Frustrating week of baseball

[boomstick 1,315]

This has been a tough week on this team. Really, it started with the aTm series. We never hit the ball consistently well, although I thought we pitched well for that entire series. Tuesday at GT, we didn't look fully engaged. We hit several balls hard right at guys, but on the whole, it seemed to take us several innings to get into the game. And by that point, we'd dug ourselves a significant hole. I thought Owen was solid for his first start until that fourth inning, which pushed him to his longest outing of the year. The bullpen held strong after that though.

The Kentucky series just seemed like a culmination of misfortune after misfortune. Mize was brilliant Friday night, the offense was productive, and everything seemed to be going right up until the late 2-run HR to tie the game. From that point on, the offense was a mess (minus one inning that salvaged the weekend for us), the defense and focus disappeared as Sunday dragged on, and the pitching staff wasn't very sharp, although Davis Daniel had another good showing after a rough start. I think the size of the ballpark combined with the potency of Kentucky's lineup really had our pitchers really in a funk. We looked worried about coming close to the strike zone and constantly had to work in hitters' counts all day Sunday.

The lineup has to develop more consistency. We're capable of putting up a crooked number in a hurry, but we're also capable of going 6 innings without getting a runner to second base. Since the start of SEC play, we're hitting .222 and averaging 4.4 runs per game. The quality of pitching has risen, and our approaches and ABs need to do the same. Not sure whether the rough stretch is a regression to the mean for this team or them listening to the headlines or just a funk. Whatever the reason, we need to find ourselves tomorrow and play a sound, solid, fundamental game. Get back to basics, as the coach speak goes. 

I think this team is very talented and capable of big things, but it isn't so talented that it can play outside of it's fundamentals and be very successful. We have to play sound, mistake-free ball to be as good as we can be. We can't out hit or out pitch our mistakes in the long run. Gotta get back to play smarter baseball.

[AU64 10,122]

Seems like in the 3rd game at UK everyone was cold and tired and just wanted to go home.....were going through the motions...some lackadaisical play that did not get counted as errors but certainly hurt the team and pitching.  Guess CBT was frustrated ....had a quick hook on some guys who deserved it....though Mize and Daniels both looked good enough to win regularly. 

The team is better than they showed IMO.... and someone needs to kick a little butt when everyone is down....and get them playing like they are capable.  

Maybe we just need some warm weather ...real baseball weather. 

[boomstick 1,315]

11 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Seems like in the 3rd game at UK everyone was cold and tired and just wanted to go home.....were going through the motions...some lackadaisical play that did not get counted as errors but certainly hurt the team and pitching.  Guess CBT was frustrated ....had a quick hook on some guys who deserved it....though Mize and Daniels both looked good enough to win regularly. 

The team is better than they showed IMO.... and someone needs to kick a little butt when everyone is down....and get them playing like they are capable.  

Maybe we just need some warm weather ...real baseball weather. 

Completely agree with the first sentence. Felt like we had the mindset to make sure we won a game to avoid the sweep. We did that in the first game and just kinda checked out. Like Butch said in the post-game comments, we didn't seem to compete much in that second game, which he said was disappointing. I imagine this week is a week of fundamentals and real focus on the details. I can't imagine any coach was happy with much from this week other than the first 8 innings of Friday night.