I don't like the idea of starting Luke Wagner on Friday night and playing a staff game, as we discussed last week. Stricklin said on Thursday that he felt like this approach gave us our best chance to win a series. Unfortunately, we've failed to win any of the three series that we've played now. Beating South Carolina on Friday night was great... I thought, as I said Saturday morning, that we had a great plan for pitching to Wes Clarke. The downside though was that we wound up using eight pitchers in the game. When you do that on Friday night, it's going to create problems for the rest of the weekend.
But really, it doesn't so much matter how we slot our starting pitching if Ryan Webb and Jonathan Cannon don't pitch deeper into games. Both guys have made three starts in the SEC. Webb has thrown 16 innings and Cannon has thrown 13 2/3. It's just not enough innings. Nobody is expecting either guy to go out and throw CGs, but you'd like to see them working into the 6th or 7th. I know that both guys are coming back from an illness. Mono has a long "tail" to it as I understand... and Covid seems like it's all over the map with how it affects people. So maybe that has something to do with it. Either way, we just need to get more out of those guys, and I think that we will. We won't many SEC series when the bullpen is throwing 14 innings or more over the course of the weekend.
It's interesting to look at what our pitchers have done to SEC hitters, as opposed to what our hitters have done against SEC pitching.
We've allowed 79 hits in league play, but our offense has tallied 80. We are being hit at a .257 average by SEC hitters, while hitting .256 against SEC pitching. We've allowed 14 doubles to SEC hitters. We've collected 13 doubles against SEC pitchers. We've struck out 87 SEC hitters. We've struck out 91 times against SEC pitching.
So why the 3-6 record?
It's HRs and walks. We've allowed 14 home runs in the 9 SEC games that we've played, while hitting 6 ourselves. And we've walked 44 hitters in conference games, while only drawing 24 ourselves. For good measure, we've also hit 9 batters, while only collecting 6 HBPs ourselves.
It adds up. Between walks and HBPs, that's 53 freebies in 9 games - almost 6 per game.
I think that walks are going to be a problem to some extent all year, but I'm hoping we can reduce it a little bit.
Offensively for us, the power numbers are what they are. We're slugging .367 in SEC games. Of the 80 hits we've collected, only 21 have gone for extra bases. We are not all of a sudden going to start hitting for power. But I think if we can start drawing some more walks and then cut down on the ones we're allowing, it'll make things a bit easier. And I think that's very doable.
But really, it doesn't so much matter how we slot our starting pitching if Ryan Webb and Jonathan Cannon don't pitch deeper into games. Both guys have made three starts in the SEC. Webb has thrown 16 innings and Cannon has thrown 13 2/3. It's just not enough innings. Nobody is expecting either guy to go out and throw CGs, but you'd like to see them working into the 6th or 7th. I know that both guys are coming back from an illness. Mono has a long "tail" to it as I understand... and Covid seems like it's all over the map with how it affects people. So maybe that has something to do with it. Either way, we just need to get more out of those guys, and I think that we will. We won't many SEC series when the bullpen is throwing 14 innings or more over the course of the weekend.
It's interesting to look at what our pitchers have done to SEC hitters, as opposed to what our hitters have done against SEC pitching.
We've allowed 79 hits in league play, but our offense has tallied 80. We are being hit at a .257 average by SEC hitters, while hitting .256 against SEC pitching. We've allowed 14 doubles to SEC hitters. We've collected 13 doubles against SEC pitchers. We've struck out 87 SEC hitters. We've struck out 91 times against SEC pitching.
So why the 3-6 record?
It's HRs and walks. We've allowed 14 home runs in the 9 SEC games that we've played, while hitting 6 ourselves. And we've walked 44 hitters in conference games, while only drawing 24 ourselves. For good measure, we've also hit 9 batters, while only collecting 6 HBPs ourselves.
It adds up. Between walks and HBPs, that's 53 freebies in 9 games - almost 6 per game.
I think that walks are going to be a problem to some extent all year, but I'm hoping we can reduce it a little bit.
Offensively for us, the power numbers are what they are. We're slugging .367 in SEC games. Of the 80 hits we've collected, only 21 have gone for extra bases. We are not all of a sudden going to start hitting for power. But I think if we can start drawing some more walks and then cut down on the ones we're allowing, it'll make things a bit easier. And I think that's very doable.
