Big Week For North

My opinion here...and YES I admit I AM biased.....Nashua North looks like the team to beat so far. But.....this week (rain permitting) will say a lot about this team. If they play well in all three of their games against Pinkerton, Central and BG and win at least 2 of 3 that should establish them as the heavy favorite come tourney time. These are very tough teams so hopefully they will continue to play well. Now is not the time for this team to hit a wall.

I would agree with North as the favorite. They don't seem to score a ton of runs but they play good solid baseball on defense. With Turner followed by Mellin I think that is the best one two pitching punch I have seen in D1 this year. I have not seen Poore pitch this year.

But, I think there are five or six teams that could beat North in a playoff game if they play their best.

bb603 wrote:I would agree with North as the favorite. They don't seem to score a ton of runs but they play good solid baseball on defense. With Turner followed by Mellin I think that is the best one two pitching punch I have seen in D1 this year. I have not seen Poore pitch this year.

But, I think there are five or six teams that could beat North in a playoff game if they play their best.

For two weeks now it seems like North has been in a tough spot. Last week it was the 5-game week and they came out of that better than I expected given the teams we had to play. There's not letdown this 4-game week as all the teams we're playing are above 0.500. I hope that Concord game was all about Friday the 13th and nothing else!

The other challenge this week is the weather. Our meteorologist, GNG, predicted a week of rain and he's been right. There's an outside shot today's game will be played. We have Central tomorrow, BG Thursday, and Andover on Saturday.

Mellin should be back now and should seem some innings this week. This will definitely help. Look for Root and Lipkind to continue the heavy lifting this week too. Knowing that we'll be seeing everyone's #1s or #2s, it's critical for the defense to get back on track and for the hitting to be timely. North did hit well against Concord. 7 runs is typically enough to win a game, 9 errors isn't!

As far as teams to beat are concerned, I think all the teams in the top 5 or 6 are the teams to beat. There's really not a lot of separation between these teams and with a single-elimination playoff format, nothing is guaranteed.

What are the other key D1 match-ups this week? I know Merrimack has Winnacunnet and South this week. Both of those games should be very good to watch.