Baseball vs (#2) Arkansas series

[Tigerbelle 5,299]

Gonzales makes a rookie mistake.....and a run scores with no play at the plate....UGH!

[Tigerbelle 5,299]

Tigers get double play #6 !!!

[SaltyTiger 7,808]

Double play sends us to 8 and gets us out of jam. 5 - 2 with Skipper looking sharp in relief

[SaltyTiger 7,808]

Need a run or so bad here

[Tigerbelle 5,299]

AGH!!!! Game is tied now.

[Tigerbelle 5,299]

Huddy should've pulled Barnette sooner. The kid didn't have his stuff today.

[tgrogan21 6,198]

Pretty normal for Auburn and the bullpen to blow a big lead and lose by 1 run.

[tigerbrotha12 2,362]

Your fault bullpen. Your d*** fault. Get better now. You blew leads of 4 and 5 because you walked batters a you didn’t get in front of hitters. It’s unacceptable and it’s costing your team. Your fault. Do better. 

[tigers23 653]

Need a qualified pitching coach

[Gowebb11 9,324]

Butch went full Malzahn on us this weekend. Some poor decisions on pitchers. 

[Win4AU 4,052]

That was a rough watch.  

[tigerbrotha12 2,362]

Love Huddy. Not as a coach. This is unacceptable. 

[tgrogan21 6,198]

2 minutes ago, tigers23 said:

Need a qualified pitching coach

Yep. As good as an Auburn man that Hudson is, if this was any other person, we would want him fired right away. He has to go at the end of the year and we have to go out and get an experienced pitching coach.

[fredst 9,064]

I think we are a good team except for our bullpen. Unfortunately the bullpen is part of our team which is now 1-8 in conference. That = bad team. Injuries, etc is just part of it and blaming that is just making excuses for bad play. At some point you have to figure out how to win games. We are losing to good teams but in spectacularly inept looking fashion

[SurfingTiger 45]

Hell you might as well leave the starting pitcher in at this point as bad as the bullpen has been.

[SaltyTiger 7,808]

3 hours ago, tgrogan21 said:

Pretty normal for Auburn and the bullpen to blow a big lead and lose by 1 run.

Pretty sure 5 Arky runs product of on base by walk. Very disappointing 

[Mikey 16,604]

Twelve walks and two hit batters. If you want a recipe to lose a game by beating yourself, there it is. At no level of baseball would a team be expected to win when giving up that many freebees.

[Tigerbelle 5,299]

16 hours ago, tgrogan21 said:

Yep. As good as an Auburn man that Hudson is, if this was any other person, we would want him fired right away. He has to go at the end of the year and we have to go out and get an experienced pitching coach.

We have one. That's Butch Thompson's background. He will probably get more involved That's not his style. He's not a micromanager but I'm positive he knows that the bullpen is shaky right now. They will  address it but sometimes it just has to work itself out. Butch is the one who saved Davis Daniel's career when other coaches might've given up, so I think he knows how to handle his pitchers. The pitching coach is a non-paid position at Auburn IIRC......so you can see the issue with that. Huddy will be fine. 

[steeleagle 2,945]

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Twelve walks and two hit batters. If you want a recipe to lose a game by beating yourself, there it is. At no level of baseball would a team be expected to win when giving up that many freebees.

18 in the 2 games we lost. I looked at Ark' stat line for pitching, and very few walks.

As baseball fans, we know walks are killers, and the one thing a reliever is taught, and is critical to being a reliever is they have to have control, bc they don't get many innings to adjust. It seems like all of our relievers except Skipper simply can't stop walking guys...

It's the difference between winning these 1 run games or not. 

And possibly is the pitching coach not pulling the struggling guys soon enough? I thought we now have all our injured guys back except maybe 1 pitcher....

[Gowebb11 9,324]

I can’t understand the inability of some pitchers to throw strikes. At some point (the past two games 8th innings for instance) better to groove a fastball than walk hitters. At least if they hit it you have a chance at an out. Men’s and women’s basketball with losing records and our softball and baseball teams in the cellar of the SEC. After a 6-5 football season. Very sad to see this. 

[steeleagle 2,945]

4 hours ago, Gowebb11 said:

I can’t understand the inability of some pitchers to throw strikes. At some point (the past two games 8th innings for instance) better to groove a fastball than walk hitters. At least if they hit it you have a chance at an out. Men’s and women’s basketball with losing records and our softball and baseball teams in the cellar of the SEC. After a 6-5 football season. Very sad to see this. 

Yep. It's hard to take when your Auburn spring sports, leave the weekend without a single win, and the ladies this weekend scored 1 run in 3 games. Bad. It's a little depressing not to enjoy some wins.

And it's even worse when you are a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. lol....

[PUB78 1,358]

Let’s hope and pray the 2/3 of the SE schedule is much better than the first 1/3 in baseball and softball.

[boomstick 1,315]

19 hours ago, Gowebb11 said:

I can’t understand the inability of some pitchers to throw strikes. At some point (the past two games 8th innings for instance) better to groove a fastball than walk hitters. At least if they hit it you have a chance at an out. Men’s and women’s basketball with losing records and our softball and baseball teams in the cellar of the SEC. After a 6-5 football season. Very sad to see this. 

I've watched this team all year. To me, it seems like we pitch scared out of the pen. It's like we now know that's the weakness, and it's mentally taken a toll on us to where we're not aggressive with our pitches. We're too afraid of giving up hits so we pitch around hitters and throw pitch after pitch that we don't locate. Outside of Carson Skipper, I don't know that we have any other consistently reliable arm that will come in and throw strikes with confidence. Barnett shows it at times, but then he goes and has an appearance like he did Saturday. 

This team is built well enough to win a lot of games and could get on a run in the next few series. But the bullpen has to figure itself out, and I'm not sure it is capable of turning itself around. There's no trust in the stuff.

[SaltyTiger 7,808]

1 hour ago, boomstick said:

There's no trust in the stuff.

No confidence was pretty glaring in Arkansas. Only hope that CBT sees the problem as fixable

[boomstick 1,315]

Just now, SaltyTiger said:

No confidence was pretty glaring in Arkansas. Only hope that CBT sees the problem as fixable

The problem with confidence is it is typically coupled with experience and success. Several of the bullpen arms are lacking experience and almost all of them are low on the success meter. I think the coaching staff has to do a better job of protecting these guys and knowing their best utilization and putting them in the best spots possible. Like with Fitts, his numbers are atrocious when he inherits runners, but in his career, he's been a more successful pitcher as a long reliever starting clean innings. So, bringing him in with 1 out and runners on doesn't seem like the best use of him.

Joseph Gonzalez has pitched past the 5th inning in two starts. In both games, he gave up a leadoff base runner after being in complete control of both games. It was his third time through the lineup in both games. Maybe make that change to start the 6th inning knowing he's probably at the end of his rope, and let him end his outing on a super high note and turn the game over to someone else with a clean inning to start. Instead, we let him walk the first two hitters and created a massive pressure situation for our entire bullpen the day after blowing a big lead.

I hope Butch sees it too. But man, I feel like, as poorly as the guys are pitching at times, we're making equally poor decisions that make things worse. And I'll be honest, I haven't been a fan of Huddy's pitching change decisions for most of the year. There seems to be a lack of urgency about making changes, like there are 162 games in the season. We sometimes don't seem to act like the season or the series are hanging in the balance and want to stick with a guy for way too long. Or we stick with him just long enough to create a big mess and then put it on someone else's shoulders to fix ( like the BC game where we needed to either pull Hill two batters before we did or let him ride it out and give up all the runs). I just don't like the way we've handled the staff to this point.