5 August, 2005


Chatham A's aim at Cardinals

Quicker than a greenhead bite, the 2005 Cape Cod Baseball League regular season will conclude Sunday, barely a month-and-a-half after its June 16 opening night.

Thanks to some stellar pitching, clutch hitting and all-star caliber defense, the 25-14 Chatham A's find themselves preparing for tough matchup against the Orleans Cardinals in the Eastern Division playoffs, which will start Aug. 9. The winner of that best-of-three series will play the Western Division winner to decide the championship.

Leading the offensive attack has been the threesome of Baron Frost (.357), Alex Presley (.347) and Chris Coghlan (.342), who hold the top three spots in the league in batting average.

The A's also have Evan Longoria (.289), who has consistently remained in the top of the league for power numbers, including leading the league in RBI with 32, homers with eight and extra-base hits with 15. His .500 slugging percentage is second in the league.

Four Chatham position players started this year's all-star game, including two-thirds of its outfield in right fielder Presley and left fielder Frost. Longoria started at second, and Coghlan was at third base.

Chatham's Jared Hughes (6-0, 1.47) was the starting pitcher for the Eastern Division, joining teammates Derrick Lutz (12 saves), Andrew Miller (6-0, 1.65) and Robert Woodard (5-1, 2.18) on the all-star staff.

Orleans and Chatham are evenly matched, with the Cardinals holding a 3-2 head-to-head advantage prior to the final regular season game between the two Sunday. All the games have been decided by three or fewer runs.

With Orleans holding a slight lead, the last few games of the season could determine who gets home-field advantage, but Chatham coach John Schiffner isn't putting too much effort into gaining the points lead.

"I'm more in the favor of letting things happen naturally," he said. "We need to be ready to go (against Orleans); that has to be our main focus. We need to make sure our players are rested and prepared to play. They're well-coached, and we're two pretty evenly matched teams, so I expect some great games." 

Schiffner said his main concern is trying to control Orleans' explosive speed on the bases, especially stolen base leader Manny Burriss with his 35 steals in 41 games.

"They really like to run; they do a lot of stealing and hit-and-run plays. We just really have to be conscientious of that and do a lot of what I call 'full court pressure' type of baseball," said Schiffner.

That "full-court pressure" means Chatham pitchers will pay a lot of attention to runners on base and use many pickoff attempts to try to control the Orleans runners.

"We're also going to talk to our catchers about using a few back pick attempts too," Schiffner said.

As far as playoff starters, Schiffner said he hasn't made any decisions about who would start what game.

The series will most likely come down to whether good hitting or good pitching will win out. Although Chatham has a clear advantage in batting with a league-leading team average of .267, Orleans can counter with their league-best 2.18 team ERA.

By Matt Rice 
mrice@cnc.com