and I'm not just saying that because of the all the shenanigans and what happened after the game.
We're 8-2 now. Vanderbilt is 5-5. If we can get a split over the next two, that's another team that we'll have the tie breaker against. But more than that, we haven't been that great away from home this year... We all remember Charleston and while we played with a lot of grit in Tuscaloosa, we didn't play that great out there. We ran into a Vandy team tonight that really needed to win, we overcame some poor umpiring, bad luck, we rallied against a lefty... I mean, you name it. We can talk about the confidence that this team took to Nashville, but I really believe that we proved something else to ourselves tonight. Sports is funny... sometimes the best thing that can happen to you is winning when everything doesn't go your way.
On that note, how unusual is it to open a league series with our bullpen as limited as it was tonight? Kevin Smith was burned. Zac Kristofak clearly wasn't 100%... Neither was Tony Locey. Both of those guys threw a decent number of pitches 48 hours ago. That, to me, is the biggest thing that we overcame tonight.... Chase Adkins hung in there and got us into the 6th, he never let it unravel on him, and then we cobbled it together after that.... I'm glad that we pitched the way that we did against tech on Tuesday night. And it was bad luck that this series got moved to Thursday - Saturday. We overcame that too.... You think about it, we played a late game Tuesday night against our arch rival and used all of our A guys in the bullpen. What does it take to get up to Nashville from Athens? 5 hours? We make that trip on Wednesday and out there tonight without all our bullets and still get the W. Best one of the year. No question.
As for all the stuff after the game, it is what it is. Teams get other teams signs/ pitches all the time. If they have a guy out there who is tipping his pitches, that's on them. And I imagine that's what Stricklin told that little pissant assistant coach at home plate tonight. This isn't little league baseball... you shouldn't spike the ball on a strikeout or caught pop foul in the middle of the game and you shouldn't expect other teams to ignore the fact that you're giving your pitches away. I definitely think that there is a way to handle that too, besides one assistant coach yelling at another and then yelling at the head coach after the game.
Needless to say, the next two days will be interesting, but I think we may be in their heads a little bit.
Soak this up. Let's beat these assholes again tomorrow.
We're 8-2 now. Vanderbilt is 5-5. If we can get a split over the next two, that's another team that we'll have the tie breaker against. But more than that, we haven't been that great away from home this year... We all remember Charleston and while we played with a lot of grit in Tuscaloosa, we didn't play that great out there. We ran into a Vandy team tonight that really needed to win, we overcame some poor umpiring, bad luck, we rallied against a lefty... I mean, you name it. We can talk about the confidence that this team took to Nashville, but I really believe that we proved something else to ourselves tonight. Sports is funny... sometimes the best thing that can happen to you is winning when everything doesn't go your way.
On that note, how unusual is it to open a league series with our bullpen as limited as it was tonight? Kevin Smith was burned. Zac Kristofak clearly wasn't 100%... Neither was Tony Locey. Both of those guys threw a decent number of pitches 48 hours ago. That, to me, is the biggest thing that we overcame tonight.... Chase Adkins hung in there and got us into the 6th, he never let it unravel on him, and then we cobbled it together after that.... I'm glad that we pitched the way that we did against tech on Tuesday night. And it was bad luck that this series got moved to Thursday - Saturday. We overcame that too.... You think about it, we played a late game Tuesday night against our arch rival and used all of our A guys in the bullpen. What does it take to get up to Nashville from Athens? 5 hours? We make that trip on Wednesday and out there tonight without all our bullets and still get the W. Best one of the year. No question.
As for all the stuff after the game, it is what it is. Teams get other teams signs/ pitches all the time. If they have a guy out there who is tipping his pitches, that's on them. And I imagine that's what Stricklin told that little pissant assistant coach at home plate tonight. This isn't little league baseball... you shouldn't spike the ball on a strikeout or caught pop foul in the middle of the game and you shouldn't expect other teams to ignore the fact that you're giving your pitches away. I definitely think that there is a way to handle that too, besides one assistant coach yelling at another and then yelling at the head coach after the game.
Needless to say, the next two days will be interesting, but I think we may be in their heads a little bit.
Soak this up. Let's beat these assholes again tomorrow.
