DeRoche Tries to Hit it in the Bay
I guess it's technically a cove
Let's start with the Game of the Day between Falmouth and Yarmouth in boys lax. Falmouth got off to a 5-1 start after 1 and led 8-3 in the third on the way to an 11-7 win.
Michael Hoffer was there.
Michael Hoffer
Saturday, I had just barely enough time after a 5K to get to Portland for the Marshwood @ Cheverus softball game and my first in-person look at Addison DeRoche (I know, I know).
It was also my first time at a Cheverus game that wasn't in the gym and while I guess I understood the layout, I was surprised at the view. It's a nice spot!
DeRoche gave up a single in the first and you've never seen someone so excited to hit a 2-out bloop single in the first inning of a regular season game. Then, after taking a pitch to the helmet in the bottom of the first, DeRoche settled down. She struck out 7 straight and homered in her second at bat.
She was as dominant as you'd expect. I'm not sure how anyone gets a bat on that fastball when she's pumping it in there, much less makes solid contact. She gave up a hit to Laurali Shisler to lead off the 4th and then struck out the next 8 straight. The Cheverus offense in three different innings loaded the bases with zero outs, only to have little to show for it as Marshwood 4 times made a play at the plate to prevent a run. But it wasn't enough. Cheverus won by mercy rule, 10-0 in 6 to improve to 13-0. DeRoche finished with 16K against 2 hits.
Elsewhere
Ben Robbins' 2-run single was the winner for Falmouth over Bonny Eagle...Hudson Iacuessa struck out 12 in the first 7 innings and SoPo erupted for 5 runs in the 10th to outlast Scarborough...Lewiston's Harley Gasser struck out 10 in a 2-hit shutout of Hampden...OOB's Hannah Webber notched her 200th strikeout in the first game of a doubleheader split with Mount View...Haley Hamlin had 5 RBIs and 8Ks in Lake Region's win over Wells...Brewer's Sara Young shutout Edward Little on 3 hits....Medomak's Arianna Sproul picked up her 100th hit in a win over Erskine.
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One of the long-range goals of the spring sports season for yours truly has been to 1) revamp the website and 2) rethink the ways that we can do live stats. The first has gone pretty well, although you might notice that I've moved everything from the app.mainebasketballrankings subdomain back into the normal structure as I found a way to embed the new stuff in the old system in a way that's more stable. If you've been having issues logging in or staying logged in, this should solve all of that. If you've been using the web app on your phone, there's been fewer issues. Anyway, both systems work and I'd like to still work toward making a full-on iPhone/Android app--like a real one in the app store--but it was causing problems on the website and yadda yadda yadda it should work better now.
The live stats has been an even more complicated project this spring as I work toward a live stats app that talks to everything else and will make for a much, much better live stats experience during the tourney. The baseball/softball version, which I thought would be much easier to build, has finally turned a corner where it has passed a couple tests in a row without screwing up. I think this is version 11?
I've been doing the baseball version as a stress test in anticipation of basketball, but also because GameChanger sucks and it shouldn't cost $10/month just to see a box score. That's insane.
So if you're interested in trying out the live scorer, I wrote up a primer.
I'm going to throw another test at it today, weather permitting.
Lucas McNelly
The All-NBA teams are out. Jaylen Brown made the second team (and just missed the first team) and Cooper Flagg got a single third place vote from a very wise member of the voting body. I haven't yet seen who that was.
Havlicek Stole the Pod
Maine Public has added the Lobster Bowl to their live sports offerings.
Staff, Piscataquis Observer
Graham Platner, who I'm sure you have an opinion on already, put out a new ad criticizing the Red Sox ownership for being terrible billionaires. We won't get into the politics of it all here, even though he's right. They're terrible billionaires. Just the worst. Sell the team. What's interesting is that NESN pulled the ad in the middle of a game.
Callie Ferguson
NESN, which is owned by the Red Sox, said the ad "included unauthorized use of third-party intellectual property and did not comply with NESN’s advertising standards", which is the sort of thing you say when your boss makes you do something.
I've watched the ad a couple of times and while there's some very quick shots of Fenway and certain parts of the park are covered under copyright and trademark law (like the shade of green on the Monster), the architecture of the park itself is in the public domain (because it's so old).
The obvious culprit is the font Platner uses in the ad, which based on a Google search is very likely the free BoSox font. That's the first thing that comes up on Google. It's a free font without any restrictions listed I can find. And that's almost definitely what a campaign staffer would use for this ad. The first Google result is a lookalike font that's free with no copyright restrictions on DaFont? Perfect. Use that, intern.
If you rotate the R in the Red Sox logo and put it next to the font in Platner's ad, there's clear differences. I'm no copyright lawyer, but that looks like a different font to me.
It's also worth noting that there's no small number of people outside Fenway selling t-shirts and other such merch with this exact font and John Henry and company are perfectly happy to let them do it.
This is less about the Red Sox protecting their Intellectual Property and more about silencing criticism of their ownership, even if that ownership sucks, which it does.
I also miss Mookie Betts.
One of the great innovations of the data revolution is that we can finally get real answers to previously unknown things like, "does the 2-time MVP fall down too much or do people just think he's a flopper?" In the olden days, we had no way of knowing such things. All we could do is argue about them endlessly in bars. Eventually we moved on to forums and the comment sections of blogs and then Twitter before Elon ruined it.
But Tom Haberstroh has done the work.
This is some really important journalism and worth your time.
Tom Haberstroh
With the holiday, today is a light schedule and the rain promises to knock some of it out, but we've got a pretty interesting lax matchup.
The Erskine boys are 8-3 and fifth in the state in scoring differential (+72), but they've only played 2 games against the Top 25, splitting with #15 Morse. They've faced the easiest schedule in the state and it isn't even that close.
As for Maranacook, they're 5-5 with a profile that says they're probably a 6-4 team (they're 1-1 in close games) and while they don't have a best schedule, they have as 12-3 win over a winless Oak Hill team Erskine beat twice (9-5 and 7-4).
But if you just glance at it, 8-3 Erskine has to be better than 5-5 Maranacook, right? Not necessarily. Paula Roberts of the Lincoln County News tells a story of when she coached Lincoln Academy's field hockey team and had to call the entire team to inform them that despite their record (something like 11-3), they had missed the tournament because there just weren't any Heal Points in their wins. These things can happen in the smaller sports. Erskine has a chance to make their case today.
The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.