Observations from Opening Day at KPP

[backinky2018]

-Best opening day crowd I can remember. It appears that BBN is excited about UK baseball.
-Great weather, especially when the sun was still out.
-Morehead brought a decent number of fans, and they were fairly vocal (obnoxious?) taunting our pitchers and such. Surprising from an in state school.
-Not a ton of energy from the dugout early, but they got very rowdy as we made our rally late. This team really gets excited when they work a long at-bat with foul balls and laying off bad pitches.
-I generally like Ming's style of play with the aggressive base running and bunting. But, some of these bunts late in games with bases loaded drive me insane. We were extremely lucky to not get thrown out at the plate twice in the 8th inning.
-I was very happy to see Burkes at DH. I felt that he needed more days off last year, so good to see Fawley behind the plate.
-Bad news bears defense for a while. 3 errors on Lopez???? Good grief.
-Our two young pitchers did great to start the game. Threw a lot of strikes, and they deserved better from our defense.
-Hummel has been great in his two appearances in relief. Love a pitcher that comes in and gets his three outs with out a lot of drama.

A win over Morehead is nothing to write home about, but winning these games and avoiding the killer RPI loss is really important when it comes to hosting or getting into the tournament later in the year.

 

[Comebakatz3]

I certainly wouldn't say we 'deserved,' to win that game. UK shot themselves in the foot all game long and got the breaks they needed when it mattered most. The biggest one being the Morehead coach's decision to take out the pitcher that went in the 7th and put in a new guy and then to follow that up with the basesloaded pitching change to a guy who had already appeared once on the year and had walked 4 guys in that appearance. Then the next biggest being that their catcher went absolutely braindead and tried to tag out Crittenberger instead of just stepping on the plate.

All that being said, it is big to win the ones you don't really deserve to win. It can be a big boost to morale to know that you don't have to play perfect to win games like that and to feel like you're never out of a game. So, a ton of credit for them sticking with it and not just hanging their heads and laying down. Big shoutout to Small who got a big pinch hit single. That was a huge spot to put a freshman into. I personally didn't like that decision, but it paid off big time and really shows how much I know. haha

I believe that UK struck out just twice last night. That is absolutely insane. Huge at bats from Pitre twice to be down 0-2 and get a double and a single in those counts, one of them to kick off the 8th inning rally.

On the flip side... one thing to watch moving forward will be how this pitching staff gets strikeouts. Got 7 last night, so that is pretty solid, but we have 29 on the year, or about 7.25 per game. Last year we were approaching 9 per game. Just hasn't quite felt like, to this point, that we've had performances where our guys were basically unhittable. It is early, that could change, but just something to kind of keep an eye on as this pitching staff might be more of the type to induce ground balls and trust their defense.

 

[backinky2018]

Agree, we def didn't "deserve" to win, but we won anyway. Step up in competition this weekend, so hopefully we can perform.

 

[Comebakatz3]

Agree, we def didn't "deserve" to win, but we won anyway. Step up in competition this weekend, so hopefully we can perform.

I'm not so sure this is a step up in competition this weekend.

Wash State had an RPI of 93 last year.
Kansas 110

USC Upstate was 85
Morehead State 116

Texas State is the only real step up for the most part. They had a 60 RPI a year ago.