-It's disappointing, but I guess that goes without saying. It's just hard to get on a track right now, to build any momentum. You see the lineup, you know it's going to look a little different with Nichols being out, but there's Nick King at the top, with his sub .300 OBP. There's Trevor Kieboom in the 3 hole with his 5 extra base hits and 6 RBIs in 96 ABs this season. There's Michael Curry, who has to be nearing exhaustion as he's needlessly being forced to catch every day, down under .230 in average with a K in almost 37% of his ABs on the season. I'm not trying to knock these guys.... But King shouldn't be at the top, Kieboom shouldn't hit 3rd, and Curry needs a day off periodically. When you look at our offensive numbers, wouldn't you think that we should try something different?
-I hated it for Patrick Sullivan yesterday. He's our best defensive 1B, and just failed to make a routine play that he could probably make 200 times in a row with no trouble.... Stricklin said of the game that he doesn't believe in bad luck.... I generally agree that one typically makes his own opportunities and that "luck" favors the prepared man... there are any number of cliches that you can place on it.... BUT, I would argue that the occurrence of a extrememly rare event, following immediately by a consequence realized only (or in part) because of the rare event occurrence is pretty much the definition of "bad luck".... We shouldn't have been down 2-0 at the top of the 1st. And it was unlucky that we were. Now, with that said, we still can't fall behind Woodman 3-1 and then throw something right down the middle of the plate. And while Stricklin is opining about not believing in bad luck, he was sure to mention that Woodman's ball got "up in the wind".... Of course, as soon as the ball left Woodman's bat, Scott screamed "shit" in the dugout. He knew it was a HR immediately and it would've been a HR with no wind. So, it was bad luck that Woodman got that AB with a guy on 1st, it wasn't bad luck that he blasted the baseball off the top quarter of the scoreboard.
-Someone pointed out yesterday that three times this weekend we've had a runner on 2nd, hit a liner or a ground ball into the OF, and then held that runner at 3rd. I almost lost my mind when we did that with Steven Wrenn yesterday. Make the other guy make a play. Getting a run right there on a play at the plate can really pump some life into the dugout. Holding the guy (needlessly) at 3rd base has got to suppress the momentum in our dugout. Alternatively, do you think Ole Miss was glad that we held Wrenn at 3rd there? I mean, look at where we are in the order too.... I'm getting irritated just thinking back on it.... Daeley is a better 3b coach that Osborne, but Daeley has seemingly gotten a lot more conservative since 2014 and it's coming at a time when we absolutely cannot afford it.
-We've lost 7 straight SEC games since that gutsy, inspirational win over Florida to open that series. 7 straight. But what's worse, we were never really in any of those 7.... We kept it close with Ole Miss on Friday night and had our chances, but to me, it never seemed like we were going to find a rally and take the lead late in that one. Same thing yesterday.... There's nothing "unlucky" about this 7 game conference skid, to me anyway.
-Texas A&M shutout Vanderbilt twice this weekend. Vanderbilt shutout A&M the other game. Those two teams combined to score 65 runs against us.
-Seems like everyone is stuck on 7. Both Arkansas and Auburn took leads into the 9th inning last night, but couldn't hold them.... The Arkansas loss had to be particularly galling as they were cruising to an easy win over LSU until things got sideways for them late. Tennessee is now at 7 wins also. It's clear that the bottom two in the league will come from two of us, Arkansas, Auburn, Tennessee, and Missouri. At least we do get to play Missouri and Tennessee over the final two weekends.
-We are 7-16 in league play now. That was our record after 23 SEC games a season ago, as well. As for this weekend, Ole Miss is just better than we are. So too is the majority of the SEC, I'm afraid. I don't disagree with Stricklin that our seniors (and juniors, for that matter) deserve to play in the NCAAT. They've put the work in, they've done what's been asked of them.
-I hated it for Patrick Sullivan yesterday. He's our best defensive 1B, and just failed to make a routine play that he could probably make 200 times in a row with no trouble.... Stricklin said of the game that he doesn't believe in bad luck.... I generally agree that one typically makes his own opportunities and that "luck" favors the prepared man... there are any number of cliches that you can place on it.... BUT, I would argue that the occurrence of a extrememly rare event, following immediately by a consequence realized only (or in part) because of the rare event occurrence is pretty much the definition of "bad luck".... We shouldn't have been down 2-0 at the top of the 1st. And it was unlucky that we were. Now, with that said, we still can't fall behind Woodman 3-1 and then throw something right down the middle of the plate. And while Stricklin is opining about not believing in bad luck, he was sure to mention that Woodman's ball got "up in the wind".... Of course, as soon as the ball left Woodman's bat, Scott screamed "shit" in the dugout. He knew it was a HR immediately and it would've been a HR with no wind. So, it was bad luck that Woodman got that AB with a guy on 1st, it wasn't bad luck that he blasted the baseball off the top quarter of the scoreboard.
-Someone pointed out yesterday that three times this weekend we've had a runner on 2nd, hit a liner or a ground ball into the OF, and then held that runner at 3rd. I almost lost my mind when we did that with Steven Wrenn yesterday. Make the other guy make a play. Getting a run right there on a play at the plate can really pump some life into the dugout. Holding the guy (needlessly) at 3rd base has got to suppress the momentum in our dugout. Alternatively, do you think Ole Miss was glad that we held Wrenn at 3rd there? I mean, look at where we are in the order too.... I'm getting irritated just thinking back on it.... Daeley is a better 3b coach that Osborne, but Daeley has seemingly gotten a lot more conservative since 2014 and it's coming at a time when we absolutely cannot afford it.
-We've lost 7 straight SEC games since that gutsy, inspirational win over Florida to open that series. 7 straight. But what's worse, we were never really in any of those 7.... We kept it close with Ole Miss on Friday night and had our chances, but to me, it never seemed like we were going to find a rally and take the lead late in that one. Same thing yesterday.... There's nothing "unlucky" about this 7 game conference skid, to me anyway.
-Texas A&M shutout Vanderbilt twice this weekend. Vanderbilt shutout A&M the other game. Those two teams combined to score 65 runs against us.
-Seems like everyone is stuck on 7. Both Arkansas and Auburn took leads into the 9th inning last night, but couldn't hold them.... The Arkansas loss had to be particularly galling as they were cruising to an easy win over LSU until things got sideways for them late. Tennessee is now at 7 wins also. It's clear that the bottom two in the league will come from two of us, Arkansas, Auburn, Tennessee, and Missouri. At least we do get to play Missouri and Tennessee over the final two weekends.
-We are 7-16 in league play now. That was our record after 23 SEC games a season ago, as well. As for this weekend, Ole Miss is just better than we are. So too is the majority of the SEC, I'm afraid. I don't disagree with Stricklin that our seniors (and juniors, for that matter) deserve to play in the NCAAT. They've put the work in, they've done what's been asked of them.