-Not to beat this to death, but the defense was obviously disappointing this weekend. I posted in another thread about how many guys we had playing their non-natural positions. Paul Toetz didn't a start a game in the OF in his last two years at Purdue. He started his college career at Indiana and I'm not sure if played any OF there in 2020 or 2021. In any case, putting him in LF on the road, on a windy day, is inviting trouble. We have one of the best defensive catchers to ever play here and we started him at 1b today. For all the talk about of our pitching struggles, I'm sure that part of it is not having a great deal of confidence about what is going to happen when the ball is put into play. These bats are juiced, or whatever term you want to use, the balls I think have a flatter seam, and the strike zone is smaller. The baseball comes FLYING off of the bat. I'm not suggesting that it's easy to play in the field at this level right now. I know it isn't. But I think that you have to give your guys a better chance by playing them in their natural positions.
-On that note, I want to see Paul Toetz at 2b, Slate Alford at 3b, and Charlie Condon at 1b. That, with Branch at SS, is a pretty good defensive IF. I have no idea what's going on with Trey Phelps. Would be nice to see him in the OF.
-Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in fall 2012. So, starting with the 2013 baseball season when the league was constituted as it is currently, we've played 11 SEC openers (recall that we did not play any SEC games in 2020). With this weekend's outcome, we have been swept in 5 of them. Those five sweeps have come under three different head coaches, three different hitting coaches, four different pitching coaches, and have come against five different programs coached by five different men. I add that last part because it's not the case that we had to open multiple times in Nashville or something like that. It's pretty bad when you think about it. That's almost have of the time in the last decade plus that we've started out 0-3. But this was the first time of those five sweeps that we've basically gotten worked three games in a row. We were down by 9 runs at one point on Friday, down by 6 runs twice yesterday, and then were outscored 12-0 today after taking an early lead. Those other four sweeps all featured one close loss. Second year in a row that we've been run-ruled in game three while trying to avoid a sweep.
-I don't say that to say that nothing has changed. This is a much different team from last year. I don't believe that we're front-runners either. Yes, we didn't handle it well when we got down this weekend. And no, we didn't play well and seemed to disengage a bit when we did get down. But we were also down 9-3 against tech two weeks ago today and came back and won that game. I don't know what the mentality of this team is going to be ultimately, but I'm not ready to say that we're fragile or front-runners. That tech series happened.
-Of course, I remember Stricklin last year after South Carolina swept us talking about how we'd just beaten tech twice, two weeks before.
-Some things happened this weekend that probably won't happen again. Suspect as our pitching might be, I doubt we play very many games were Charlie Goldstein and Kolten Smith combine to allow double digit runs in one game. And I doubt we play many games where we get 3-hit. After we went up 4-0 on Friday, virtually nothing went right for us. A lot was self-inflicted, but there was some bad luck in there also.
-I don't know what Wes Johnson is saying to the team. His post-game interviews have been very upbeat. I agree with the comment that there is a lot of coach-speak there... and that seems to be reserved for the few times this year that we have lost. I don't have a problem with that. What he says to the team is important. What he says to us, is not. I do miss the David Perno interviews inasmuch as Perno would tell it exactly like it was, but I recognize that there isn't much incentive to do that. I know that fans roll their eyes when we get run-ruled at the coach says "we just have to get better." But I'm sure that a different message is being communicated internally.
-You can look at this one of two ways. We either need to pare down the number of guys who are in the lineup, or we need to expand the core of guys in the lineup. Right now, it's Alford, Branch, and Condon who you know will be out there each day. Beyond that, you don't know. There are some hard decisions to make there, and some guys will inevitably be unhappy. But this is a very high level of baseball, and I think that's what is best for the team.
-We failed the first road test. And the next four places we go (Columbia, SC, Knoxville, Starkville, and College Station) are all going to be more hostile than Kentucky. That's the bad news. But the good news is, we've got 5 of the next 9 at home... and I think that we're going to learn and grow from this weekend.
-I'm still excited about this team. Let's see how we rebound. This weekend sucked, but I've seen a month of good things that haven't now evaporated. We've got good coaches and good players. We all know the question marks, and, as Perno liked to say "we got exposed a little bit" ... so let's take the lessons from it and get back on track. I'm glad that we play Tuesday and can't wait for this weekend. If we're 2-4 at this time next week, I think that we all feel totally different about things. And that's a very realistic expectation to have.
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