-Losing to tech just sucks.... This is a school that beat us in all three of our main men's sports in 2014, which, frankly is inexcusable for an athletic department with as many resources as ours. Baseball has the first chance to get that righted. We can still win the season series with tech, obviously, but it's harder to do when you're down 0-1. And we didn't see tech's best hitter tonight (Kel Johnson) tonight either.
-Too many walks. It's getting a little ridiculous now. 9 more tonight with only 5 strikeouts, 2 of which came from a guy making his collegiate pitching debut. We walked the leadoff hitter in two of the first three innings (and allowed the leadoff guy to reach on a single in the other). Beyond the walks, we just didn't miss many bats again tonight. Lot of foul balls and lots of squared up hits and squared up outs. I think we had 13 fly ball outs by our OFs tonight and a number of those were DEEP. If we weren't so athletic in the OF, tech may score 20 runs tonight. On that note, Ryan Avidano has a very bright future. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But he's not taking any confidence out there right now, it seems. We may need to go a different direction next mid-week and allow Avidano to work through some of those things. He seems a little bit inconsistent in his mechanics too. Running him back out for the 3rd inning didn't do him or us any favors tonight. I know that we're short in the bullpen, but he really didn't need to go back out for the 3rd.
-Jared Walsh needs to play 1B when he's not pitching. That said, Daniel Nichols did a great job on that foul near the dugout. Walsh is our best option there. Bowers should DH when Stephens is catching and Walsh isn't on the mound.
-I didn't see the Longwood series and I understand Saturday was quite the stinker in this capacity, but tonight was the worst defensive game that I've seen us play. That was really disappointing as we took care of the baseball really well in Columbia. But it's a weird game. In the midst of that Mitchell Webb's 5-3 putout was one of the best defensive plays I've seen all year.
-Really liked what Max Ford did. He came after the hitters, got ahead in some counts, and turned in a very quick four outs. Here's a guy who probably isn't going to see a lot of time hitting or in the field this year moving forward, but he can be a huge asset on the mound. He was definitely the bright spot this evening.
-Three times tonight we lead off an inning with an extra base hit and still managed to not score in the inning. On the one hand, we scored 6 runs anyway, on the other, it's hard to win when you don't take advantage of those opportunities.
-Brandon Stephens does such a good job behind the plate. That doesn't get talked about enough. He really seems to take a lot of pride in his defensive prowess and it's fun to watch.
-All the walks and the inability to "miss bats" by our pitching staff all of a sudden are leading to some LONG games.... 3:40 tonight. It's tough to sit through that.... But then, I think about how bad the weather was when we played tech last year.... Imagine that being 3:40.... Anyway, it's bad enough losing a baseball game by a touchdown, but then having to sit through 220 minutes of that just isn't a great deal of fun.
-Not that it made too much difference, but Ken Couch really kicked that call on Wrenn's attempted steal of 3rd base early. It really changed that inning.... Again, I don't think it mattered in the grand scheme of things, but Wrenn wasn't really even close to being out.
-Finally, I said a few weeks ago that we were going to be really good in the mid-week with our pitching depth. Well, that depth is gone now and we are 1-3 in our last four mid-week games with two lopsided losses. Hopefully we'll start getting some guys back soon.
-Too many walks. It's getting a little ridiculous now. 9 more tonight with only 5 strikeouts, 2 of which came from a guy making his collegiate pitching debut. We walked the leadoff hitter in two of the first three innings (and allowed the leadoff guy to reach on a single in the other). Beyond the walks, we just didn't miss many bats again tonight. Lot of foul balls and lots of squared up hits and squared up outs. I think we had 13 fly ball outs by our OFs tonight and a number of those were DEEP. If we weren't so athletic in the OF, tech may score 20 runs tonight. On that note, Ryan Avidano has a very bright future. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But he's not taking any confidence out there right now, it seems. We may need to go a different direction next mid-week and allow Avidano to work through some of those things. He seems a little bit inconsistent in his mechanics too. Running him back out for the 3rd inning didn't do him or us any favors tonight. I know that we're short in the bullpen, but he really didn't need to go back out for the 3rd.
-Jared Walsh needs to play 1B when he's not pitching. That said, Daniel Nichols did a great job on that foul near the dugout. Walsh is our best option there. Bowers should DH when Stephens is catching and Walsh isn't on the mound.
-I didn't see the Longwood series and I understand Saturday was quite the stinker in this capacity, but tonight was the worst defensive game that I've seen us play. That was really disappointing as we took care of the baseball really well in Columbia. But it's a weird game. In the midst of that Mitchell Webb's 5-3 putout was one of the best defensive plays I've seen all year.
-Really liked what Max Ford did. He came after the hitters, got ahead in some counts, and turned in a very quick four outs. Here's a guy who probably isn't going to see a lot of time hitting or in the field this year moving forward, but he can be a huge asset on the mound. He was definitely the bright spot this evening.
-Three times tonight we lead off an inning with an extra base hit and still managed to not score in the inning. On the one hand, we scored 6 runs anyway, on the other, it's hard to win when you don't take advantage of those opportunities.
-Brandon Stephens does such a good job behind the plate. That doesn't get talked about enough. He really seems to take a lot of pride in his defensive prowess and it's fun to watch.
-All the walks and the inability to "miss bats" by our pitching staff all of a sudden are leading to some LONG games.... 3:40 tonight. It's tough to sit through that.... But then, I think about how bad the weather was when we played tech last year.... Imagine that being 3:40.... Anyway, it's bad enough losing a baseball game by a touchdown, but then having to sit through 220 minutes of that just isn't a great deal of fun.
-Not that it made too much difference, but Ken Couch really kicked that call on Wrenn's attempted steal of 3rd base early. It really changed that inning.... Again, I don't think it mattered in the grand scheme of things, but Wrenn wasn't really even close to being out.
-Finally, I said a few weeks ago that we were going to be really good in the mid-week with our pitching depth. Well, that depth is gone now and we are 1-3 in our last four mid-week games with two lopsided losses. Hopefully we'll start getting some guys back soon.
