-First, the commentary on Alabama over the last few days appeared to be accurate tonight. Those guys really scrapped. They were overmatched tonight and they still fought hard and hung around longer than I thought they would. If you didn’t know that they were 7-20 coming into the game tonight, you’d have thought they were closer to 13-14. They came out to win tonight and I respect that.
-Not often that you see a catcher hitting leadoff. I thought their catcher was probably their best position player. He was really good behind the plate. Strong arm, very fast release, blocks the plate well. I think Mason Meadows is the best defensive catcher that we’ve seen this year, but their guy is #2 as far as I’m concerned. Speaking of strong arms, their RF certainly has one, although he’s wildly inaccurate. That’s got to be tough for Daeley… you can’t REALLY run on that guy because he could put it close to the plate and then you’re way out.
-It was a little bit of everything for Cole Wilcox tonight. It took him 17 pitches to get through 2 innings, then took him 18 pitches to get an out in the 3rd inning. He had to grind tonight and I kept thinking that he was going to get lifted… and he probably does if this game is more consequential. He made a lot of big pitches tonight in some tough spots. Emerson Hancock had a lot of outings like that last year and one thing I always admired about Emerson as a freshman was that he never let things get out of control. I think we saw that with Wilcox tonight. The kind of improvement that Wilcox has made in-season, I can’t wait to see the jump he makes as a sophomore. Emerson and Wilcox back to back next year is going to be something else… and it’s possible, I’m not predicting it, but it’s possible those two guys go 1/1 in consecutive drafts.
-Offensively, it no longer feels that we’re sentenced to playing 2-1 games… We’ve really swung the bats well over the past two weeks. Cam Shepherd especially. What he’s done, really going back to the game in Augusta, is what I thought he’d do all season. It’s not just him, obviously. John Cable continues to get hits in big spots, Patrick Sullivan had a good night, Mason Meadows and Chaney Rogers got some big hits as well. This is easily the best that we’ve swung the bats all season. It feels like this team is starting to peak… obviously this is when you want to do it.
-Alabama had a couple of errors tonight and a couple of other plays that weren’t made. That was similar to the Florida series… we’re getting outs on a lot of those balls, and they aren’t.
-For the first few seasons of his tenure, Scott Stricklin used to badger the umpires, day after day, trying to get a balk call. That’s calmed down a good bit, but he had his best ever non-balk call argument tonight, I think… holy cow, I don’t know how the umpires missed that in the 6th inning. Stricklin was pretty hot under the collar, as he should have been… “There’s FOUR GUYS OUT THERE. How come none of you saw it? That’s embarrassing. FOUR GUYS.” We probably should have put more than 2 on the board that inning and would have had the balk been called, but it all evened out later.
-Kristofak was good in relief of Wilcox, and I thought that was the best I’ve ever seen Justin Glover tonight. The top of the 9th inning was a thing of beauty.
-I thought about not posting this, and I know this sounds unnecessarily negative, but I wish that someone would tell our PA guy that he’s already got a microphone up there. He doesn’t need to shout into it. It’s hard to talk to the person sitting next to you when the PA is going… shouldn’t be that way.
-Doing some scoreboard watching, it looks like Vanderbilt, in what was probably a really screwy game, came back and beat Kentucky 16-10. So Vanderbilt initially lead 9-0, then Kentucky scored 10 straight to take the lead 10-9, then there was a rain delay, then Vanderbilt scores the next 7. I bet that stadium up in Lexington was mighty quiet after the delay. So, we’re probably not going to win the SEC regular season title, although I still think that Kentucky has a great shot to beat Vanderbilt with Thompson pitching on Saturday. South Carolina is not exactly dying a soldier’s death right now… at one point they were down 24-3 at Miss State before finally losing 24-7. I think that we’re probably going to end up 4th. I still think we’re getting a national seed.
-Lastly… watching the game tonight, I’ve watched us over the past several years lose so many games like that… basically where the roles were flipped. Where we’re just trying to win salvage something, where we fight pretty hard, but just don’t have enough pitching, just aren’t good enough defensively, and just can’t do enough to get the W. What happened with Alabama tonight, we’ve been in that position before… a lot, actually. It just feels good to know that’s in the rear view mirror right now. Can’t tell you how many times we’ve been on the other end of that kind of game tonight… how many times you try to find the positives or try to figure out how it’s going to get better. I hope everyone is enjoying where we are now. Our baseball fan base isn’t huge, and it deserves this….
-Not often that you see a catcher hitting leadoff. I thought their catcher was probably their best position player. He was really good behind the plate. Strong arm, very fast release, blocks the plate well. I think Mason Meadows is the best defensive catcher that we’ve seen this year, but their guy is #2 as far as I’m concerned. Speaking of strong arms, their RF certainly has one, although he’s wildly inaccurate. That’s got to be tough for Daeley… you can’t REALLY run on that guy because he could put it close to the plate and then you’re way out.
-It was a little bit of everything for Cole Wilcox tonight. It took him 17 pitches to get through 2 innings, then took him 18 pitches to get an out in the 3rd inning. He had to grind tonight and I kept thinking that he was going to get lifted… and he probably does if this game is more consequential. He made a lot of big pitches tonight in some tough spots. Emerson Hancock had a lot of outings like that last year and one thing I always admired about Emerson as a freshman was that he never let things get out of control. I think we saw that with Wilcox tonight. The kind of improvement that Wilcox has made in-season, I can’t wait to see the jump he makes as a sophomore. Emerson and Wilcox back to back next year is going to be something else… and it’s possible, I’m not predicting it, but it’s possible those two guys go 1/1 in consecutive drafts.
-Offensively, it no longer feels that we’re sentenced to playing 2-1 games… We’ve really swung the bats well over the past two weeks. Cam Shepherd especially. What he’s done, really going back to the game in Augusta, is what I thought he’d do all season. It’s not just him, obviously. John Cable continues to get hits in big spots, Patrick Sullivan had a good night, Mason Meadows and Chaney Rogers got some big hits as well. This is easily the best that we’ve swung the bats all season. It feels like this team is starting to peak… obviously this is when you want to do it.
-Alabama had a couple of errors tonight and a couple of other plays that weren’t made. That was similar to the Florida series… we’re getting outs on a lot of those balls, and they aren’t.
-For the first few seasons of his tenure, Scott Stricklin used to badger the umpires, day after day, trying to get a balk call. That’s calmed down a good bit, but he had his best ever non-balk call argument tonight, I think… holy cow, I don’t know how the umpires missed that in the 6th inning. Stricklin was pretty hot under the collar, as he should have been… “There’s FOUR GUYS OUT THERE. How come none of you saw it? That’s embarrassing. FOUR GUYS.” We probably should have put more than 2 on the board that inning and would have had the balk been called, but it all evened out later.
-Kristofak was good in relief of Wilcox, and I thought that was the best I’ve ever seen Justin Glover tonight. The top of the 9th inning was a thing of beauty.
-I thought about not posting this, and I know this sounds unnecessarily negative, but I wish that someone would tell our PA guy that he’s already got a microphone up there. He doesn’t need to shout into it. It’s hard to talk to the person sitting next to you when the PA is going… shouldn’t be that way.
-Doing some scoreboard watching, it looks like Vanderbilt, in what was probably a really screwy game, came back and beat Kentucky 16-10. So Vanderbilt initially lead 9-0, then Kentucky scored 10 straight to take the lead 10-9, then there was a rain delay, then Vanderbilt scores the next 7. I bet that stadium up in Lexington was mighty quiet after the delay. So, we’re probably not going to win the SEC regular season title, although I still think that Kentucky has a great shot to beat Vanderbilt with Thompson pitching on Saturday. South Carolina is not exactly dying a soldier’s death right now… at one point they were down 24-3 at Miss State before finally losing 24-7. I think that we’re probably going to end up 4th. I still think we’re getting a national seed.
-Lastly… watching the game tonight, I’ve watched us over the past several years lose so many games like that… basically where the roles were flipped. Where we’re just trying to win salvage something, where we fight pretty hard, but just don’t have enough pitching, just aren’t good enough defensively, and just can’t do enough to get the W. What happened with Alabama tonight, we’ve been in that position before… a lot, actually. It just feels good to know that’s in the rear view mirror right now. Can’t tell you how many times we’ve been on the other end of that kind of game tonight… how many times you try to find the positives or try to figure out how it’s going to get better. I hope everyone is enjoying where we are now. Our baseball fan base isn’t huge, and it deserves this….
