and I mean real quick... it's late and I'm tired.
-What can you say, really? We just seem to come up with ways to lose games right now. I thought that the players battled really hard tonight and I hate it for them.... the focus and intensity were there tonight. It's a bitter pill, for sure.
-Andrew Gist was great. He deserved a better fate than what he got. What happened in the 8th inning was, unfortunately, very foreseeable. He was pretty clearly out of gas at that point.... 100 pitches in and he was leaving some stuff up in the 7th inning. No reason to run him back out there in the 8th. None at all. But that's what we do.... We try to squeeze that extra out, that extra inning from a guy, needlessly so. For every time like Jared Walsh in Knoxville in 2015, it seems like there are three examples like tonight. Just bring in Blakely Brown (or Kevin Smith, if you want to go that way) to start the 8th inning. We win 1-0 that way. Instead we give up the leadoff triple, then decide that 101 pitches is enough for Gist after deciding that he was good to go at 100. I didn't think Kevin Smith was a great call in that situation, but he did his job. Walking Jay Estes after it got to 2-0 to pitch to Daniel Robert was one of the dumber things I've seen from our dugout in awhile. We've gotten way too beholden to righty/ lefty matchups. I can't imagine any major college coach thinking it's a better idea to put Estes on base and pitch to Robert. But we did.... we had two very bad decisions book-ending a bizzare play, and that's how we get beaten. To Stricklin's credit, he did tell our IF with 1 out that the runner at 3rd would be going on contact, even with the IF still drawn in.... and he was right about that. Still, bad decisions invite bad luck, as far as I'm concerned.
-I mean, think about it this way.... do you think Auburn was happy to Gist run back out there in the 8th, after seeing him in the 7th? Who do you think Auburn would rather have at the plate with the go-ahead run on 2nd base? Estes or Robert? Auburn walked Keegan McGovern tonight with 1st base open to pitch to Michael Curry and get a righty/ righty matchup. The difference is that Keegan is smoking hot at the plate right now. Estes hadn't hit the ball out of the infield tonight.
-Beyond what happened to cost us the game from the dugout, I thought that Tucker Maxwell had a very good game at the plate. He had a 9 pitch AB to start the 1st inning. Although it ended in a K, he saw a lot of pitches and made Keegan Thompson work hard right out of the gate. He did a great job going the other way for our lone RBI. 1-4 games are often non-descript, but I thought that Maxwell was very good for that stat line.
-I think you're seeing why Will Procter has won that 2nd base job.... I knew that he wasn't slow, but I had no idea he had those kinds of wheels.... He got that triple standing up and was FLYING around the bases....
-We hit a lot of balls really hard tonight.... I thought it was fitting that the game ended on a fly ball to deep center.... seemed like we hit a lot of stuff to the warning track tonight. Not just those, but the line drives that we hit too.... it's hard to believe we only had 1 run and 8 hits given how many balls we squared up.
-Our first two Friday nights in the conference, we caught Alex Lange on a bad night and had Keegan Thompson leave after 49 pitches with an injury. It really stinks being 0-2 in those games... we probably aren't going to continue having that kind of fortune on Friday night.
-Bad game for Austin Biggar tonight. That's all you can say. He's a young guy and that happens.... I'm very interested to see how he bounces back and I really hope he's in the lineup tomorrow. He seems like a very mature freshman.... you wouldn't know that's what he is just watching him play.
-Last thing.... it's a whole lot easier when we don't walk or hit batters.... we are a good defensive baseball team.... throw it over the plate and make the other guy put it in play. Auburn has a good lineup.... We put up 8 zeros tonight in large part because we didn't give them anything for free. I was really happy for Andrew Gist and I hope that what he did tonight rubs off on the rest of the staff.
-What can you say, really? We just seem to come up with ways to lose games right now. I thought that the players battled really hard tonight and I hate it for them.... the focus and intensity were there tonight. It's a bitter pill, for sure.
-Andrew Gist was great. He deserved a better fate than what he got. What happened in the 8th inning was, unfortunately, very foreseeable. He was pretty clearly out of gas at that point.... 100 pitches in and he was leaving some stuff up in the 7th inning. No reason to run him back out there in the 8th. None at all. But that's what we do.... We try to squeeze that extra out, that extra inning from a guy, needlessly so. For every time like Jared Walsh in Knoxville in 2015, it seems like there are three examples like tonight. Just bring in Blakely Brown (or Kevin Smith, if you want to go that way) to start the 8th inning. We win 1-0 that way. Instead we give up the leadoff triple, then decide that 101 pitches is enough for Gist after deciding that he was good to go at 100. I didn't think Kevin Smith was a great call in that situation, but he did his job. Walking Jay Estes after it got to 2-0 to pitch to Daniel Robert was one of the dumber things I've seen from our dugout in awhile. We've gotten way too beholden to righty/ lefty matchups. I can't imagine any major college coach thinking it's a better idea to put Estes on base and pitch to Robert. But we did.... we had two very bad decisions book-ending a bizzare play, and that's how we get beaten. To Stricklin's credit, he did tell our IF with 1 out that the runner at 3rd would be going on contact, even with the IF still drawn in.... and he was right about that. Still, bad decisions invite bad luck, as far as I'm concerned.
-I mean, think about it this way.... do you think Auburn was happy to Gist run back out there in the 8th, after seeing him in the 7th? Who do you think Auburn would rather have at the plate with the go-ahead run on 2nd base? Estes or Robert? Auburn walked Keegan McGovern tonight with 1st base open to pitch to Michael Curry and get a righty/ righty matchup. The difference is that Keegan is smoking hot at the plate right now. Estes hadn't hit the ball out of the infield tonight.
-Beyond what happened to cost us the game from the dugout, I thought that Tucker Maxwell had a very good game at the plate. He had a 9 pitch AB to start the 1st inning. Although it ended in a K, he saw a lot of pitches and made Keegan Thompson work hard right out of the gate. He did a great job going the other way for our lone RBI. 1-4 games are often non-descript, but I thought that Maxwell was very good for that stat line.
-I think you're seeing why Will Procter has won that 2nd base job.... I knew that he wasn't slow, but I had no idea he had those kinds of wheels.... He got that triple standing up and was FLYING around the bases....
-We hit a lot of balls really hard tonight.... I thought it was fitting that the game ended on a fly ball to deep center.... seemed like we hit a lot of stuff to the warning track tonight. Not just those, but the line drives that we hit too.... it's hard to believe we only had 1 run and 8 hits given how many balls we squared up.
-Our first two Friday nights in the conference, we caught Alex Lange on a bad night and had Keegan Thompson leave after 49 pitches with an injury. It really stinks being 0-2 in those games... we probably aren't going to continue having that kind of fortune on Friday night.
-Bad game for Austin Biggar tonight. That's all you can say. He's a young guy and that happens.... I'm very interested to see how he bounces back and I really hope he's in the lineup tomorrow. He seems like a very mature freshman.... you wouldn't know that's what he is just watching him play.
-Last thing.... it's a whole lot easier when we don't walk or hit batters.... we are a good defensive baseball team.... throw it over the plate and make the other guy put it in play. Auburn has a good lineup.... We put up 8 zeros tonight in large part because we didn't give them anything for free. I was really happy for Andrew Gist and I hope that what he did tonight rubs off on the rest of the staff.
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