Think of it as extended spring training

If practice makes perfect, most Lake County baseball coaches are going to have to abandon their visions of perfection for their teams. At least temporarily.

The relentless cycles of cold and rainy (and sometimes snowy) weather of the early spring have wreaked havoc on the practice schedules of teams in this area.

At the very beginning of the season, teams were forced inside to take shelter from the elements. Meanwhile, games were being canceled left and right.

Now, as the conditions start to improve slightly, teams are having to play catch-up with their schedules, which means playing as many as six to seven games a week in some cases.

All that has left very little time for practice -- outdoors, anyway.

Sure, on rainy days when games are called, teams can practice inside. But, as any baseball coach will attest, that's nowhere near the same as practicing outside on a real baseball field.

Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca, for one, is at his wit's end.

It is now more than a month into the season and his team has yet to practice on its own field. Not even once.

"It's crazy," Mazzuca said. "I mean, at this point, there are still (personnel) questions I have about my own team because you can't see what you need to see by (practicing) inside."

Other teams are in the same boat. Both Warren and Grayslake North have had only one practice on their fields so far this season. And at Warren, the Blue Devils were able to use only the outfield.

"We just put the bases in the outfield," Warren coach Clint Smothers laughed. "It's not (ideal). But you can't really use (the infield). We have to work so hard on the field just to play games on it. I spent probably about four to six hours the last two Sundays working on our field just to get it ready to play games on. It's been very difficult this year."

And as hard as it's been to get their fields in shape, coaches are finding it just as hard to get their players in top form. With so little authentic practice time, teaching time is not what it should be at this point in the season.

"It's been difficult," Grayslake North coach Andy Strahan said. "I'm not trying to make excuses or anything, but I would think that part of the reason we don't always look all that crisp is that we just haven't had that time on the field to practice things."

Racking up runs: No wonder Stevenson has gone 4-1 in its last five games.

The Patriots have been on a scoring binge lately.

Over the last two weeks, they've reached double figures in runs in three games -- 13 runs against Grant, 21 against Round Lake and 11 against Hersey. All three games, not surprisingly, were wins for Stevenson.

"We've been swinging the bats real well," Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca said. "It's a lot different from the way we started the season. We weren't hitting. We knew early on that we would have pretty good pitching and now, it's nice to see that our hitting is coming along, too."

The Patriots have been getting solid efforts at the plate from seniors Dan Morales and Matt Goll, both of whom are hitting better than .400 and getting around 2 hits per game.

"I think we're hitting our stride now," Mazzuca said. "For whatever reason, we weren't clicking as a team at the beginning of the year. But everything is really starting to come together."

Word of caution: Carmel was the one team in recent weeks that was able to gum up Stevenson's well-oiled scoring machine.

On Monday, Carmel defeated Stevenson 3-0 and allowed only 4 hits.

"I hope what we learned from that Carmel game is that even though we have the potential to score a lot of runs, we're not going to score 11 runs every game," Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca said. "Especially when we're facing tough pitching, we're going to have to learn how to manufacture runs."

Robin's eggs: In his last two starts, Stevenson pitcher Matt Robin has put up a couple of goose eggs. The good kind.

Robin didn't give up a hit in a four-inning effort against Round Lake and then turned around and did the same thing in a five-inning complete game performance against Hersey.

Stevenson got the victory in that game, 11-0.

The Round Lake game, which Stevenson won 21-0, also went just five innings. Had the coaches kept him in for the final inning, Robin would be sitting on two consecutive no-hitters right now.

"I know, that's true," Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca chuckled sheepishly. "But Matt is great. He does whatever we ask him to. He's still thrown nine straight innings of no-hit baseball and that's pretty good."

Robin, who is just a junior, was moved up to the varsity at the end of last season. In his first start, he got a 1-0 loss to Lockport, which is nothing to sneeze at considering Lockport is one of the best programs in the state.

"We saw a lot of potential in Matt last year so we projected him pretty high this year," Mazzuca said. "So far, he's been right there. He's a lefty and he hides the ball really well and he can throw to both sides of the plate. He's also able to locate his fastball really well."

Rally cry: Grayslake North's big victory over Vernon Hills on Tuesday was a microcosm of its season so far.

The Knights won the game 8-7, but were scoreless through five innings. They scored 4 runs in the top of the sixth inning and 4 runs in the top of the seventh inning to pull out the come-from-behind victory.

"We've put ourselves in some holes this year, that's for sure," Grayslake North coach Andy Strahan said. "We've been fortunate to be able to battle from behind and put ourselves in a position to win a few of those games."

As of Tuesday, the Knights were 3-3 on the season and had scored a bundle of late runs in four of the six games. For instance, they beat Richmond-Burton by producing the winning run in the seventh inning.

"You don't like it when we fall behind, but you also have to like the way the kids come back," Strahan said. "Every game, we've continued to battle."

The Knights would be much less effective during their rallies without the consistent play of Jimmy Butler, Clay Henricksen and Stephan Kalina, all of whom are hitting better than .400.

Butler has been especially tough. He's hitting .529 and has rolled up 9 hits and 9 RBI in only 17 at-bats.

What a relief: How do you spell relief? At Grayslake North, it's D-E-N-I-K-A-S. As in Jason Denikas.

The senior relief pitcher has been rock solid coming out of the bullpen. In three appearances and 5½ innings of service, he's given up only 1 earned run.

"Jason has proven that he's really, really good in short bursts like that," Grayslake North coach Andy Strahan said. "He's a kid that really didn't get any innings on varsity last year but he worked so hard and now he's put himself in position to be one of our first guys out of the bullpen."

Strahan said that he's also gotten some solid pitching out of fellow reliever Nate Sousa, who hasn't allowed an earned run in three appearances.

Starter Jordan Field, the team's ace, has also been tough thus far.

That hurts: The left side of Warren's infield isn't in the best of shape right now.

Both third baseman Chad Johnson and shortstop Ryan Economos are nursing nagging, painful injuries.

Johnson hurt his back while swinging at a pitch, and Economos pulled his hamstring while running the bases.

The two have continued to play, but aren't close to being at full strength. Warren coach Clint Smothers estimated Johnson was at about 60 percent to 70 percent and Economos was only at 50 percent.

"Both of those guys have been struggling a bit lately," Smothers said. "But both of them are so competitive and they want to play so much. They want to be out there and you want to keep kids like that on the field. You just wish they were healthy."

A healthy Johnson, for instance, brings a lot to the table. During Warren's Spring Break trip, he was hitting .575 with 2 home runs and 9 RBI over just five games.

"Chad started out the season on fire," Smothers said. "So it would be hard to give (that kind of potential) up (and take him out of the lineup)."

Smothers will occasionally give Economos a break by pinch-running for him. And he has occasionally used a sub at third for Johnson, but mostly when Johnson is pitching.

"Tony Roberts has really done a nice job of stepping up at third base for Chad," Smothers said. "Chad is our No. 2 or No. 3 pitcher so we need someone to play well there (at third base) so that he can do some pitching for us."

Nice surprise: Warren coach Clint Smothers didn't see this coming.

Junior infielder Pat Walters is leading the team in hitting with a .500-plus batting average.

"He's been such a nice surprise," Smothers said of Walters. "I didn't see him starting this year, and now we can't take him out of the lineup. He's doing a great job of 'D-Hing' and of playing first base for us. I think he's just worked hard, and he really seems to love the game. He's the first one out on the field on Saturdays to help work on it. He just loves baseball."

Nice surprise 2: One look at batting practice on Tuesday and Warren coach Clint Smothers knew that he had to make a lineup change.

Ryan Brown needed a spot.

"I wasn't even going to start him, but then I'm watching 'BP' with my assistant coaches and Ryan was hitting the ball great," Smothers said. "He was hitting the cover off the ball and he wound up having a great day."

Brown went 1-for-3 in a 7-5 victory over Lake Forest with a double and an RBI. He also scored 2 runs, including the game-winner.

Lefties are right: Clearly, left-handers aren't as common as right-handers.

But the fact that Mark Tschappat, in his three years as head coach at Lakes, has never had a left-handed player until this year seems a bit unusual.

In fact, this year he's practically got a deluge of them. He's got two.

And they're both playing very well.

Sophomore Travis VanderWall is hitting .600 in the 3-spot while junior Eric Lopez has also found his way into the starting lineup.

"I really like having left-handed hitters in the lineup," Tschappat said. "You kind of change a pitcher's focus with left-handers. They aren't used to pitching to left-handers.

"I remember a few years back when I think Cary-Grove had like seven lefties in their lineup. You don't see anything like that very often and I'm sure that was very different to prepare for. But even one or two lefties in a lineup can change things for a pitcher and really make him think twice."

Tschappat didn't have to think twice about whether or not to promote the young VanderWall to varsity.

"He's probably one of the smoothest, most polished hitters I've ever seen," Tschappat said. "He's got a lot of power, but I've been really impressed with how he doesn't try to muscle up and pull everything. He's able to go the other way really well, too. I think he's got a lot of potential."

Super stat: No wonder Lakes coach Mark Tschappat is so optimistic about his team.

The Eagles are 4-5 but are light years ahead of where they were last year.

At this point in the season last year, Lakes had committed 30 errors. This year, they have only 15 errors so far.

"That makes a big difference, cutting those errors down by half," Tschappat said. "We're still making errors, but not in the bunches that we used to. I feel really good about the direction we're headed."