Softball is a game of extremes in May. The good teams are running scoreboards. The good pitchers are running ten strikeout games. And one game in Aroostook County this week somehow forgot how a regulation softball game is supposed to work and turned into a 13 to 12 sprint. Welcome back. We did not miss the snow either.
Here is what the week of May 4 through May 10 produced.
Cony hung twenty two runs on Oceanside on Thursday. Twenty two to zero. May 8. The exact kind of game where the late innings are mostly the second team players getting at bats while the starters watch from the bench and the coach does the calculus on who needs to come out before the run rule kicks in. Cony has been one of the loudest teams in the state through the early going and this week was loud even by Cony standards.
Lee Academy did the same thing to Shead, twenty three to one. Twenty four runs combined, twenty three of them in one direction. May 5. The kind of score that ends with the trailing team's coach asking the umpire to please check the time mercifully.
Then there was the pitchers' duel. Skowhegan 2, Bangor 1. May 5. One run separated two of the better Class A teams in the state for seven innings. The kind of game that gets remembered in June when both teams are pencilled in as Heal Points contenders. The other Class A pitchers' duel of the week, Erskine 5 over Belfast 4 on May 4, came two days earlier and felt like the same game in a different uniform.
Aroostook County refused to play a normal softball game on Friday. Fort Fairfield 13, Central Aroostook 12. May 8. Twenty five combined runs and somebody actually won by one. Earlier in the week Fort Fairfield beat Southern Aroostook 10 to 9 on May 5, so there is a pattern forming. Pitching staff in Fort Fairfield, please call the team bus and ask if everyone is okay.
Quietly tearing through the schedule: Katahdin, Central, Erskine, Medomak Valley, and Buckfield all finished the week three and zero. Erskine has Belfast on the schedule again next week, so the tougher test is coming. Medomak Valley spent the week reminding everyone that the defending Class B state champions are still defending Class B state champions. Camden Hills got the worst of Medomak Valley on May 8, 12 to 3. Class B is shaping up nicely.
Scarborough went three and zero too, outscoring Massabesic, Noble, and Sanford by a combined 37 to 7 from May 4 through May 8. The Class A South favorite chatter is starting to settle on Scarborough by default. Cheverus has Addison DeRoche, but Scarborough is doing it with team softball. Put both teams on a Saturday in June and see what happens.
All Access members already have GameIQ running on the Slate every morning, calling every softball game in the state with a class scoped win probability. The Big Board, Receipts, Power Index, Trophies, Mover Board, and the rest of the dashboards refresh on the nightly cadence so coaches can wake up to numbers, not last night's box score on a notepad.
Five weeks until the playoff picture starts to lock. Pour another coffee. The next slate goes up at midnight.