AU64 10,122 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 Interesting piece on al.com …Butch seems to be losing patience and talking "change"....coaching, players or whatever and getting more hands-on. Team has come unraveled in the past few weeks......apparently a players only team meeting recently to address things but not specifics offered except what we know....several important leaders are not hitting their weight and a number of the pitchers can't throw strikes. Guess maybe it was that frustration that caused him to pull the entire starting line-up at the end of the Tech game the other night. https://www.al.com/auburn/2019/04/inner-scream-butch-thompson-losing-patience-as-auburn-baseball-reaches-tipping-point.html Team is still in reach for the NCAA tournament but on a bad trend. Any ideas of how to get this turned around by tomorrow when Ole miss comes to town? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowebb11 9,326 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 15 minutes ago, AU64 said: Team is still in reach for the NCAA tournament but on a bad trend. Any ideas of how to get this turned around by tomorrow when Ole miss comes to town? I’m glad to see Butch address this publicly. I’m not at practice or in the locker room, but this team plays games with low energy. Regardless of a players age or class, I would love to see several of them step on the field with a lot more fire. Butch can make some adjustments, but our players need to man up and play with emotion and grit. Wade has good stuff, but tonight he needs to take advantage of a home crowd, take the mound like he owns it, and pound the zone. We could right the ship by taking 2 of 3 this weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerbrotha12 2,362 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 14 minutes ago, AU64 said: Interesting piece on al.com …Butch seems to be losing patience and talking "change"....coaching, players or whatever and getting more hands-on. Team has come unraveled in the past few weeks......apparently a players only team meeting recently to address things but not specifics offered except what we know....several important leaders are not hitting their weight and a number of the pitchers can't throw strikes. Guess maybe it was that frustration that caused him to pull the entire starting line-up at the end of the Tech game the other night. https://www.al.com/auburn/2019/04/inner-scream-butch-thompson-losing-patience-as-auburn-baseball-reaches-tipping-point.html Team is still in reach for the NCAA tournament but on a bad trend. Any ideas of how to get this turned around by tomorrow when Ole miss comes to town? Team is not in as bad of shape as it may seem. Not only are they still in reach for the tournament, but still are in the hunt to host a regional, especially with the remaining schedule and the RPI that they will have at season's end. They're also above .500 in the SEC after playing 3 out of 5 series away from Plainsman Park and that is pretty good. It's all going to depend on, like basketball, getting hot at the right time. Last year, the team did it at about this point in the season when it came from behind to beat Miss State. Getting Jack Owen back could be a big shot in the arm, especially if he can be ready to start by next weekend. It's also worth mentioning that Steven Williams hit the ball very well at TAMU and continued to barrel up the ball against GT on Tuesday. Rankin Woley also had a nice midweeker as well. We need some better performances from our bullpen, but we are starting to find the guys that we can rely on more than others. Brooks Fuller, for instance, has been phenomenal the past few weekends. Looks like he's settling in, and with DD pitching so well from the bullpen last season, it might be hard for Daniel to get that starting job back if Fuller continues to pitch like this. Anderson, Greenhill, and Burns are all solid as well. Richard Fitts is another that has thrown well at time this season. He made one bad pitch against Arkansas that lost the game, but he was pretty good the rest of the time. It would really help if one more of these freshmen/newbies could step up and be consistent in this latter half of SEC ball. Again, getting JO and DD back will be huge, but for the time being, need a young guy to step up. I'm hoping Garrett Wade has his coming out party tonight and just dominates the Rebels. To get the Gatorade POTY going would be huge for his development, and for the rest of this season. IF, and that's a huge if, we can win the series this weekend, and then pick up another win we're not supposed to (maybe taking 2 of 3 at Vandy or LSU, or sweeping Bama) then go .500 in the rest of our SEC games, we'll go 17-13 in the league, and that is going to be a really nice record for an SEC team this season. As long as we can get on track with the midweekers and win the remaining 3, that will put us at 36-19 headed into the SEC tournament. A strong showing there ,maybe winning 2-3 games, could certainly still have us hosting as we'd be up to around 38 - 21. Keeping an SEC team with an RPI under 20 that went 38-21 and 17-13 in the SEC out of a hosting spot would be very difficult to do. That's a very specific scenario, but I'm just trying to show that the path is still there, and it is not completely insane to think Auburn is out of the conversation to host a regional. Like the last few seasons, we'll be a dangerous post-season team again if we get JO and DD back and healthy for the tournament. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boomstick 1,315 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 I don’t think this should be seen as a panic move by Butch, and I don’t think this team is unraveling. An unraveling team doesn’t beat Asa Lacey at aTm last weekend. I do think we’re at a point where we need to see some change, and it seems Butch might be the only one to create that change since he’s seemingly been pretty hands-off to this point. I don’t think we’re far off. Gotta get a few of the young guys to value pitches and ABs more and the offense to value swings more. If we can reduce the number of walks issued and reduce the number of strikeouts and big swings-and-misses, I think we can have a strong close to the season. I’d rather see a team single and double us to death than continue to walk guys, and I can almost guarantee that’s Butch’s thoughts too. If it were me, the message would be fairly simple. On the mound, throw strikes and make them earn their runs by putting the ball in play. At the plate, shorten up the swing, be patient and look opposite field, and make them earn their outs. We aren’t really doing either of those things right now, and I’d imagine that’s where Butch is hoping to make his changes with his new approach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
au302 2,669 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 47 minutes ago, boomstick said: At the plate, shorten up the swing, be patient and look opposite field, and make them earn their outs. Completely agree with this, and I wonder if Butch is considering taking control of the offense. Whether he takes over as 3rd base coach and gives signals to hitters or relays signals from the dugout the approach needs to get better. Miss the old Luke Jarvis choke up on the bat and put it in play Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCTiger2011 1,279 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 3 hours ago, tigerbrotha12 said: IF, and that's a huge if, we can win the series this weekend, and then pick up another win we're not supposed to (maybe taking 2 of 3 at Vandy or LSU, or sweeping Bama) then go .500 in the rest of our SEC games, we'll go 17-13 in the league, and that is going to be a really nice record for an SEC team this season. As long as we can get on track with the midweekers and win the remaining 3, that will put us at 36-19 headed into the SEC tournament. A strong showing there ,maybe winning 2-3 games, could certainly still have us hosting as we'd be up to around 38 - 21. Keeping an SEC team with an RPI under 20 that went 38-21 and 17-13 in the SEC out of a hosting spot would be very difficult to do. I mean, I get this, and respect it from my fanhood standpoint and logically. But theorizing this team playing .600 ball the remainder of SEC play when they're in danger right now of dropping 12 of 16 seems...HIGHLY optimistic. Fingers crossed though 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey 16,605 Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 16 hours ago, boomstick said: I’d rather see a team single and double us to death than continue to walk guys, and I can almost guarantee that’s Butch’s thoughts too. Absolutely! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
auburnfan247 27 Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 It’s gotta be real aggravating to Butch that when we’re versing these top 10 opponents like Miss. State and Arkansas, we’re good enough to win the game on friday night and all we have to do is win one game of the weekend games and we always have lost both. If we could of beat any of those teams listed above in a weekend game that would of been a huge series win for our team and huge motivation to propel our team. I’m happy for our team that they show potential to beating a top 10 team with their Friday night wins but the rankings care almost only about did you win or lose the series against the top 10 opponent, not how many games you were able to win and still lose the series. Hopefully our team can close out this series against Ole Miss and win, it’ll be our first series win over a ranked SEC team in over a month. War Eagle!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AU64 10,122 Posted April 20, 2019 Author Share Posted April 20, 2019 On 4/18/2019 at 6:52 PM, au302 said: Completely agree with this, and I wonder if Butch is considering taking control of the offense. Whether he takes over as 3rd base coach and gives signals to hitters or relays signals from the dugout the approach needs to get better. Miss the old Luke Jarvis choke up on the bat and put it in play Everything I hope....we are about 8th to 10th in the SEC in every meaningful statistic they keep. .241 team batting average, 4.75 ERA and opposing hitters are .265 against us. Unfortunately we rank higher in the dubious stats.....hitting into double plays, strikeouts looking...stuff like that. The W-L record pretty much reflects the performance of the team....pitching and hitting. http://a.espncdn.com/sec/baseball/2019/lgteams.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey 16,605 Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 29 minutes ago, AU64 said: Everything I hope....we are about 8th to 10th in the SEC in every meaningful statistic they keep. .241 team batting average, 4.75 ERA and opposing hitters are .265 against us. Unfortunately we rank higher in the dubious stats.....hitting into double plays, strikeouts looking...stuff like that. The W-L record pretty much reflects the performance of the team....pitching and hitting. http://a.espncdn.com/sec/baseball/2019/lgteams.htm Sad but true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustache eagle 2,406 Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 Don’t know where we are nationally but we are average in the sec across the board. Burns has been good enough to have the last 2 wins but the bats - well, they are average, generally speaking. That includes some good games and some bad games. even if we get our pitchers back - that doesn’t help us score runs.i hope the up trend starts today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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