Bandits to open American Legion State Tournament against Post 22

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The Bandits are heading back to the American Legion State Class A Baseball Tournament.

Brookings squares off against perennial power Rapid City Post 22 at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Hyde Park in Pierre.

Mitchell and Brandon Valley open tournament play at 10 a.m., followed by Sioux Falls East against Renner, 30 minutes after Game 1

Host Pierre takes on Yankton in the final game of the day, 30 minutes after the Bandits and Hard Hats finish play.

As for opening play against a squad that is normally considered to be the team to beat, Brookings head coach Rob Hirrschoff is looking at the positives.

“From what I’ve gathered, and it hasn’t been too in depth, they’re pretty similar to what a Post 22 team is (normally) – one of the favorites, if not the favorite – you know they are going to be fundamentally sound; you know they are going to have a pretty deep pitching staff, which usually gives them an advantage as they get later in the tournament – maybe not so much now since they are seven-inning games instead of nine – that’s where they always seemed to have that advantage in bringing that guy out of the bullpen for the last innings who is maybe their fourth or fifth guy, or maybe a Friday or Saturday guy that is maybe a little bit better,” said Hirrschoff. “You know they are always good; they are always fundamentally sound; good athletes with 60-some games in, so they definitely have gotten their repetitions in.

“You know the state champion is probably always going to have to deal with Post 22, so as far as our team is concerned, I would rather have Jameson (Meyer) on the mound. He’s given us a good effort every time out and that’s all we ask of our pitchers – give us a chance to win – and he’s done that and a couple of times he’s done that and more.

“We play really good defense behind him, so like I said, if we’re going to have to deal with Post 22, I would just as soon it be in the first round when we have a veteran presence out there on the mound and he’s done a really good job this year, so we’re going to go out there, give Jameson the ball and hope good things happen.”

The Bandits, 10-20 on the season, didn’t look like a state-tournament team earlier in the summer, especially since the makeup of Legion team was essentially the Bobcat varsity team that posted a 5-13 mark during the Spring season.

“It’s got to be your goal to win the last game of the season, but at the same time, you have to look where you’re at and maybe start with a little more attainable goals, especially with a young team that struggled a little bit in the Spring and had a tough season weather-wise,” Hirrschoff said. “We focused more on competing and making incremental improvements – if you look at the season and how it broke down, we got off to a tough start losing our first seven.

“Then the next stretch, we were getting really close – we had a lot of close losses where we were one play away. We finally broke through in the Renner tournament and got a win at Harrisburg against a Fargo team – after that, we went on a little bit of a streak which I think built our confidence.

“The last couple of weeks, we were up and down – just a little bit inconsistent pitching-wise – but that was the biggest thing and I was happy with that. We saw incremental improvement and I was viewing the entire season as a whole – a chance to improve and hopefully be ready to compete with those teams in the region tournament and get a berth in the state tournament.

“I just wanted to take it one game at a time, compete and get better – in my head, that was where I wanted this all to culminate – at the region tournament.”

And Hirrschoff did point out that success, or lack of it, in the Spring doesn’t necessarily predict your Legion season.

“The biggest thing is that in the summer, you get to be outside every day; you can get into a little bit of a routine – get your repetitions in and count on playing every day,” he said. “It’s sporadic in the Spring, and this year was exceptionally bad.

“That was part of it, too, us being young and not having a lot of chances to get repetitions in – that was probably part of the reason for our slow start (in American Legion play). End of June, beginning of July, you want to hit that stride where you should be in mid-season form, trying to play consistent ball through there until the postseason starts, and I think, for the most part, we did do that.”

But there are still things that the Bandits will need to do better to compete – and win – at the state tournament, according to Hirrschoff.

“The biggest thing is to eliminate is free passes – what I consider free passes are walks, hit batters, wild pitches and passed balls,” he said. “In the games that we’ve struggled – and you saw that in the championship game against Renner – too many free bases or free passes, –‘freebies’ – that being first and foremost.

“One thing that we did in the region tournament a lot better than we did throughout the regular season was hit with a little bit of power – I think we probably had close to 10 extra-base hits in those four games in the region tournament – where we didn’t hit for a lot of power throughout the course of the regular season,” said Hirrschoff. “And the biggest thing with that, is it gives you a little bit more of a margin for error, where you don’t have to get three singles to score a guy. You can get away with a mistake here or there in the field where all of a sudden the next inning you have runners on first and second and you hit one to the wall – it just gives you a little more margin for error.

“I think those are two keys for us in the tournament – playing good defense and minimizing the number of free bases and continue to hit the ball hard and hopefully, get a few extra-base hits, because it gives you a little bit more margin for error as far as not feeling like you have to play a perfect game as far as pitching and defense.”

Register file photo: Jameson Meyer, shown pitching against the Aberdeen Smitty’s on July 2, will get the starting nod in the Bandits’ opening game of the 2018 American Legion Class A State Tournament game against Rapid City Post 22 on Wednesday at Hyde Park in Pierre.