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Got our first extended (and by extended I mean short) look at Loewen today.
But considering all we had seen so far was the highlight HR from the other day when he lofted one into the jet stream for a long-and-oppo HR, this rain-shortened deal was better than nothing.
A couple of glove/bat/base-path observations:
- first of all he was playing CF ... and didn't do much to distinguish himself.
Got a slow break/odd angle on a sinking liner and therefore just missed the sliding catch. Wasn't an error certainly, but a better CF gets that one most of the time and he even got a bit lucky in that the ball hit his butt after it missed the mitt otherwise he'd still be chasing it as the guy rounded the bases. As it was it stayed a single.
Got another late break that I saw on a blooper but that one had enough air time so he had plenty of time to catch up to it; don't think he saw it right off.
Then later he made an error going to his right when he bobbled the ball he was trying to cut off and turned a possible stretch-2B for a speedster into a definite 2B for everyone. Score it 1B + E
- on the other hand he had a couple of knocks.
Took the lefty Buerhle the other way and, even though he looked off balance slightly on the swing, he hit the damn thing HARD to the point where it sailed over the LF's head and one-hopped the wall. It got there so fast that a cleaner play by the LFer might have held him to a single - something you don't see that much on opposite field hits unless it's at a little league field like RF in YSIII or maybe LF in Houston. This one was more impressive than his HR from earlier in the week.
Later he tossed in a pulled ground single to RF.
- tagged up and took 3rd on a medium fly-ball.
It looked like he was getting the hold sign from Tuefel but he probably figured that, at worst, he'd draw the throw away from home (there was a runner on 3rd also) and he just made it sliding head-first.
He didn't show a ton of speed in doing so but it was an aggressive play, I think a reasonably smart one (depending on specific game circumstances if it were the reg season), and he's certainly not a lead-foot either.
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