Every other week this baseball season, George Washington catcher Nelson Rodriguez will give us an inside look at his team’s quest for a second straight PSAL Class A city title and his mission to get drafted in June’s MLB First-Year Player Draft. In this exclusive diary for NYPost.com, the four-year varsity player talks about his team’s first league loss in three years and the Trojans’ improve play since the defeat.
I’m just relaxing right now at home. Everything is going good right now, I’m just playing baseball and working hard in school. The team is doing good. We’re starting to look how we’re supposed to be looking and playing baseball.
We had a very good outing against Environmental Studies. We scored 22 runs and today against Graphic Communications we had another good game. We’ve been playing how we know. I feel like I’ve been playing good. I’m playing better than the beginning of the season. Now I picked it up. I’m hitting the ball better and playing great defense.
[Last week Manhattan Center snapped George Washington’s 40-game league win streak, 4-3, in 14 innings.]
We went to extra innings against Manhattan Center. We played good, but we didn’t execute. We had men on third and less than outs and didn’t score. We missed signs. But all of that is out the window. That’s baseball; things are going to happen.
It really didn’t affect us. In baseball you win or lose. It was a hard-fought game. We have to move on and keep playing baseball. We have other teams to play. We have to play smarter. We have the playoffs coming up. We can’t think about a loss. If we had gone 16-0 and lost in the playoffs, it wouldn’t matter.
It motivated us to step up a notch. Before that, we weren’t playing great baseball; we were playing so-so. Now we’re playing how we’re supposed to be playing. Our approach at the plate is better. We’re getting more walks than strikeouts. The pitching has been great.
The [First-Year Player Draft] is coming up. I spoke to the Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox, a few other teams. They have been coming to my games. But I’m not thinking about that. I’ll think about it when the draft comes.
Everything depends on the draft. If the draft doesn’t go as I want, I’ll go to college. I just sent my [transcript] to Virginia Tech. I’m waiting to hear back and then I’m going to visit.
Check back with Nelson Rodriguez every other Thursday during the season. His next diary will run May 18.