The last time we played UAB was 2013. We got them one this same weekend that season and came into the series at just 2-6 and off an embarrassing loss at Georgia State in the midweek. UAB proved to be the weakest opponent we played that year, or maybe more accurately, proved to be our easiest series. We outscored the Blazers 33-6 over the three game sweep and pounded out 43 hits in the process. UAB would finish that season at 23-36.
This should be a better Blazer squad that we see this season. I spoke to someone who has seen them play and whose opinion I value highly. He told me that they are solid fundamentally and will give us trouble.
They come to Athens at 5-3 after having to cancel their game last night against Alabama State due to weather. They lost at Alabama State in earlier midweek action and lost to Troy on Tuesday night. They started the season by sweeping our old friends from Creighton in a three game set. Last weekend they took the first two from Valparaiso before dropping the series finale. This weekend will be their first action outside of the state of Alabama and Friday night will be their second road game overall.
Tomorrow night, we’ll see Garrett Whitlock, a tall, lanky draft eligible sophomore from Snellville. Whitlock is a righty and, if he stays healthy, has a chance to go pretty high in the draft this June. He was rated as the #3 pitching prospect in Conference USA by D1Baseball. He’s been fantastic on the young season, going 2-0 with a 0.53 ERA. He has 11 K’s to 1 walk in 17 innings and opponents are hitting just .182 against him. He went CG last weekend. In his 8 innings of shutout baseball to open the season, he got a ton of groundball outs… It looked a little more balanced last weekend, but it looks like he’s really overmatched both teams he’s seen so far. With Whitlock being a Georgia guy, I’m sure he’s going to be primed tomorrow night.
We should see Tanner Graham on Saturday afternoon. Graham is another sophomore righty. He’s listed at 6’3, 212 lbs and is hails from Killen Alabama. This guy made 13 starts for the Blazers and worked a team high 71 1/3 innings as a freshman last season. This year, he’s 1-0 with a 0.90 ERA and a .194 average against. He’s thrown 10 innings so far on the year and has 10 K’s and 1 walk. It looked like he pitched well last weekend, but I imagine his pitch count got pretty high. He went 4 innings against Valpo and allowed only 3 hits and 1 run. UAB committed 5 errors on that day (they’ve committed 4 in their other 7 games) and I imagine that drove up his pitch count.
On Sunday, we should see Ryan Ruggles, a junior lefty from Sheffield Alabama. Ruggles’ numbers are not as eye popping as the first two guys. He’s 1-1 on the year with a 2.25 ERA and .233 average against. He has 5 strike outs, but 4 walks, in 8 innings. Ruggles didn’t fare very well last weekend, going only 3 innings and allowing 3 hits and 2 earned runs with 3 walks and 2 strikeouts. Ruggles has some experience, though. He started 6 games as a freshman, making the Conference USA All Freshman team, and started 15 games last year. He’s not really a strike out guy, his career high in K’s is only 6, so I imagine we can expect to put some balls in play against him. You always would rather take your chances making the defense make a play, but you’ve got to make sure you get your pitch… Chase Cohen didn’t miss a lot of bats last weekend for Ga Southern, but wound up being very effective for them while he was out there.
(After I wrote this, I saw in the game notes on GeorgiaDogs that UAB has left things TBA for Saturday and Sunday. I anticipate we'll see Graham and Ruggles, but they may be injured or sick. No idea why they have it TBA)
UAB has pretty much done this all with pitching this season. They have a staff ERA of 2.92 and an batting average against of .252. They’re averaging 7 strikeouts a game. We can say what we want about their competition so far, but those are solid numbers.
Offensively, UAB’s numbers are decidedly not solid. No other way to put it. The Blazers have yet to hit a home run on the season. They don’t run very much (6-9 in stolen bases). They have just a .232 team batting average and are slugging only .312. I was thinking that our team OBP of .332 really needs to improve (it does), but UAB is only sitting at .311 in that mark. The Blazers have recorded just 16 extra base hits this season (we have 22).
It’s hard to know what they’ll do in terms of an order this weekend. We saw Ga Southern making a lot of changes to their lineup last weekend. UAB used a number of pinch hitters and bench players in their game against Troy on Tuesday, trying, as their coach said “just to get something going.”
We’ll see Antonio Ralat at SS this weekend. He’s off to a good start. The sophomore from San Juan Puerto Rico, by way of Palm Beach State, is off to a good start, hitting .346/.455/.423. He’s their only regular over .270 in terms of average. Thomas Johns has done some DH’ing for UAB and is hitting .269/.345/.346. We may see him at catcher or 1st base this weekend. He’s listed at 6’0, 248 and is a freshman from Pinson Alabama. Price Visintainer is a junior from Vestaiva Alabama, by way of Shelton State Community College. Visintainer should play 3B this weekend. He’s hitting .241/.290/.448 for UAB, having accounted for 25% of their extra base hits on the year.
The Blazers are fielding .972. They’ve only allowed 1 steal in 4 attempts.
UAB is coached by Brian Shoop. This is his 27th year as a head coach between Birmingham Southern and UAB. He was an assistant during the 1980s at Mississippi State under Ron Polk, which I imagine is one of the reasons why Polk is a volunteer assistant on Shoop’s staff now. Although Shoop has been at UAB since 2007, I think the fact that he is secure enough to have a legend like Ron Polk in the dugout says an awful lot about him as a coach. He should reach 1,000 career wins at some point this season.
I think that this is going to be a good test for us. UAB probably isn’t going to come in here and smash the ball all over the yard. They’re probably a lot closer offensively to what we saw last weekend than from College of Charleston. Whitlock is a good looking pitcher for them. Seeing a guy like him, like Bailey Ober two weeks ago, and Evan Challenger last week (although Challenger wasn’t as sharp) is very beneficial to us as we start looking toward league play. I didn’t really know what to think of this series until I started looking at UAB a few days ago. I think it’s pretty clear that they’re going to be a lot better than they were in 2013. I think our pitching can keep us in it this weekend, but we are going to have to lock in at the plate, especially tomorrow night.
This should be a better Blazer squad that we see this season. I spoke to someone who has seen them play and whose opinion I value highly. He told me that they are solid fundamentally and will give us trouble.
They come to Athens at 5-3 after having to cancel their game last night against Alabama State due to weather. They lost at Alabama State in earlier midweek action and lost to Troy on Tuesday night. They started the season by sweeping our old friends from Creighton in a three game set. Last weekend they took the first two from Valparaiso before dropping the series finale. This weekend will be their first action outside of the state of Alabama and Friday night will be their second road game overall.
Tomorrow night, we’ll see Garrett Whitlock, a tall, lanky draft eligible sophomore from Snellville. Whitlock is a righty and, if he stays healthy, has a chance to go pretty high in the draft this June. He was rated as the #3 pitching prospect in Conference USA by D1Baseball. He’s been fantastic on the young season, going 2-0 with a 0.53 ERA. He has 11 K’s to 1 walk in 17 innings and opponents are hitting just .182 against him. He went CG last weekend. In his 8 innings of shutout baseball to open the season, he got a ton of groundball outs… It looked a little more balanced last weekend, but it looks like he’s really overmatched both teams he’s seen so far. With Whitlock being a Georgia guy, I’m sure he’s going to be primed tomorrow night.
We should see Tanner Graham on Saturday afternoon. Graham is another sophomore righty. He’s listed at 6’3, 212 lbs and is hails from Killen Alabama. This guy made 13 starts for the Blazers and worked a team high 71 1/3 innings as a freshman last season. This year, he’s 1-0 with a 0.90 ERA and a .194 average against. He’s thrown 10 innings so far on the year and has 10 K’s and 1 walk. It looked like he pitched well last weekend, but I imagine his pitch count got pretty high. He went 4 innings against Valpo and allowed only 3 hits and 1 run. UAB committed 5 errors on that day (they’ve committed 4 in their other 7 games) and I imagine that drove up his pitch count.
On Sunday, we should see Ryan Ruggles, a junior lefty from Sheffield Alabama. Ruggles’ numbers are not as eye popping as the first two guys. He’s 1-1 on the year with a 2.25 ERA and .233 average against. He has 5 strike outs, but 4 walks, in 8 innings. Ruggles didn’t fare very well last weekend, going only 3 innings and allowing 3 hits and 2 earned runs with 3 walks and 2 strikeouts. Ruggles has some experience, though. He started 6 games as a freshman, making the Conference USA All Freshman team, and started 15 games last year. He’s not really a strike out guy, his career high in K’s is only 6, so I imagine we can expect to put some balls in play against him. You always would rather take your chances making the defense make a play, but you’ve got to make sure you get your pitch… Chase Cohen didn’t miss a lot of bats last weekend for Ga Southern, but wound up being very effective for them while he was out there.
(After I wrote this, I saw in the game notes on GeorgiaDogs that UAB has left things TBA for Saturday and Sunday. I anticipate we'll see Graham and Ruggles, but they may be injured or sick. No idea why they have it TBA)
UAB has pretty much done this all with pitching this season. They have a staff ERA of 2.92 and an batting average against of .252. They’re averaging 7 strikeouts a game. We can say what we want about their competition so far, but those are solid numbers.
Offensively, UAB’s numbers are decidedly not solid. No other way to put it. The Blazers have yet to hit a home run on the season. They don’t run very much (6-9 in stolen bases). They have just a .232 team batting average and are slugging only .312. I was thinking that our team OBP of .332 really needs to improve (it does), but UAB is only sitting at .311 in that mark. The Blazers have recorded just 16 extra base hits this season (we have 22).
It’s hard to know what they’ll do in terms of an order this weekend. We saw Ga Southern making a lot of changes to their lineup last weekend. UAB used a number of pinch hitters and bench players in their game against Troy on Tuesday, trying, as their coach said “just to get something going.”
We’ll see Antonio Ralat at SS this weekend. He’s off to a good start. The sophomore from San Juan Puerto Rico, by way of Palm Beach State, is off to a good start, hitting .346/.455/.423. He’s their only regular over .270 in terms of average. Thomas Johns has done some DH’ing for UAB and is hitting .269/.345/.346. We may see him at catcher or 1st base this weekend. He’s listed at 6’0, 248 and is a freshman from Pinson Alabama. Price Visintainer is a junior from Vestaiva Alabama, by way of Shelton State Community College. Visintainer should play 3B this weekend. He’s hitting .241/.290/.448 for UAB, having accounted for 25% of their extra base hits on the year.
The Blazers are fielding .972. They’ve only allowed 1 steal in 4 attempts.
UAB is coached by Brian Shoop. This is his 27th year as a head coach between Birmingham Southern and UAB. He was an assistant during the 1980s at Mississippi State under Ron Polk, which I imagine is one of the reasons why Polk is a volunteer assistant on Shoop’s staff now. Although Shoop has been at UAB since 2007, I think the fact that he is secure enough to have a legend like Ron Polk in the dugout says an awful lot about him as a coach. He should reach 1,000 career wins at some point this season.
I think that this is going to be a good test for us. UAB probably isn’t going to come in here and smash the ball all over the yard. They’re probably a lot closer offensively to what we saw last weekend than from College of Charleston. Whitlock is a good looking pitcher for them. Seeing a guy like him, like Bailey Ober two weeks ago, and Evan Challenger last week (although Challenger wasn’t as sharp) is very beneficial to us as we start looking toward league play. I didn’t really know what to think of this series until I started looking at UAB a few days ago. I think it’s pretty clear that they’re going to be a lot better than they were in 2013. I think our pitching can keep us in it this weekend, but we are going to have to lock in at the plate, especially tomorrow night.
