I don't really have a lot to say, seriously. It was a very bad day, that goes without saying.
-The tempo yesterday was lousy. I wanted to leave by 6p to see Ms. RedRain last night... by 6:20p, the thing was still going and, for only the second time since the start of the 2010 season, I left a game early. I think I was about 2 miles from I-85 by the time Stricklin's interview came on the radio broadcast. One of my buddies texted me during and said "watching right now on watchespn and we take too long to call pitches. So boring." Amen. And that's been a recurring theme. These guys want, for the most part, to get the baseball and throw it. The delays (which seem more pronounced with a freshman catcher over the past few years) just get excessive... I'm a huge fan of Fred Corral, but we've got to figure out a way to get those signs in faster. I do think that some of the sloppy play defensively has been attributable to that poor tempo.
-We had a ton of 3-2 counts yesterday. I'd love to see the final total. I don't think we won any of them, or very, very few. Both ways....
-The umpiring yesterday was lousy, but we need to do a better job framing pitches. That'd be the case anyway, but it's even more necessary with a weak umpire, like we had yesterday. Your catcher and can win or lose a strike for you, and we lost way too many yesterday. This is part of the deal with having a freshman catcher. I don't mean it as anything bad about Curry, but that's just the reality of having a freshman back there, especially one who is struggling offensively during a game.
-On that note, yeah Curry stunk it up yesterday. There's no other way to say it. I figure that the real coaching job doesn't come with "fixing" anything mechanically as much as it does keeping his confidence up. He's a much better player than he showed yesterday. I remember Matt Cerione completely losing his confidence as a freshman, to the point where he had to be shut down completely. And Cerione was a very talented player... I don't look for that to happen to Curry, but these next couple of days are going to be important as far as getting him back on track.
-It looks like the emerging narrative is "we are a young team".... Frankly, we are young at a couple of positions because we choose to be. But beyond that, we aren't that young. We have two seniors and two juniors who are in the line up every day. We start two sophomores, one of whom played almost every day last season. Our Friday night starter is a junior, projected first rounder. Our Saturday starter is a 5th year senior. We have some youth in the bullpen, to be sure, but I don't know that it's realistic to characterize this as a "young team". We actually are going to be a young team next year and it's going to sound really funny saying that two seasons in a row.
-I thought it was funny that the Thurston kid, a lefty, who started for Western Kentucky, failed to retire any of the lefties that he saw in the 1st inning, but got all out all three of the right handed hitters he saw. I thought we'd wear that guy out after the 1st. He hung in and did a good job, has a pretty good curve, but we should have hit him a lot harder than we did. We seemed to lose some intensity after the 1st inning and probably gave away some ABs as a result.
-The offensive numbers right now are pretty bleak. We are hitting .214/.336/.307 as a team. We've only had 17 extra base hits in 7 games, but worse than that, players not named Keegan McGovern have only had 11. .336 isn't much of an OBP, but we aren't doing much when we do get on. We've only attempted 6 stolen bases this season and have only been successful 3 times... What's the story with that? This team isn't built around a 3 run HR.... And we haven't been hesitant to run under Stricklin, especially in the conference. We always hear "so and so is an athletic guy, he can run, steal some bases..." That's said about so many of our position players, and it is accurate.... so why not let them do it? Going back to the hitting numbers, outside of Kevin Hill and Evan Challenger, we haven't really seen top shelf arms so far (and it may be a stretch to say Challenger is that). It's concerning, because we know what's waiting for us in two and a half weeks once league play gets here.
-All that said, we've got some time to get things straightened out.... Charleston Southern will bring a good, but beatable team up here tomorrow and Wednesday. I took a quick look at Wright State earlier today. They can swing the bats and those guys love to run also.... they'll be a good challenge for our pitchers and defense, but they look like they're hittable.
-It's not time to panic yet, and I want to stress that as my post here may suggest otherwise. I think everyone is well aware that improvements need to be made, but I think everyone (fans) are also well aware that we are capable playing much better than we did this weekend. I don't know yet what this teams ceiling actually is, but it's a heck of a lot higher than we showed over the last four games. That much I do know. We came very close to getting swept this weekend, in our own "Invitational".... every team has a bad weekend somewhere, and hopefully this was ours, and at the end of the day it may not be that consequential (and may even serve as a positive as it reinforces the importance of doing all the little things during a game).
Let's start a win streak tomorrow.
-The tempo yesterday was lousy. I wanted to leave by 6p to see Ms. RedRain last night... by 6:20p, the thing was still going and, for only the second time since the start of the 2010 season, I left a game early. I think I was about 2 miles from I-85 by the time Stricklin's interview came on the radio broadcast. One of my buddies texted me during and said "watching right now on watchespn and we take too long to call pitches. So boring." Amen. And that's been a recurring theme. These guys want, for the most part, to get the baseball and throw it. The delays (which seem more pronounced with a freshman catcher over the past few years) just get excessive... I'm a huge fan of Fred Corral, but we've got to figure out a way to get those signs in faster. I do think that some of the sloppy play defensively has been attributable to that poor tempo.
-We had a ton of 3-2 counts yesterday. I'd love to see the final total. I don't think we won any of them, or very, very few. Both ways....
-The umpiring yesterday was lousy, but we need to do a better job framing pitches. That'd be the case anyway, but it's even more necessary with a weak umpire, like we had yesterday. Your catcher and can win or lose a strike for you, and we lost way too many yesterday. This is part of the deal with having a freshman catcher. I don't mean it as anything bad about Curry, but that's just the reality of having a freshman back there, especially one who is struggling offensively during a game.
-On that note, yeah Curry stunk it up yesterday. There's no other way to say it. I figure that the real coaching job doesn't come with "fixing" anything mechanically as much as it does keeping his confidence up. He's a much better player than he showed yesterday. I remember Matt Cerione completely losing his confidence as a freshman, to the point where he had to be shut down completely. And Cerione was a very talented player... I don't look for that to happen to Curry, but these next couple of days are going to be important as far as getting him back on track.
-It looks like the emerging narrative is "we are a young team".... Frankly, we are young at a couple of positions because we choose to be. But beyond that, we aren't that young. We have two seniors and two juniors who are in the line up every day. We start two sophomores, one of whom played almost every day last season. Our Friday night starter is a junior, projected first rounder. Our Saturday starter is a 5th year senior. We have some youth in the bullpen, to be sure, but I don't know that it's realistic to characterize this as a "young team". We actually are going to be a young team next year and it's going to sound really funny saying that two seasons in a row.
-I thought it was funny that the Thurston kid, a lefty, who started for Western Kentucky, failed to retire any of the lefties that he saw in the 1st inning, but got all out all three of the right handed hitters he saw. I thought we'd wear that guy out after the 1st. He hung in and did a good job, has a pretty good curve, but we should have hit him a lot harder than we did. We seemed to lose some intensity after the 1st inning and probably gave away some ABs as a result.
-The offensive numbers right now are pretty bleak. We are hitting .214/.336/.307 as a team. We've only had 17 extra base hits in 7 games, but worse than that, players not named Keegan McGovern have only had 11. .336 isn't much of an OBP, but we aren't doing much when we do get on. We've only attempted 6 stolen bases this season and have only been successful 3 times... What's the story with that? This team isn't built around a 3 run HR.... And we haven't been hesitant to run under Stricklin, especially in the conference. We always hear "so and so is an athletic guy, he can run, steal some bases..." That's said about so many of our position players, and it is accurate.... so why not let them do it? Going back to the hitting numbers, outside of Kevin Hill and Evan Challenger, we haven't really seen top shelf arms so far (and it may be a stretch to say Challenger is that). It's concerning, because we know what's waiting for us in two and a half weeks once league play gets here.
-All that said, we've got some time to get things straightened out.... Charleston Southern will bring a good, but beatable team up here tomorrow and Wednesday. I took a quick look at Wright State earlier today. They can swing the bats and those guys love to run also.... they'll be a good challenge for our pitchers and defense, but they look like they're hittable.
-It's not time to panic yet, and I want to stress that as my post here may suggest otherwise. I think everyone is well aware that improvements need to be made, but I think everyone (fans) are also well aware that we are capable playing much better than we did this weekend. I don't know yet what this teams ceiling actually is, but it's a heck of a lot higher than we showed over the last four games. That much I do know. We came very close to getting swept this weekend, in our own "Invitational".... every team has a bad weekend somewhere, and hopefully this was ours, and at the end of the day it may not be that consequential (and may even serve as a positive as it reinforces the importance of doing all the little things during a game).
Let's start a win streak tomorrow.
