This would be an appropriate time for the Hawaii Hilo baseball team to start wading into the Pacific West Conference season, but anyone close to the program knows it doesn’t work that way on the Big Island.
This would be an appropriate time for the Hawaii Hilo baseball team to start wading into the Pacific West Conference season, but anyone close to the program knows it doesn’t work that way on the Big Island.
“I’m not discouraged,” said coach Kallen Miyataki, looking ahead to a weekend series at Wong Stadium that starts at 6 p.m. Thursday against Holy Names, “I know our situation and I know all the teams we play had 10 games or so to get ready before the season, so you have to consider all of that.”
The school always plays fewer preseason games for financial reasons, meaning most of the issues other Hawaii schools and other Pacific West Conference opponents work out in their early games are issues the Vulcans work out in conference play.
This year has been a good example of the dilemma faced by the UHH baseball team.
The Vulcans recently completed an 0-8 trip to California that dropped their record to 3-13, and 3-11 in conference play. The opponents on the trip, Concordia (12-15), and Azusa Pacific (23-3), have played 11 and 10 more games than UHH, respectively. Holy Names, 3-13 in conference and 6-23 this season, has played 13 more games, but the Hawks are sitting at the bottom of the conference, one game below Hawaii Hilo.
These four games should provide the opportunity for the Vulcans to create some separation between themselves and Holy Names with whom they find themselves uncomfortably similar.
In the 10-team conference, UHH ranks ninth in hitting (.228) and the Hawks are 10th (.209); those places are almost the same in pitching statistics where UHH is eighth, with a staff earned run average of 5.48, while Holy Names is 10th, with a bulging 8.18 ERA.
What concerns Miyataki most is the fielding stats. The Vulcans have committed 29 errors in their 14 conference games, which is not what he sees in practice.
“If you watch us practice, we’re super,” he said, “we make all the plays and then we get in games and something happens. It’s a mental thing, it’s a matter of self confidence, it’s a case where they have to believe in themselves.”
Miyataki said his players aren’t falling apart throughout the game, but have made mistakes at the exact wrong time.
“If we went back through it and replayed the errors and when they happened, I think we’d have seven or eight wins by now,” he said, “maybe more.”
The recent trip — or at least the first four games at Concordia when the Vulcans dropped the first three by scores of 2-0, 3-2 and 4-3 — provided a glimpse at his concerns. In the 3-2 loss to the Eagles Concordia benefitted from an error that provided the difference in the game. In the 4-3 loss, the Vulcans had two errors and two unearned runs, again, the difference in the game.
“Most of these games we’ve lost we could have won without the errors,” Miyataki said, “and I’m not talking about tough plays, I’m saying if we just make the routine plays, we win a few more games.”
It has been especially galling considering the work being done in the early season by junior first baseman Phil Steering who is seventh in conference play and first in overall games among PWC players with a .440 batting average and .660 slugging percentage, based on a 22-for-50 start at the plate.
Notes: The series continues Friday at 6 p.m., with a Saturday noon doubleheader, all at Wong … . Holy Names is coming off a four-game split at Hawaii Pacific, winning the middle two games. UHH lost three of four to HPU at home after just two preseason games… . Chris Gnos, a senior third baseman, leads the Hawks with a .330 batting average, first baseman Nick Snyder, also a senior, tops HNU with 15 RBI.