The bad:
1. Daryl Norris is in the doghouse at least to a degree it appears. Daryl has been a disappointment to me over his career in terms of his power. His hitting has been OK- over .300, I'll take that. But I'm surprised that CT Bradford has more home runs at this point in his career. And now he is doing his Michael Rutledge impression defensively.
2. Evan Mitchell continues to walk too many people, although I thought he got a little bit better as the game went on.
3. Brandon Woodruff isn't quite ready for the SEC rotation- yet.
4. We need to work on our base running a little bit. Especially Demarcus Henderson and CT Bradford. Demarcus should be a little bit better at stealing bases than he is. I think now that they have gotten his hitting better and his defense pretty solid, now they can add that dimension to his game. He just has to get the timing down a little bit better. In fairness to him, he got thrown out on what was scored/called a double steal, but unless I'm mistaken that was a ball in the dirt, and I'm not sure if the runner on first took off and Demarcus didn't at first and he realized what was happening too late, or if he just got a bad jump or what. CT got thrown out at second on a ball that he shouldn't have tried to take second on. That certainly could be on the first base coach- I'm not sure. But it has happened too many times this year.
The good:
1. Our offense is better. This is because we are taking better at bats and we are going the other way more than we did all of last year. We are also adding to our offense in the form of stolen bases and now we have that dimension because we are healthy and have more experience. I'm curious to see if we continue to steal and run like we did this weekend or if it was a case of St. Joseph's having a bad catcher. So far, we are running a LOT more as the weeks go by thus far. We came into this week with 11 stolen bases, and now we have 23. As far as effectiveness, we are 23 out of 29 in stolen base attempts. We'll see if that continues. Once Wes and Hunter get back 100%, we will then have a power dimension to go with everything else and we will have really good balance throughout the lineup.
2. Speaking of- it was good to see Wes and Hunter back in the lineup even if it was limited. My guess is they will be back by next weekend.
3. Jacob Lindgren has just about secured a spot in the weekend rotation. Graveman was OK- I still want our rotation to be Woodruff, Lindgren and Graveman. I think Will Cox should be the Sunday starter, but I have a feeling it's going to be Evan Mitchell.
4. Johnathan Holder passes Johnathan Papelbon on the all-time MSU saves list. He is now seventh overall. Nothing else to say about that. He got squeezed a little bit on Friday, worked through it, and then today he struck out the side. Someone mentioned being worried about him throwing his fastball early in the count yesterday and being worried about hitters adjusting- the reason he does that is because he is the closer and he normally comes in with a lead. Because of that, he knows that hitters are likely going to be taking pitches hoping that he falls behind. All closers at all levels do that. Watch a MLB game and if a closer falls behind, a lot of times they will act royally pissed- that's why. They know the hitter is going to be taking and all they have to do is throw strikes. Even if hitters adjust, his stuff is good enough that they're not likely to hit it anyway.
5. What I think the lineup should be. I'm sure Will James will take credit for this and then make fun of my for correctly predicting that Brett Pirtle would be our starting second baseman on opening day.
Frazier- SS
CT- CF
Rea- 1B
Porter- DH
Renfroe-RF
Detz- 2B
Flair- 3B
Slauter-C
Henderson- LF
6. The upcoming week- we have Valley and we have Woodruff who has hopefully cleaned up his mechanics out of the stretch. Hopefully we will hit better against them than we did against Grambling. Central Arkansas is a good team. They are 11-1 and they are a Southland Conference team, which is not a bad baseball conference. They have beaten a lot of SWAC team, sure- but they also beat Wichita State at home and their only loss is to Vanderbilt. With only three games, our pitching staff won't be stretched quite as much. We will have either Will Cox or Evan Mitchell out of the bullpen. Central Arkansas might be a regional team, so it's a good test before SEC play. You could make a strong argument that Central Arkansas is the best team we will have played up until this point.
7. We are 15-0 and we seem to be improving every week. I really like where we are heading in all facets of the game. Just like every year, the lineup will settle itself out by the time we start SEC play and hopefully we will play our best baseball at the end of the year like we have the past couple of years under Cohen. The encouraging thing to me is we really haven't hit our peak yet in my opinion because we are doing what we are doing without our two best power hitters and our ace at 100% for the most part.
1. Daryl Norris is in the doghouse at least to a degree it appears. Daryl has been a disappointment to me over his career in terms of his power. His hitting has been OK- over .300, I'll take that. But I'm surprised that CT Bradford has more home runs at this point in his career. And now he is doing his Michael Rutledge impression defensively.
2. Evan Mitchell continues to walk too many people, although I thought he got a little bit better as the game went on.
3. Brandon Woodruff isn't quite ready for the SEC rotation- yet.
4. We need to work on our base running a little bit. Especially Demarcus Henderson and CT Bradford. Demarcus should be a little bit better at stealing bases than he is. I think now that they have gotten his hitting better and his defense pretty solid, now they can add that dimension to his game. He just has to get the timing down a little bit better. In fairness to him, he got thrown out on what was scored/called a double steal, but unless I'm mistaken that was a ball in the dirt, and I'm not sure if the runner on first took off and Demarcus didn't at first and he realized what was happening too late, or if he just got a bad jump or what. CT got thrown out at second on a ball that he shouldn't have tried to take second on. That certainly could be on the first base coach- I'm not sure. But it has happened too many times this year.
The good:
1. Our offense is better. This is because we are taking better at bats and we are going the other way more than we did all of last year. We are also adding to our offense in the form of stolen bases and now we have that dimension because we are healthy and have more experience. I'm curious to see if we continue to steal and run like we did this weekend or if it was a case of St. Joseph's having a bad catcher. So far, we are running a LOT more as the weeks go by thus far. We came into this week with 11 stolen bases, and now we have 23. As far as effectiveness, we are 23 out of 29 in stolen base attempts. We'll see if that continues. Once Wes and Hunter get back 100%, we will then have a power dimension to go with everything else and we will have really good balance throughout the lineup.
2. Speaking of- it was good to see Wes and Hunter back in the lineup even if it was limited. My guess is they will be back by next weekend.
3. Jacob Lindgren has just about secured a spot in the weekend rotation. Graveman was OK- I still want our rotation to be Woodruff, Lindgren and Graveman. I think Will Cox should be the Sunday starter, but I have a feeling it's going to be Evan Mitchell.
4. Johnathan Holder passes Johnathan Papelbon on the all-time MSU saves list. He is now seventh overall. Nothing else to say about that. He got squeezed a little bit on Friday, worked through it, and then today he struck out the side. Someone mentioned being worried about him throwing his fastball early in the count yesterday and being worried about hitters adjusting- the reason he does that is because he is the closer and he normally comes in with a lead. Because of that, he knows that hitters are likely going to be taking pitches hoping that he falls behind. All closers at all levels do that. Watch a MLB game and if a closer falls behind, a lot of times they will act royally pissed- that's why. They know the hitter is going to be taking and all they have to do is throw strikes. Even if hitters adjust, his stuff is good enough that they're not likely to hit it anyway.
5. What I think the lineup should be. I'm sure Will James will take credit for this and then make fun of my for correctly predicting that Brett Pirtle would be our starting second baseman on opening day.
Frazier- SS
CT- CF
Rea- 1B
Porter- DH
Renfroe-RF
Detz- 2B
Flair- 3B
Slauter-C
Henderson- LF
6. The upcoming week- we have Valley and we have Woodruff who has hopefully cleaned up his mechanics out of the stretch. Hopefully we will hit better against them than we did against Grambling. Central Arkansas is a good team. They are 11-1 and they are a Southland Conference team, which is not a bad baseball conference. They have beaten a lot of SWAC team, sure- but they also beat Wichita State at home and their only loss is to Vanderbilt. With only three games, our pitching staff won't be stretched quite as much. We will have either Will Cox or Evan Mitchell out of the bullpen. Central Arkansas might be a regional team, so it's a good test before SEC play. You could make a strong argument that Central Arkansas is the best team we will have played up until this point.
7. We are 15-0 and we seem to be improving every week. I really like where we are heading in all facets of the game. Just like every year, the lineup will settle itself out by the time we start SEC play and hopefully we will play our best baseball at the end of the year like we have the past couple of years under Cohen. The encouraging thing to me is we really haven't hit our peak yet in my opinion because we are doing what we are doing without our two best power hitters and our ace at 100% for the most part.
