What can you say? What about tonight was any different than our other 16 conference losses to date? "Hitting with men in scoring position" has turned into the whipping boy here of late, but that's not the only reason why we're losing. Sure, it'd help if we'd hit 1.000 with guys on 2nd and/ or 3rd, but that issue alone isn't why we lost tonight or why we are so far under water this season. You're playing in a band box stadium up here... I saw Johnathan Taylor as a true freshman hit at least 5 HRs during one BP here in 2009.... it's VERY hard to win if you only score two runs. But then it's also hard to win when you make multiple defensive mistakes, when you make your worst pitch of the night with two guys on base, and when you make highly questionable pinch hitting decisions. It's not like one single thing needs to be cleaned up here. It's a lot, and the fact of the matter is that it isn't getting better.
I saw a team tonight who didn't seem to want to have the baseball hit to them in the field and didn't seem to want to be in the batter's box with men on base. That's a subjective observation, but I'd challenge anyone to watch this game tonight, note the body language, and tell me where I'm wrong. Why is this happening? And how can it be fixed?
I've run out of things to say about... believe that or not, I have. It's a joke right now. And I say thing with the statement that I think I'd have to go back to 2006 to recall the last team that I believed in this much, to a man. There isn't a kid on this team who I don't want to see in the batter's box. There isn't a kid I don't want to see on the mound. I couldn't even say that in 2008. And perhaps I'm off base, but I really mean that with this group. I love this team individually. But the whole just doesn't come close to the sum of the parts. And I'm afraid that the sum of the parts next year is going to be a lot less than this year and I just don't see much reason to be optimistic that things are going to get better.
Pinch hitting with Zack Bowers for Mitchell Webb really bugged me tonight. You're replacing a guy hitting .200 in the conference with another guy hitting around .148 in the league at the time of his AB. You're replacing a hitter who had two RBI hits the last two games for you and hit both of those balls right on the nose. But beyond that, and maybe nobody wants to hear this, this season is done. It's finished. And it was finished before tonight. Zack Bowers, in all probability, isn't going to be on the team next year. He's going to get a chance in professional baseball and he's going to, wisely, take advantage of it. Mitchell Webb will be. Regardless of what I said above, we'll start next year with a clean slate and maybe we can make a push. Either way, we'll get into a situation where Webb needs to get a hit on a conference Friday night that can swing the game our way or the other way. Why don't you give him that chance tonight? It doesn't matter for this season, but it can pay dividends down the road. And even if Webb hits into a DP tonight, as Bowers did, at least now Webb has the experience that AB and it's not the first time he's in the spot next season. Then our coach gets on the post game show tonight and says (paraphrasing) "that was the situation we wanted for Zack" as if he himself pressed all the right buttons and the player just didn't execute. Baloney. Let's take a view toward the long term success of the program, not just a May game played when we are 9 games under .500 in the league.
And I'm going to say this too about Zack and all of the other draft eligible guys... And this goes against my own policy of not posting non-public information, but I can tell you that our coaches are engaging in some "negative recruiting" against pro ball amongst our current draft eligible guys and the incoming freshman class, telling them how tough the life is, how long the bus rides are, how the hotels are bad, how they don't make any money, how the bonus isn't worth it, etc. This weekend the team was slated to stay at a Hampton Inn up here. That's printed in the media guide. Earlier this week they decided to move them over to a Comfort Inn, relatively close by. I can't remember the last time we've changed hotels this close to the weekend, but whatever. Earlier this year there was loose talk about flying the team up here. That also fell through. So for all of the alleged contrast to the horrors of the low minors, our baseball team was put on a bus for seven and a half hours to stay at a Comfort Inn and given the usual $15 for meal money for the weekend. It's almost comical, it really is, ALMOST... here are our coaches with presumably straight faces trying to swing these guys to coming to or back to UGA earlier this week, and then this is how we handle the longest road trip of the year. It's a joke.
I generally thought that "Any Given Sunday" was a bad movie. Great cast, but Oliver Stone decided to be Oliver Stone and do way too much with it, basically trying to mesh three different accounts of professional football (of questionable accuracy) into one 100 minute movie. But there was one line that I really liked in the movie. Tony D'amato, played by Al Pacino, is the head coach. His defensive coordinator is played by Jim Brown. After giving up a TD, the head coach runs up to his defensive coordinator and says, in a hyper tone "They're leaking and you don't know where! Just fix it. Don't just yell and scream and all that shit. FIX IT."
That's my attitude about this right now.
I saw a team tonight who didn't seem to want to have the baseball hit to them in the field and didn't seem to want to be in the batter's box with men on base. That's a subjective observation, but I'd challenge anyone to watch this game tonight, note the body language, and tell me where I'm wrong. Why is this happening? And how can it be fixed?
I've run out of things to say about... believe that or not, I have. It's a joke right now. And I say thing with the statement that I think I'd have to go back to 2006 to recall the last team that I believed in this much, to a man. There isn't a kid on this team who I don't want to see in the batter's box. There isn't a kid I don't want to see on the mound. I couldn't even say that in 2008. And perhaps I'm off base, but I really mean that with this group. I love this team individually. But the whole just doesn't come close to the sum of the parts. And I'm afraid that the sum of the parts next year is going to be a lot less than this year and I just don't see much reason to be optimistic that things are going to get better.
Pinch hitting with Zack Bowers for Mitchell Webb really bugged me tonight. You're replacing a guy hitting .200 in the conference with another guy hitting around .148 in the league at the time of his AB. You're replacing a hitter who had two RBI hits the last two games for you and hit both of those balls right on the nose. But beyond that, and maybe nobody wants to hear this, this season is done. It's finished. And it was finished before tonight. Zack Bowers, in all probability, isn't going to be on the team next year. He's going to get a chance in professional baseball and he's going to, wisely, take advantage of it. Mitchell Webb will be. Regardless of what I said above, we'll start next year with a clean slate and maybe we can make a push. Either way, we'll get into a situation where Webb needs to get a hit on a conference Friday night that can swing the game our way or the other way. Why don't you give him that chance tonight? It doesn't matter for this season, but it can pay dividends down the road. And even if Webb hits into a DP tonight, as Bowers did, at least now Webb has the experience that AB and it's not the first time he's in the spot next season. Then our coach gets on the post game show tonight and says (paraphrasing) "that was the situation we wanted for Zack" as if he himself pressed all the right buttons and the player just didn't execute. Baloney. Let's take a view toward the long term success of the program, not just a May game played when we are 9 games under .500 in the league.
And I'm going to say this too about Zack and all of the other draft eligible guys... And this goes against my own policy of not posting non-public information, but I can tell you that our coaches are engaging in some "negative recruiting" against pro ball amongst our current draft eligible guys and the incoming freshman class, telling them how tough the life is, how long the bus rides are, how the hotels are bad, how they don't make any money, how the bonus isn't worth it, etc. This weekend the team was slated to stay at a Hampton Inn up here. That's printed in the media guide. Earlier this week they decided to move them over to a Comfort Inn, relatively close by. I can't remember the last time we've changed hotels this close to the weekend, but whatever. Earlier this year there was loose talk about flying the team up here. That also fell through. So for all of the alleged contrast to the horrors of the low minors, our baseball team was put on a bus for seven and a half hours to stay at a Comfort Inn and given the usual $15 for meal money for the weekend. It's almost comical, it really is, ALMOST... here are our coaches with presumably straight faces trying to swing these guys to coming to or back to UGA earlier this week, and then this is how we handle the longest road trip of the year. It's a joke.
I generally thought that "Any Given Sunday" was a bad movie. Great cast, but Oliver Stone decided to be Oliver Stone and do way too much with it, basically trying to mesh three different accounts of professional football (of questionable accuracy) into one 100 minute movie. But there was one line that I really liked in the movie. Tony D'amato, played by Al Pacino, is the head coach. His defensive coordinator is played by Jim Brown. After giving up a TD, the head coach runs up to his defensive coordinator and says, in a hyper tone "They're leaking and you don't know where! Just fix it. Don't just yell and scream and all that shit. FIX IT."
That's my attitude about this right now.
