Thought on baseball after the last 4 games.

Meh, it’s a long season. Either they show up or they don’t. I think everyone will be happier in a few days. We are a good team, but some of the guys need to step up and rise to the level of your potential.

I think we win the national championship. We are a bad ball/strike call away from beating UCLA, and the USM game was very close in an extremely hostile environment

NO, the SKY IS FALLING!!

I posted last week that I thought 2-2 was an acceptable result. We lost two games by one run each to top 10 teams.
This team has a high ceiling potentially, but they are making way too many fundamental mistakes. Examples from these games- not scoring baserunners from third with less than 2 out multiple times, giving up runs twice on wild pitch third strikes, dropping a routine pop-up to give up a run. We also got several bad breaks - Nunalee missed two homers by 5-6 feet combined last night, Reese hit 2 balls to centerfield Sunday that would have been out of every stadium that we will play in the remainder of the season, the bs missed ball strike call on Sunday, & Woodson's hit to the right center gap bouncing out for a ground rule double. It is difficult to imagine making that many mistakes & getting that many bad breaks again in any two games the rest of the year, but the Dead Injuns will do their thing on some level. Hopefully they are thru 17'ing us for a while.

I'm always of the opinion that these close losses make you tougher and focus more on getting better. The key is to not make losing a habit, but learn to close out the tough games. Time will tell and I feel pretty dang good about our talent and great about our coaching.

Willow Grove Dawg said:

I posted last week that I thought 2-2 was an acceptable result. We lost two games by one run each to top 10 teams.
This team has a high ceiling potentially, but they are making way too many fundamental mistakes. Examples from these games- not scoring baserunners from third with less than 2 out multiple times, giving up runs twice on wild pitch third strikes, dropping a routine pop-up to give up a run. We also got several bad breaks - Nunalee missed two homers by 5-6 feet combined last night, Reese hit 2 balls to centerfield Sunday that would have been out of every stadium that we will play in the remainder of the season, the bs missed ball strike call on Sunday, & Woodson's hit to the right center gap bouncing out for a ground rule double. It is difficult to imagine making that many mistakes & getting that many bad breaks again in any two games the rest of the year, but the Dead Injuns will do their thing on some level. Hopefully they are thru 17'ing us for a while.

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We have lots of talent and are a very good ball club. I am a little surprised that we are as sloppy as we are in a few areas under BOC. Baserunning being the most glaring along with multiple occasions of not running hard out of the box on long fly balls. Not sure we will ever be a 'great' defensive team because we have guys playing at 2nd, SS and 3rd that are more hitters than they are top level defenders. Just a trade off we have to make to keep the offense raking. Also, I think Milewski is likely the best defensive catcher we have but he's had a back problem for the last couple of weeks. Anyway, likely one reason we have not been doing a good job blocking up the ball on pitches (cost us 2 runs last night).

What the last week showed is that what LSU Shreveport did going 59-0 last year in the NAIA is unbelievable. Think of all the things in that UCLA game that had to happen for us to end up with an L. The ball bounces over the fence, two hitters avoid getting hit with the bases loaded on pitches that would have hit them if they stood still, The ump blows a ball 4 call with the bases loaded, our pitcher hits a guy that just stands there when the ball it at them, Dude hits a 2 run HR when UCLA needed it. Baseball is so hard to win every game no matter the talent you are playing against.

patdog said:

This is still a very good team. Issues we need to work out are:
Need a couple of guys to claim the #3 and #4 starter spots.
Need a couple more guys to step up and be consistent out of the bullpen.
Need to get Milewski back behind the plate. Whether he can hit or not (and he did last year), we need his defense and the other 2 guys just don't provide that.

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I agree. Very talented team. We just need to get better at the little things that can mean the difference between a win and a loss in these very close games.

I think we’re a host and will have a definite chance to be a Top 8 seed and play for a long time in June. We’re super talented and super deep.

It’s interesting to look at the lay of the land on our SEC schedule after 3+ weeks of play:

Arkansas - has been a bit underwhelming, feels like a more winnable road series for us than usual.

Vandy - really struggling, need to take that series at home

Ole Miss - won’t be easy especially in Oxford, but we are the better team and have kinda owned them for the last decade.

Georgia - very good team but we get them at home

Tennessee - looking more wobbly than expected, plus we get them at home

SC - road series but they might be the worst team in the league this year, even behind Missouri

LSU - super talented but they gotta come here

Texas - toughest series we will play, most likely

Auburn - very good but they gotta come here

A&M - similar to the OM series, solid team and will be tough on the road, but I think we are better.

I feel like we stack up well against the rest of the league, but obviously we will hit some bumpy spots given that it’s a very good league again this year.

Good news = our players from last year might have actually gotten better. Bad news = the transfers are kind of struggling (minus Woodson and Tico). If the transfers continue to get better, we will dominate. I think Teel is the key. If he gets going, the other new guys will too. He's the Alpha. I like this team to make a super and I think we host.

msualohadog said:

Good news = our players from last year might have actually gotten better. Bad news = the transfers are kind of struggling (minus Woodson and Tico). If the transfers continue to get better, we will dominate. I think Teel is the key. If he gets going, the other new guys will too. He's the Alpha. I like this team to make a super and I think we host.

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Agree 100% on Teel. We need him to be the leadoff hitter he was advertised to be. Maybe it's been a slow start so far, but he just doesn't look all that comfortable at the plate yet. In the 9th against UCLA it just seemed like he was begging for a walk rather than trying to put the ball in play to score the winning run.