2014 season, a look back......

[CloverforkCat]

After calming down from the regional finals loss, and thinking somewhat objectively, let's look back at 2014.
Team batting avg. finished at .299, Cats hit 60 HR's, and stole 67 bases, pretty darn good offensive numbers. They had a team fielding % of .968, not really good, but not terrible.
Pitching wise, the Cats had a team ERA of 4.03, not really good, with 12 team saves, average there.
They finished with a record of 37-25, and overall counting the tournament, went 17-17 in the SEC, pretty good. They went 3-1 against teams that were ranked #1 when they played them, outstanding. They went 19-10 at home and were 18-15 in road and neutral site games, again pretty good.
They had the SEC, and in at least one service the National POY in A J Reed, a 1st team all SEC of in Ka'ai Tom, a 2nd team all SEC player in Max Kuhn, an all SEC fresham selection in Javon Shelby, and an all SEC defensive team member in Austin Cousino, really, really good.
Great wins....Virginia, So. Carolina, Florida, Vandy, Louisville, Texas A&M, Alabama, Miss. State. Bad losses, USC-Upstate, VMI, Morehead, Murray St., Missouri, Georgia.
All in all, I would give an overall grade of B+ on the season as a whole. I believe an A- is required to make the Super regionals, an A would be CWS appearance, and an A+ would be necessary for a NC. Thoughts !

 

[Comebakatz3]

We can break it down further... just for fun.

Hitting - A
I think that we hit the ball really well for most of the season, but we did cool off some as a team near the end. So, I give them an A there. We finished in the top 3-4 in SEC batting average.

Fielding - C-
We finished second to last in the SEC in fielding percentage and our left side of the infield was probably the worse duo in almost every major league. Kuhn finished the season with 21 errors and a fielding percentage of .863. He almost had more errors than putouts. Reida wasn't a ton better with 17 errors for a percentage of .942. Kuhn led the league in errors and Reida was in the top 5. Just not overly impressed with our defense. It was especially bad in some very dire times. Thomas was 2nd in the league in passed balls and 4th in the league in steals attempted against him, as well as 5th in the league in most steals against him. Not great numbers there. However, to be fair to him, he does also have the second highest number of runners caught stealing.

Pitching - C
We finished second to last in the SEC in overall team ERA, ahead of only Georgia. Sorry, but that isn't going to cut it for me. That is a terrible year. The only reasons that the score is even a C is because Reed pitched very well and because Shepherd and Cody were injured for parts of it. So I am giving a little bit of a leeway for this. But for those things this grade would be much worse. Not having a closer or a single really great option out of the bullpen really hurt this team.

Overall - C+

Some of the results were good, but basically the best things came because of Reed and our hitting. I like that we made the post season, but the results there were rather poor as well. Anyway, that is just my take.

 

[CatsFanGG24]

Crazy if you break it down into these categories the team looks like it would've had a terrible year.

Hitting - A+
Defense - C
Pitching - C+
Baserunning - C

But I believe their overall grade should be in the B range. They were .500 in the SEC...did great against ranked opponents and made it as far (Regional Finals) as any UK team ever has.

Did they blow a huge opportunity? Yes...did guys make you scratch your head over and over again? Yes...but in reality it was a nice season.

 

[CloverforkCat]

Agree that pitching and defense needs to improve the most. Our fundamentals are lacking in other areas, bunting runners over tops the list, also some pizz poor base running.
With the people we are losing, I hope we are smart about our early season scheduling in 2015. The team will need to be brought along in steps, not saying cupcake city scheduling, but not opening the season against the #1 ranked team.
Summer ball will be huge, I can see only one Cape Cod league worthy player, and that is Ka'ia Tom, the rest should be able to be placed in leagues where they can get valuable PT, and improve their skill sets.
We haven't made back to back NCAA tourneys in my lifetime, so I hope we can make it back, and continue to build the foundation for making Omaha, ala UK softball, and their systematic climb by steps to the WCWS.