{"id":86,"date":"2021-01-28T00:55:51","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T00:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/?p=86"},"modified":"2021-01-28T00:55:51","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T00:55:51","slug":"busy-offseason-driving-season-8-optimism-for-garveys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/2021\/01\/28\/busy-offseason-driving-season-8-optimism-for-garveys\/","title":{"rendered":"Busy Offseason Driving Season 8 Optimism for Garveys"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Charm Plankovich November 28, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n

After a tough loss to end a tough Season 7, the Garveys are looking to bounce back in Season 8 with a playoff-ready team for game 1 against the Spiky Dudes. While finishing with a sub .500 record in Season 7, the Garveys felt that they could have been a lot better if their offense had picked up the slack. \u201cI can\u2019t really explain it\u201d said Garveys manager Steve Garvey, \u201cwe had all the pieces we needed in all the right places. We had big bats, but they just weren\u2019t hitting the ball very hard, you know, slow rollers and pop ups, they weren\u2019t driving it into the gaps and definitely not over the fence.\u201d Garvey is right. The team batted a franchise-worst .205 in Season 7 and were below .200 for the first half of the season. After firing pitching\/hitting coach Tom Niedenfeur after game 3 and bringing is the much-feared Kirk Gibson to ignite their bats, Garvey felt that would be the spark they needed. While averages increased, it wasn\u2019t nearly enough. \u201cI was really counting on Gibby to shape these guys up, but even he<\/em> couldn\u2019t do it. He came up to me after game 7 and told me they were all \u2018pathetic\u2019 and that they \u2018couldn\u2019t hit a basketball if he lobbed it to them\u2019 . And sadly, he was right we tried it with Almora and LoCain, we lobbed them basketballs for 45 minutes in the gym before game 8, not one solid contact from them. That\u2019s when Gibby walked out of the gym\u201d continued Garvey \u201cI haven\u2019t seen him or heard from him since.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhile I was ready to let Cain go after the season, he reached out and told me he\u2019s been working on his approach in the offseason and wants to make the Garveys champions again\u201d said Steve. We reached out to Lorenzo earlier this week to check up on his progress. \u201cOh man\u201d said Cain \u201cI\u2019m so pumped that Steve is givin\u2019 me another shot. I\u2019ve been hittin\u2019 the gym every day man. First thing I do when I get there is hit basketballs for an hour\u2026every morning man! The first time I connected, it was like the third or fourth morning, it was like \u2018BAM\u2019 and that thing went halfway across the gym man! Powerful!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lorenzo Cain after popping out\u2026 LoCain batted a paltry .150 for the Garveys last season<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to brining back Cain, Steve made sure that Haniger would be a Season 8 Garvey. \u201cWe called up Haniger during our final game, which was game 13 with the Hams. You know Haniger, he\u2019s just\u2026different, and he\u2019s going to be a key part of our new offense\u201d finished Garvey. In fact, Mr. Garvey has been traveling non-stop across the country talking with free agents and players on the market. \u201cWe really needed an offensive re-boot\u201d said Steve \u201cthat was my focus, so I talked with Garv (Mitch Garver) who was a big part of our championship teams and a solid backstop and he was like \u2018oh yeah!\u2019. I\u2019ve had my eye on a lot of players including Wis, T-Wizzle, and Up\u2026not to mention the \u2018G-Force\u2019 as they\u2019ve been calling themselves\u2026Gurriel and Gordon at first and second, and I see this lineup, and see these guys driving the ball, and I say to myself\u2026.good job Steve, good job\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Garveys start Season 8 at Spiky playing the Dudes.<\/p>\n

Charm Plankovich has been a reporter for BatBreaker since 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charm Plankovich November 28, 2020 After a tough loss to end a tough Season 7, the Garveys are looking to bounce back in Season 8 with a playoff-ready team for game 1 against the Spiky Dudes. While finishing with a sub .500 record in Season 7, the Garveys felt that they could have been… Continue reading Busy Offseason Driving Season 8 Optimism for Garveys<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batbreaker.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}