-First, I really had no idea what to expect going into the series finale. Friday night was such a tough loss... With the "chamber of commerce" day on Saturday in Starkville, I figured Miss State would draw a huge, loud crowd and would come out of the gate firing on all cylinders. It didn't really happen that way, thankfully.... The day for me started off well enough with some lunch at this place called The Little Dooey, which I understand to be something of an institution in Starkville. It's a big place, that's for sure, and it was obvious that they'd expanded it several times over the years. They specialize in crawfish, catfish, and BBQ.... I went with the brisket, waffle fries, and potato salad.... Really good stuff.... Sitting outside, I got to watch the guy cook about 10 pounds of crawfish as well. It's funny how stuff like that puts you in a good frame of mind. All that had no bearing at all on the outcome of the game, but leaving there and heading over to the park, I just felt really good and upbeat. It certainly wound up being a good day, and one that I won't forget for awhile.
-UGA has been playing baseball since 1886 and has never, at least with verification, played a regulation game as long as yesterday. I mean, we were about two hours in and still in the 4th inning, and you just knew that there were plenty of pitching changes ahead.... The game featured 22 walks, 25 hits, and 1 HPB. Subtracting the two HRs, that's 46 base runners, by my count. We know how things slow down with men on base. I'd much rather sit through a long game that we win than a short game that we lose, but we really need to do something about the tempo. It just takes so long to get the pitches called, especially when guys get on, and I think that's the main reason these games tend to drag. You add that in with all the mid-inning pitching changes and I guess it's not hard to see a 4 hour game happening.... 4:52 though? Wow. To put that in some different perspective, it took me 4:50 to drive from the parking lot in Starkville to my parking garage here in Atlanta... and I stopped once to grab some dinner and a second time for gas, and took my time at both places. Still, it took two minutes less to make that trip than it did to play that baseball game.
-I was really proud of LJ Talley for the bounce back. It would have been easy for him to go in the tank after Friday night, but he really answered the bell nicely. The HR was great, obviously, but his bases loaded walk was a HUGE "at bat" (since it's not considered an AB officially) as well. You get a freshman who hits his first HR of his career in a huge spot, you worry about him being hyper aggressive on his next AB, especially with the bases loaded. Instead Talley never took the bat off his shoulder. He was going to make Miss State throw a strike, and they never did. Lot of maturity there.
-I really liked the flopping of Skyler Weber and Stephen Wrenn. Weber is more of a natural 2 hole hitter and Wrenn is more of a natural leadoff hitter. Both guys responded well, combining to go 5-10 with 2 RBIs, 2 walks, and 1 K on the afternoon. This is the second consecutive road SEC series where Sykler has had a 4 hit game, also.
-The back to back HRs from Kieboom and Talley.... If you were at the track, that ticket would have paid A LOT of money.... Kieboom had a really good day, I thought, and should earn himself some more playing time moving forward. That's the thing too.... You don't need 3 hits every day from the bottom 5 hitters in the order, you just need some production and some threat. Both Kieboom and Talley gave you that yesterday.
-Talley hit for the "RBI Cycle" in the series. I don't know if that's a real thing or not, but it should be.... Talley collected an RBI on: a sacrifice, a hit by pitch, a walk, a solo HR, and a base hit.
-Bo Tucker will probably go in the rotation next week. I thought for sure he'd start yesterday when they didn't go to him Friday night. I think he definitely earned a crack at it yesterday....
-Finally, I had to roll my eyes a little bit at this quote from Stricklin after the game. I wouldn't bring this up otherwise, but I think that it's illustrative and probably would not have been said if yesterday's game was at home or on TV or if we had more fans there (in other words, if more people actually saw the game).
“We found a way to get some toughness after the third inning when I called them up and let them have it,” Georgia’s Ike Cousins head baseball coach Scott Stricklin said. “I said we need to find some heart, we’re down 4-2 and playing the worst baseball...."
To me, and I think to most everyone else who watched it, that wasn't when the game turned. After the third inning, we responded with a couple hits and a long RBI double (that sure looked like a HR when it left the bat) before grounding into a DP to end the inning. We scored one run and took the field in the bottom of the 4th tied 2-2. We then gave up a bunt single, allowed the runner to move to 3rd on an error on a pickoff play, then walked the next hitter. Bo Tucker came on to pitch and THAT represented the actual turning point.... not just Bo entering the game, but what happened after that. [Stricklin probably mis-spoke. I assume he meant after the 4th inning, as that was when we were down 4-2]
Tucker K'd the first hitter and gave a demonstrative fist pump and yelled something.... nothing at the Miss State dugout and nothing directed toward the batter, "hell yeah" or something like that was what it sounded like. The Miss State players started chirping from their dugout. Bo then gives up a double down the LF line. As Bo is backing up home plate, the Miss State CF Robson, who had just scored, said something to Bo. Bo said something back. It wasn't a face to face kind of thing, both guys were basically were looking over their shoulders at each other. Then Robson said something else. Skyler Weber starts toward their dugout and said something back to Robson, who was just about in the dugout by that time, and everyone else who had now moved to that end of the dugout. I wish I'd been able to take a picture of it, Skyler standing 5 feet from their dugout, by himself for a minute, with almost the entire Mississippi State team in front of him. The umpires diffused it and Gavin Collins from State did a really good job too of settling things down also. A couple of guys came out of our dugout, but it never escalated beyond that.... our coaches made sure of that also.
THAT is when the game really turned. That swing of emotion didn't come after the 4th inning, it came during the bottom of the 4th. Trevor Kieboom lead off the 5th with a HR and then Talley followed him. Our side showed as much emotion on the Talley HR, that tied it, as they had all year long. From the point of the exchange with Robson, it was a different ball game... and the stat sheet bears that out also.
I was really proud of the way we responded to that and was proud of Skyler and Bo for showing that kind of fortitude as well. If you want to tell me that the coach getting everyone together and "letting them have it" provided a bigger spark than that, then, ok.
Scott Stricklin never takes any blame for a loss, other than the generic "we have to play better and that's my responsibility" stuff that every coach says. It's very interesting that yesterday the first person he credited with the win was himself. I don't know what he said on the radio afterward, but that's the exact quote from the UGA release.
Whatever he said to the team after the [4th] inning, I'm sure they've all heard it before. They seem to have at least one such dugout "conference" every game, it seems, and I can't imagine the message is a whole lot different in any of those. If Stricklin believes in his heart that is what changed yesterday's game, then, I guess, let him believe that. If he was banking on the fact that few Georgia fans actually saw the game and would not be in any position to dispute his assertion, that presents a different discussion and begs some other questions. I'm not sure which side of that is better.... To me though, that was the most eye opening public statement he's made this season.
-Great win yesterday. Georgia fans everywhere should have been very proud of that showing.... I know I was.
-UGA has been playing baseball since 1886 and has never, at least with verification, played a regulation game as long as yesterday. I mean, we were about two hours in and still in the 4th inning, and you just knew that there were plenty of pitching changes ahead.... The game featured 22 walks, 25 hits, and 1 HPB. Subtracting the two HRs, that's 46 base runners, by my count. We know how things slow down with men on base. I'd much rather sit through a long game that we win than a short game that we lose, but we really need to do something about the tempo. It just takes so long to get the pitches called, especially when guys get on, and I think that's the main reason these games tend to drag. You add that in with all the mid-inning pitching changes and I guess it's not hard to see a 4 hour game happening.... 4:52 though? Wow. To put that in some different perspective, it took me 4:50 to drive from the parking lot in Starkville to my parking garage here in Atlanta... and I stopped once to grab some dinner and a second time for gas, and took my time at both places. Still, it took two minutes less to make that trip than it did to play that baseball game.
-I was really proud of LJ Talley for the bounce back. It would have been easy for him to go in the tank after Friday night, but he really answered the bell nicely. The HR was great, obviously, but his bases loaded walk was a HUGE "at bat" (since it's not considered an AB officially) as well. You get a freshman who hits his first HR of his career in a huge spot, you worry about him being hyper aggressive on his next AB, especially with the bases loaded. Instead Talley never took the bat off his shoulder. He was going to make Miss State throw a strike, and they never did. Lot of maturity there.
-I really liked the flopping of Skyler Weber and Stephen Wrenn. Weber is more of a natural 2 hole hitter and Wrenn is more of a natural leadoff hitter. Both guys responded well, combining to go 5-10 with 2 RBIs, 2 walks, and 1 K on the afternoon. This is the second consecutive road SEC series where Sykler has had a 4 hit game, also.
-The back to back HRs from Kieboom and Talley.... If you were at the track, that ticket would have paid A LOT of money.... Kieboom had a really good day, I thought, and should earn himself some more playing time moving forward. That's the thing too.... You don't need 3 hits every day from the bottom 5 hitters in the order, you just need some production and some threat. Both Kieboom and Talley gave you that yesterday.
-Talley hit for the "RBI Cycle" in the series. I don't know if that's a real thing or not, but it should be.... Talley collected an RBI on: a sacrifice, a hit by pitch, a walk, a solo HR, and a base hit.
-Bo Tucker will probably go in the rotation next week. I thought for sure he'd start yesterday when they didn't go to him Friday night. I think he definitely earned a crack at it yesterday....
-Finally, I had to roll my eyes a little bit at this quote from Stricklin after the game. I wouldn't bring this up otherwise, but I think that it's illustrative and probably would not have been said if yesterday's game was at home or on TV or if we had more fans there (in other words, if more people actually saw the game).
“We found a way to get some toughness after the third inning when I called them up and let them have it,” Georgia’s Ike Cousins head baseball coach Scott Stricklin said. “I said we need to find some heart, we’re down 4-2 and playing the worst baseball...."
To me, and I think to most everyone else who watched it, that wasn't when the game turned. After the third inning, we responded with a couple hits and a long RBI double (that sure looked like a HR when it left the bat) before grounding into a DP to end the inning. We scored one run and took the field in the bottom of the 4th tied 2-2. We then gave up a bunt single, allowed the runner to move to 3rd on an error on a pickoff play, then walked the next hitter. Bo Tucker came on to pitch and THAT represented the actual turning point.... not just Bo entering the game, but what happened after that. [Stricklin probably mis-spoke. I assume he meant after the 4th inning, as that was when we were down 4-2]
Tucker K'd the first hitter and gave a demonstrative fist pump and yelled something.... nothing at the Miss State dugout and nothing directed toward the batter, "hell yeah" or something like that was what it sounded like. The Miss State players started chirping from their dugout. Bo then gives up a double down the LF line. As Bo is backing up home plate, the Miss State CF Robson, who had just scored, said something to Bo. Bo said something back. It wasn't a face to face kind of thing, both guys were basically were looking over their shoulders at each other. Then Robson said something else. Skyler Weber starts toward their dugout and said something back to Robson, who was just about in the dugout by that time, and everyone else who had now moved to that end of the dugout. I wish I'd been able to take a picture of it, Skyler standing 5 feet from their dugout, by himself for a minute, with almost the entire Mississippi State team in front of him. The umpires diffused it and Gavin Collins from State did a really good job too of settling things down also. A couple of guys came out of our dugout, but it never escalated beyond that.... our coaches made sure of that also.
THAT is when the game really turned. That swing of emotion didn't come after the 4th inning, it came during the bottom of the 4th. Trevor Kieboom lead off the 5th with a HR and then Talley followed him. Our side showed as much emotion on the Talley HR, that tied it, as they had all year long. From the point of the exchange with Robson, it was a different ball game... and the stat sheet bears that out also.
I was really proud of the way we responded to that and was proud of Skyler and Bo for showing that kind of fortitude as well. If you want to tell me that the coach getting everyone together and "letting them have it" provided a bigger spark than that, then, ok.
Scott Stricklin never takes any blame for a loss, other than the generic "we have to play better and that's my responsibility" stuff that every coach says. It's very interesting that yesterday the first person he credited with the win was himself. I don't know what he said on the radio afterward, but that's the exact quote from the UGA release.
Whatever he said to the team after the [4th] inning, I'm sure they've all heard it before. They seem to have at least one such dugout "conference" every game, it seems, and I can't imagine the message is a whole lot different in any of those. If Stricklin believes in his heart that is what changed yesterday's game, then, I guess, let him believe that. If he was banking on the fact that few Georgia fans actually saw the game and would not be in any position to dispute his assertion, that presents a different discussion and begs some other questions. I'm not sure which side of that is better.... To me though, that was the most eye opening public statement he's made this season.
-Great win yesterday. Georgia fans everywhere should have been very proud of that showing.... I know I was.
