1 week to go

The 2009 summer is just around the corner as the players are scheduled to report for the first team meeting next Monday, May 25th. With the season opener being played on Wednesday, May 27th, you can see that there is not much time to practice together as a team. Each of these college kids have played a 40-50 game college schedule on top of practicing for many weeks in the fall. At this level, there is not a whole lot of re-teaching. These guys have all been the best players on every team they have played on growing up and the couple days we have with them will be primarily review.

After we meet Monday, position players will take a light round of BP (batting practice) with infielders getting a few ground balls while this is going on. Pitchers that aren’t schedule to throw in the first or second game will throw 20-30 pitches in the bullpen with most of this work just being to get the kinks out.

Tuesday will be a little more intense with a morning practice and an inter-squad game later in the evening. College baseball games tend to be mainly day games, where the majority of CPL games are played at night “under the lights”. The morning practice will consist of PFP’s (pitchers fielding practice), bunt defenses and 1st and third defenses. We will also take an extended round of infield/outfield as well as a long BP round. We have a meet and greet schedule at Old Towne Catering that night for players to meet sponsors, host families and booster and then we come back for the inter-squad.

The inter-squad will be fun to watch with every player doing everything they can to impress coaches, as well as their new team mates. At this point, the pitching is always ahead of the hitting. Keep in mind that most hitters will be hitting with a wood bat for the first time and it’s quite an adjustment from the aluminum rocket launcher they are used to.

Once the season gets going on Wednesday, the amount to team practice shrinks to about zero as we have games either home or away most every day. When there is an off day players will have the option of getting some extra BP but most use that time to rest, play golf, spend time with family, etc.

The staff of the Generals have been working many hours lately and are using this week to finish preparations for the players reporting next week, speaking daily with players and coaches, making a final push for sponsors, securing and finalizing host families, painting the town red with Generals poster schedules, getting tickets to sponsors and on and on. A big year is on tap with this being our decade anniversary in the CPL, including double the amount of firework dates (every FRI game, 6 total), a reading program with over 5,000 area youths participating, a never too early to learn camp for 4,5 and 6 year olds and many game day specials including Faith Night, Non-profit Night, Little League Tuesdays, Thirsty Thursday (adult beverages being 2 for 1), Firework Fridays and Soldier Saturdays (military appreciation).

Baseball Stat To Know:
OPS: on-base plus slugging…this is the best way to gauge a players true offensive production…you add a players on base percentage and slugging percentage…you get slugging percentage by dividing total bases by official at-bats (all AB’s except walks, hit by pitch or sacrifices)…you get on base percentage by dividing by you reach base safely by total AB’s…reaching base safely includes hits, walks and hit by pitches…. reaching due to error or fielders choice

Welcome to the Blog

With the professional baseball season in full swing and the college season finishing up, the Generals are a mere 1 month away from reporting to Petersburg, VA for what will be the Generals 10th season in the Coastal Plain League.

Our blog will contain information relating to this special 10th season, including, roster updates, games scores and story lines, CPL news, Generals in the community and we will occasionally venture into other sport stories (primarily baseball).

For those of you who stumbled across this blog and are not familiar with summer college baseball, I will try to give you some insight. Most college baseball players that have aspirations to play professional baseball have to continue playing throughout the summer, even after their college seasons come to a close. The biggest and most important difference between these summer leagues and the college ranks is the summer leagues utilize the same tools as MLB players: wood bats.

Some people, myself included, feel like the summer wood bat seasons are almost as important to a player’s career as their individual college seasons. Predicting a prospects true power is sometimes difficult if you have only seen him hit with an aluminum bat which makes it extremely important to play in a competitive summer wood bat league.

When the Generals entered the CPL in 2000 there were only a handful of good summer wood bat leagues including: the Cape Cod League (generally ranked as the best college league), the Alaska League (the Cape Cod of the West) and the Valley League in Virginia has been around for many years as well. Now you have well over 20 summer college leagues stretched all across the United States.

I have been involved with summer college wood bat baseball since 2000 and have seen many great players come through the Coastal Plain League, including, Ryan Zimmerman (Nationals) and Justin Verlander (Tigers). I have watched the leagues MLB alumni list grow each year, as these players have no doubt left an imprint in one of the 14 CPL communities.

As for the Generals we are excited about many programs initiated for the ’09 summer, including, the Home Run Reading Challenge, First Petersburg Generals Golf Tournament, added an American Legion program with 11 more home games, added Firework Friday to the schedule which will feature fireworks at every Friday home game and Generals President Larry Toombs is writing a book that will highlight the history of baseball in the Petersburg-area.

Keep checking the blog and I will try to update at least weekly but maybe more. You can email comments, thoughts, etc to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . To find out more information about the CPL visit their website at www.coastalplain.com.

College Baseball Name to Know:

Steven Strasburg – RHP – San Diego State
*most people have already heard of him as he played with team USA in the summer Olympics as the only college player….just peek at his stats and you will see why he is hands down the #1 draft pick this June….routinely throws 100

Jeremy Toombs

GM, Petersburg Generals

From CBS News Sources

The LSU Tigers are predicted to win the 2009 Southeastern Conference baseball championship, as voted by the league’s 12 baseball coaches in the 18th annual preseason SEC poll.

The Tigers, ranked as high as No. 1 nationally in multiple preseason polls, seek to capture their league-leading 14th SEC Championship and first since 2003. LSU returns 14 position players with starting experience and ten pitchers from their 2008 squad which won the SEC Western Division, the SEC Tournament and advanced to the NCAA College World Series.

Since 1996, the SEC has named a regular season champion as well as a tournament champion. Prior to 1996, the tournament champion was considered the SEC Champion.

In the overall SEC Champion vote, LSU received ten of a possible 11 votes. Ole Miss and Georgia also received one vote each.

In addition to picking a preseason SEC champion, the league’s head coaches voted a predicted order of finish in the SEC Eastern and Western Divisions. In the Eastern Division, Georgia was the favorite with 62 of a possible 66 points. Florida came in second with 52 points and Vanderbilt third with 40 points. LSU was favorite in the Western Division with a total of 65 points. Ole Miss was second with 54, while Alabama finished third 44.

Points were compiled on a 6-5-4-3-2-1 basis for each division. Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own team. Each coach also voted for one team as an overall conference champion.

The 2009 season gets underway this Friday, February 20. The conference schedule is set to begin the weekend of March 13-15. The 2009 SEC Tournament will be held May 20-24 at the newly refurbished Regions Park in Hoover, Ala. The SEC Tournament has drawn over 100,000 fans five of the last seven years. Over 1.6 million fans attended games in the SEC last season, the seventh year in a row the SEC has topped the one million mark in attendance, leading the nation once again in that category. Additionally, LSU and South Carolina will both unveil new ballparks this season.

From CBS News Sources

“Everybody involved with the Challenge has pitched in to help us come up with a solution to this situation under very trying, last-minute circumstances,” said Kevin Smith, Director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Sports Commission. “Unfortunately, the field at Progress Energy Park was damaged and deemed unplayable following a Super Bowl event. The grounds crew worked hard to get the field ready, but at some point with 18 NCAA Division I baseball teams making final preparations for the event, we had to make a decision to look elsewhere. That’s when the folks in Bradenton and at USF and Jack Russell really came through for us. It was a trying week, but I think we came up with a solution that will make everyone happy.”

The BIG EAST-Big Ten Baseball Challenge will take place at facilities in the St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Bradenton, Dunedin and Tampa Bay areas from Feb. 20-22. All 10 of the Big Ten’s baseball-playing institutions will compete in the inaugural event, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State and Purdue. Eight BIG EAST representatives will participate, including South Florida, Connecticut, Georgetown, St. John’s, Seton Hall, West Virginia, Cincinnati and Notre Dame.