First of all on Routt- to me, this was really his only bad start that I could totally pin on him. The other starts we played horrible defense in two of them- and I was at one of the games where he made pitches to get out of the inning TWICE only to have our defense boot the ball. The other start, we score one run for him after he pitches well for eight innings. I think it's too early to give up on him still, and as far as the velocity and losing movement thing, well if he's struggling with that, he needs to go back to his old self. Only at MSU do players improve their skills and still manage to regress.
I am pissed off at Devin Jones for not stepping up. He loses the closer job to a freshman, and then he looks horrible in a loss we could not afford to Texas A&M CC, a team that he should have dominated.
I'm not upset about losing to Oklahoma and UCLA- who pitched a guy that was a freshman All-American last year- at a neutral site. Our team had not played anyone with credentials like these two teams and they had not played away from Dudy-Noble until this past weekend. We needed to play these games to get ready for the SEC. Winning would have been a bonus. I do think that we will learn from this and make progress.
I am upset about losing to Texas A&M CC. That was unexcusable, and thank God for Conner Powers stepping up and taking over the second game.
But what we have seen this year is probably going to be typical of the entire year. I think we are going to have weekends where we look good, maybe with some holes here and there, but good. And then weekends where we want to drive over to UAB and kick Polk in the nuts.
My expectation for the SEC play is 12 wins. That comes out to a 12-18 record. That may be good enough to be the eighth seed. If we finish ninth, with our schedule and RPI, I think we make a regional so long as we have a winning overall record.
What I would do for UF is first of all not announce my starters. I would make them guess at who is going to pitch to keep them from setting a lineup that is LH or RH heavy to try to give us an advantage. I know that they would guess Routt on Fri., but what I would do is pitch Houston on Fri because he has pitched well, he is a senior, he has started for us before, and he has earned it. I would also ask him to go 4-5 innings, and then bring in Caleb Reed, and then go from there. I would start Stratton on Sat. because he is a freshman and I don't want to put too much pressure on him of being the opening SEC game guy as a freshman. And to get him a better matchup. Then I would start Routt on Sunday, which hopefully would give us a mismatch on the mound and allow us to maybe steal a win.
