By Bob Fromer
Sant Boi, Spain: 23 July – The GB Women’s Team played two final warm-up games on Friday evening and Saturday morning before the start of the European Women’s Championship on Sunday, and registered a win over Germany on Friday but lost to Israel on Saturday.
These are valuable games for a team coming off a three-year hiatus due to Covid, allowing players to get used to playing together in a variety of situations and giving everyone on the roster time on the field against good opposition.
Both Germany and Israel are ranked among the top eight teams in the competition, as was the Spanish side that GB beat on Wednesday, so these games are decent tests for a GB Team with medal aspirations.
After the loss to Israel at the Olympic Softball Stadium at Montjuic in Barcelona on Saturday morning, Head Coach Rachael Watkeys told the team: “This was a game that showed us things we needed to know going forward. When the European Championship starts tomorrow [with games against Turkey and Ukraine], we need to come out hard and together as a team and win those games in the minimum number of innings so we can get on to the tournament proper. We will play better when we meet Israel again: we still have lots of gears we can go through.”
GB 6, Germany 2
Germany proved to be stubborn opposition in a game played on Friday evening in the main European Women’s Championship stadium in Sant Boi.
Germany took a 1-0 lead with an unearned run in the top of the first inning on a two-out throwing error, but GB tied the score in the bottom of the second inning,
Rebecca Faulkner led off by dropping a single into short right field that the German defense misplayed into a triple. Two strikeouts later, Rebecca was still on third base, but a two-strike double over the head of the German centre fielder by Jade Yerex brought Rebecca in to score.
That’s how things stayed until GB scored two more runs in the bottom of the fourth inning. Cameron McGinnis was hit by a pitch leading off the inning, Lauren Evans singled and Jade Yerex moved both runners up with a perfect sacrifice bunt. Cameron then scored on a German throwing error and Lauren on an infield ground ball by Aubrey Peterson on which the Germans failed to get an out.
That put GB up 3-1, but after four excellent innings from GB starter Rebecca Faulkner, Georgina Corrick came in to start the fifth inning and took a while to find her rhythm, giving up a run on a single by Fiona Brosch and a double that landed just inside the left field line hit by veteran German shortstop Katharina Szalay.
That cut GB’s lead to 3-2, but Georgina struck out four of the seven batters she faced over the final two innings and GB finally put the game to bed with three runs in the bottom of the sixth.
With two out and no one on in the sixth, the GB offense finally came to life. Tia Warsop and Katie Burge beat out infield singles and both scampered home on a long double to the fence in left centre field hit by Georgina Corrick. Kendyl Scott then reached on an error, and a sharp single to left field by Amy Moore drove in the sixth and final GB run.
Rebecca Faulkner, in her first assignment as a starting pitcher for several years due to injuries and other circumstances, pitched a very strong first four innings. The run scored against her was unearned and Rebecca gave up just one hit and one walk, struck out two, and induced a lot of soft contact: not a single ball was hit out of the infield.
GB’s infield defense was unable to match the flawless performance turned in against Spain on Wednesday, but 11 ground balls off German bats were turned into outs.
Over the course of the first two warm-up matches against Spain and Germany, all four GB pitchers – Amie Hutchison, Kim Hobson, Rebecca Faulkner and Georgina Corrick – pitched approximately half a game each and the opposition scored just one earned run off the quartet on five hits.
Pitching and defense were excellent during those first two games and the offense put pressure on the opposition. But GB left 18 runners on base over the two games and the coaches will feel that more of those runners need to be cashed in.
“We need to make sure we keep our focus and intensity from the beginning of the game to the end,” Head Coach Rachael Watkeys told the team after the Germany game. “But after one time through the order, we made some good adjustments at the plate, and that eventually paid off.”
Things were a little bit different, however, when GB played Israel the following morning.
Israel 8, GB 3
This was a strange game and the perfect illustration of the old cliché that baseball and softball are games of inches.
Israel won the game on the back of a seven-run outburst in the top of the second inning against GB starter Kim Hobson, but if it had not been for a dropped third strike with two out that allowed Israeli outfielder Maddy Lewis to reach base, the inning would have been over with just one run scored.
Instead, Kim had to throw a lot more pitches, soon found the bases loaded, and gave up a grand slam home run to Ruby Salzman, plus another couple of runs on successive singles by Darby Rosen, Tal Evans and Arizona Ritchie. All of those six runs were unearned.
Instead of being down 1-0 after that inning, GB was down 7-0 – though it’s also true that the Israelis hit some balls hard.
Now GB was playing catch-up for the rest of the game against Israeli starter Sydney Evyn, who pitched the first five innings, and Ava Nicole, who pitched the last two, and it was catch-up from a long way behind.
Kim Hobson pitched two more innings in which Israel failed to score, though they did leave the bases loaded in the bottom of the third inning, so all in all, Kim kept the Israelis off the board in three of her four innings and was inches away – that dropped third strike – from giving up just a single run.
Kim gave up eight hits in those four innings plus a walk and two hit batters while striking out three.
Rebecca Faulkner pitched the last three innings for GB and gave up just a single run – Israel’s eighth – in the top of the seventh inning. However, Rebecca had some help from the fine arms in the GB outfield, as right fielder Jade Yerex cut down an Israeli runner at home in the sixth inning and centre fielder Kendyl Scott threw out a runner trying to go from first to third on the single by Aliya Jordan that drove in that last Israeli run in the top of the seventh.
A GB line-up that included a number of substitutions throughout the game had nine hits (Israel had 11), but struggled to string them together into enough runs to put real pressure on the opposition.
GB scored one run in the bottom of the second inning on a single to left centre field by Morgan Salmon, a walk to Jade Yerex, a single to left by Imogen Gie and a wild pitch.
But it wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth inning that GB managed to score again, with Morgan Salmon’s double to right centre field off Israeli reliever Ava Nicole driving in Kendyl Scott, who had singled, and Rebecca Faulkner, who had reached on a fielder’s choice.
GB had at least one baserunner in every inning but the third, and only four strikeouts, but just couldn’t mount a sustained attack.
Now for the real thing
On Sunday morning, the 2022 European Women's Championship starts in earnest. GB will be among 13 teams across four pools playing mini round-robins from which one team in each pool will join the eight top-seeded teams in the Championship rounds.
For GB to join the top teams from Pool C will require beating Turkey in a game that begins at 11.30 am Spanish time (10.30 am in the UK) and then beating Ukraine in a game that begins at 2.00 pm local time (1.00 pm in the UK), with both games at the Olympic complex in Barcelona where GB and Israel played today.
The report on those games that will be posted on the BSF website on Sunday evening will contain a full explanation of how the tournament format will proceed from there and why GB, which has not finished lower than fifth in a European Championship since 2001, is having to go through an entry round.
All GB games during the tournament will be webstreamed, and the broadcasts can be accessed on https://www.youtube.com/wbsceurope for free or on ESport Plus.