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Kentucky at Georgia (DH)

Bryan Cranston Reaction GIF
 
You know what I didn’t see today? I didn’t see the same fire from Kentucky that’s been there. I know teams and players have off days but something was just off from the get go. They have a short week to put this behind them.
 
That's not a series you want to drop, but we're still in a good position to make the post season
Hate to lose that series because of such a daunting 2 weeks ahead. Hopefully, they'll right the ship and have a great week. Will need it after this weekend. Couple of my buddies will be at u6 games Tues. Anybody else? Got some really nice seats .
 
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Yeah, I guess a day off at a hotel can make you sluggish. I can believe I'm saying this, but I also didn't see the same "chaos on the basepaths" approach from the coaches either. No bunting, no stealing, no aggressively sending the runner home from 3rd. I think if Ming sends Gilliam from 3rd on McCarthy's would be double the whole trajectory of our day changes. We then have guys on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out. Either church still gets hit and Grant Smith said bunts to score our 2nd run or church sac bunts and Smith is hitting with a guy on 3rd and 2 outs up 2-0.

That probably makes Bosmas approach different and makes the rest of the hitters looser, probably chases their pitcher sooner and get into their bullpen, which would then affect the 2nd game.

Shorten games every decision is magnified, and so far this year, we've forced the play and made it so we were on the receiving end of the miscues. This one was a case where we messed up and in a shorten game its tough to recover from. Crazy how one decision could affect the trajectory of a season.
 
I think some weaknesses were a bit exposed yesterday. However, I'm not sure a ton of teams are built to expose them like Georgia was. We led the year off facing a relatively soft throwing lefty. We struggled and went scoreless. This weekend we faced 3 relatively soft throwing lefties that thrived against us when throwing strikes. We lost to all 3 of those starters and didn't hit on Friday until righty bullpen came in and struggled to throw strikes. So, it appears that those softer throwing lefties could be a problem for us.

I doubt few teams we face will have that many lefties that we struggle against. At the same time, we ourselves didn't pitch great this weekend. Game 3 was the first league game we gave up over 5 earned runs. I'll also say that the shortened weekend really put us at a disadvantage.

Would love to see a full stat breakdown of how we fair right versus left. It's something to watch moving forward and could be a bad matchup for us in something like an NCAA tournament game where you're short on chances.

Also, this team relies a lot on walks and timely hitting. Opponents that throw strikes and make us string together a lot of hits will be more successful.

I think we will be fine overall and we will bounce back and continue to compete at a strong level. Not sure what the ceiling is for this team but I feel like they could compete with anyone.
 
Yeah, I guess a day off at a hotel can make you sluggish. I can believe I'm saying this, but I also didn't see the same "chaos on the basepaths" approach from the coaches either. No bunting, no stealing, no aggressively sending the runner home from 3rd. I think if Ming sends Gilliam from 3rd on McCarthy's would be double the whole trajectory of our day changes. We then have guys on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out. Either church still gets hit and Grant Smith said bunts to score our 2nd run or church sac bunts and Smith is hitting with a guy on 3rd and 2 outs up 2-0.

That probably makes Bosmas approach different and makes the rest of the hitters looser, probably chases their pitcher sooner and get into their bullpen, which would then affect the 2nd game.

Shorten games every decision is magnified, and so far this year, we've forced the play and made it so we were on the receiving end of the miscues. This one was a case where we messed up and in a shorten game its tough to recover from. Crazy how one decision could affect the trajectory of a season.

Definitely agree there. Gilliam kind of created a snowball effect by not going halfway and scoring on that ball off the wall. Then McCarthy not being heads up and noticing that he didn't run or Degen not being vocal enough to get him on cue there. Especially since no one was covering first and McCarthy probably could have gone back and everyone would have been safe with the bases loaded and 1 out.

The pressure mounts much faster in those shortened games and as we saw, a pitcher that might not pitch into the 7th will do so in those shortened games if he's dealing. They know they can extend him a bit, which is what they did in the first game yesterday. In a 9 inning they have to go to the pen and that changes things as well. We obviously saw how bad their pen was on Friday. Even if their pen guy does well for 3 innings, that is one less pen guy in the next game. So, the DH really messed with us in that regard.
 
I was there yesterday for the DH. I agree on several takes here. Cats seemed a little flat. The would be double by McCarthy and the subsequent base running errors set the tone. I think we bounce back. Could get dicey this week though.
 
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