Hawk Baseball’s 2021 Update & CL by The Numbers!
Chase Anderson applying the tag while James LaLonde looks on in case the umpire misses his call. (photo from Connie Singleton)
Canyon Lake Baseball has finished their best regular season since play began 13 years ago with a 22 win campaign and a District 28-4A Championship under their belt.
Canyon City Grill says Go Hawks!
A season that was highly anticipated after a 12-2 start to last year’s season that was left at the train station when the Covid virus stopped every spring sport in it’s tracks.
There were several seniors on last year’s team that never had a chance to show what they could do as that team had a better fielding percentage and a pitching staff that had not allowed more than 3 runs during that shortened season compared to this season. Those stats might have gone down some if they would have played more contests.
One thing, that this year’s Hawk team has excelled in, has come from the batting box. A .316 team average with a very respectable .444 on base percentage was outstanding and this year’s club had an all-time best in a slugging percentage at .425 to top off this trifecta.
Scoring over 200 runs and finishing with 223 hits has topped any previous year regardless of the number of games each season had. This year’s Hawk team has a better stats over any other Hawk team has had in all those offensive categories.
However, as good as those offensive stats showed at the end of The Lake’s last game with Davenport, there was an 8 game stretch of getting runs was seen as gold. Scoring 12 runs during that stretch would average just 1.5 runs per contest.
Let’s Go Hawks!!
The good news was still being able to break even with 4 wins and losses. This group of games did have some excellent pitching by those opposing teams and all those schools made the playoffs.
Mathis and Sinton were champions of their districts while SA Johnson and East Central both finished second in their larger classification districts.
Canyon Lake’s batting started strong coming in with a .324 average in those first 13 battles before an 8 games stretch that had these Hawks showing a woeful .224 batting average.
CL has since had a robust .385 average to finish out those last 7 district games plus that one game with Llano that had your Hawks averaging over 11 runs per game.
Notable Hawk Players during those Stretches with Batting Averages. Hawk Record 10-3 4-4 8-0 22-7 First 13 Games 8 Game Swoon Last 8 Games Present Average Tyler Pauly .409 .211 .455 .376 Matthew McLain .423 .316 .563 .426 Tanner Schultz .417 .167 .429 .346 Hunter Anderson .375 .263 .304 .324 Chase Anderson .304 .500 .444 .414 Griffen Williams .393 .333 .320 .356
This is all to say that Canyon Lake enjoyed a healthy year but it did not come with a parade that did not have any marching band wanting to be behind those horses.
Let’s Go Hawks!
If not for the Hawk pitching, this would have been a much worse set of circumstances in regards to having a game record of 22-7.
Now, Canyon Lake will start their post-season preparations that will have a Hawk 1st seed playing a 4th seed later this week. The times and place have not been set as, at this writing, District 27-4A has 3 teams still not knowing where they will be standing after last week’s games were postponed due to weather.
A likely team would be Gonzales as Cuero won their first match-up, 14-1 but in baseball it is not the score as much as the pitcher that can control a game. So, an Apache win this week would probably have a 3 way tie and some juxtaposition taking place on how to untwine that knot.
Those 8 games of upheaval has been over a month ago and Canyon Lake will certainly meet up with some more good pitching but now the question would be which team will come from those 8 games of learning?
Hawk Proud!!
A team that has more confidence resulting in a better average but knowing it will probably not be at that .385 clip enjoyed during this winning streak. Or a team that could squeeze another one or two runs into the equation. That would be ideal as that scenario would have had CL with two more wins and a, 6-2 record during that same period..
Pitching will need to continue being a constant and CL’s fielding would want to be a tad better than their present, .934 average. Having baseball’s three aspects clicking would be ideal for a longer run than that 2010 team, that was ousted during the 2nd round 11 years ago.
Stay tuned, as The ReSporter, will update the Hawk Nation on this week’s contests when they become available.
There will be a pre-game article when that information is known and as always, Go Hawks!!
CANYON LAKE BASEBALL by the NUMBERS 2 Strikeouts for Chase Anderson in 80 plate appearances. 3 District 27-4A teams still uncertain for their seeding. 4 Hawk Batters are presently in the Top 10 Batting Averarge. (Based on 50 or more at bats) Matthew McLain, Tyler Pauly, Chase Anderson, James LaLonde 4.86 Average strikeouts per game for CL, the lowest average ever. 5 Hawk Pitchers have been added to the Top 10 in ERA in the past 2 years. (20 or more innings) Peyton McMullen, Tyler Pauly, Tanner Schultz, Hunter Anderson, Cale Claycomb 7 Homeruns for this season. (Griffen Williams has 3 of those dingers) 7.31 Average strikeouts an opponent will have per game against Hawk pitching. 9 Hawks with double digit hits this campaign for the most players in any given season ever. Tyler Pauly, Chase Anderson, Tanner Schultz, Matt McLain, Hunter Anderson, Griffen Williams, James LaLonde, Gunnar Walker, Jeremy Greene 19 Hawk players with a career batting ave. over .300 and 8 of them are on this year’s team. Tyler Pauly, Matt McLain, Chase Anderson, Griffen Williams, Hunter Anderson, James LaLonde, Brayden Welch, Gunnar Walker 37 More runs scored by CL in the 2nd inning this year. (42-5) 45 Doubles so far hit by the Hawks. (Tyler Pauly leads with 11)
