ain’t fun. But if you want to get better defensively you have to put in that work. …
    “The kids have to make a commitment to defense, and we have to put in the time and the work and progressively get better.”
    Graves said his team “laid an egg” against the Black Knights on May 11, but Andrews responded by beating defending Smoky Mountain Conference champion Rosman on the road 7-6 in eight innings on Friday.
    “We cleaned up a lot of stuff,” Graves said about the win over the Tigers. “It was a lot of easy stuff that the kids cleaned up and they were committed to it. Now it’s going to have to be some stuff we have to improve at that’s not as easy.”
    Andrews followed that up with a 12-3 loss to Swain County and a 6-4 win at Cherokee, sticking to the pattern the Wildcats have been on this season. Graves has been impressed with the performances of seniors AJ Weaver, Isaac Weaver and Jimmy Miller, and thinks Dalton Rose and Cam Rattler have come along for being freshman playing varsity baseball.
    The challenge the rest of the way will be continuing to improve, while also shaking off the rust of not playing baseball in two years, which is true for all but one kid on the roster.
    “It’s an inexperienced team,” Graves said. “And any time you do that there’s things that you’ve got to go through, a learning curve you have to go through and it just depends on how fast you can go through it, how quickly you can catch on. A lot of the stuff I think we’re going to get better as the season goes on.”