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Kentucky-Indiana Midweek

Indiana can hit mistake pitches but haven't been able to do much against Smith yet. First and third with two outs in the top of the second and he induces a roller to himself to get out.
 
We need to get base runners. This IU pitcher is throwing 59 foot change ups.
 
Sure enough... Walk an .077 leadoff hitter and give up a run. Two outs and a runner on 2nd for the new pitcher, Nove.
 
If Headrick continues to try to pronounce Pitre in broken French or whatever that is... I might have to stop listening. It's absolutely grating.
I'm watching the SEC+ broadcast with Gabriel and Doug Flynn. Have to put up with the approximate call of Gabriel, mostly gets it right except when they have a new player that he misses or looks at the line up for the wrong team to get the name.
 
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I'm watching the SEC+ broadcast with Gabriel and Doug Flynn. Have to put up with the approximate call of Gabriel, mostly gets it right except when they have a new player that he misses or looks at the line up for the wrong team to get the name.

Hahaha. Never thought I'd say this, but if at least for Pitre at bats, I'd prefer Gabriel over Headrick try to roll an R or whatever the hell he's doing only part of the time.
 
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We've hit into two double plays today. Will cut into our LOB numbers.
 
So far 12 free base runners from IU, well, 13 counting the error that allowed a runner.
 
LOB by game
Elon 4, 8, 10
Evansville 14
Wright State 13, 6, 11
Morehead State 15
Indiana State 6, 10, 4
Murray State 7
Ohio 11
SIU 15, 15, 8
Indiana 7

At least the last two games we've scored more than we left on base.
 
So far 12 free base runners from IU, well, 13 counting the error that allowed a runner.

That's been a strength in a way. We arent often stringing together a ton of hits, but we are getting on base and often get that 2 out hit when on base. Then on the mound they UK pitchers are greatly limiting the free passes and making the opponent string together hits.
 
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If Headrick continues to try to pronounce Pitre in broken French or whatever that is... I might have to stop listening. It's absolutely grating.
I am glad you brought this up because it is absolutely annoying. I don't know if he is trying to be cute or funny but he needs to stop. Additionally yesterday he referred to us as the Bobcats. Honestly we should be able to better than a UT grad as our announcer.
 
I am glad you brought this up because it is absolutely annoying. I don't know if he is trying to be cute or funny but he needs to stop. Additionally yesterday he referred to us as the Bobcats. Honestly we should be able to better than a UT grad as our announcer.

That he's a UT grad doesn't grind my gears too much. Price was an absolute GOAT at college baseball and he was from Morristown TN. Went to MTSU though. So, I can look past that.

I think Headrick is trying to put the French accent on Pitre, but it just doesn't work and he switches back and forth between having it and not, and then doesn't do it with other French names. It's just bad.
 
At this point, it's hard to be anything but pleased how the season has gone. Winning games we are supposed to win. Several sweeps. Road series wins. No big injuries. Pitching depth looks good.

A little worried about lack of power in the lineup, but I also love the plate discipline. We don't swing at a lot of bad pitches. Hoping for a series win this weekend.
 
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From the IU baseball board. The rationale of their fans ….


It's clear that from a pitching standpoint, Mercer and the UK coach approached this game differently. Mercer started a pitcher (Levy) that has struggled and had an elevated ERA, while the starting UK pitcher has evidently been tabbed as their midweek starter and this was his 4th start in midweek games and he had a decent ERA. The UK coach used a lot of pitchers, but they all had good numbers in limited innings pitched by each. Mercer went with some pitchers that were struggling right out of the gate when the season started and that didn't change today. This game was still close and winnable until that 6th inning when the bottom fell out, and if you look at all of the pitchers that were used in that inning, every one of them was struggling on the mound going into this game. Decker-Petty and Vega were the only pitchers used that were okay in very limited exposure today, and Vega was one of those pitchers that had been struggling coming into today's game. Foley hasn't been bad in previous outings, but today wasn't his day also. It was a cold day for baseball, but it was cold for both teams.
 
From the IU baseball board. The rationale of their fans ….


It's clear that from a pitching standpoint, Mercer and the UK coach approached this game differently. Mercer started a pitcher (Levy) that has struggled and had an elevated ERA, while the starting UK pitcher has evidently been tabbed as their midweek starter and this was his 4th start in midweek games and he had a decent ERA. The UK coach used a lot of pitchers, but they all had good numbers in limited innings pitched by each. Mercer went with some pitchers that were struggling right out of the gate when the season started and that didn't change today. This game was still close and winnable until that 6th inning when the bottom fell out, and if you look at all of the pitchers that were used in that inning, every one of them was struggling on the mound going into this game. Decker-Petty and Vega were the only pitchers used that were okay in very limited exposure today, and Vega was one of those pitchers that had been struggling coming into today's game. Foley hasn't been bad in previous outings, but today wasn't his day also. It was a cold day for baseball, but it was cold for both teams.

There are a few ways to look at this. Number one is a positive for UK... we have a deep enough pitching staff that we find reliable arms during the midweek games that we might not have to rely a ton on during the weekend. That is a major positive and is not really something we have had over the past almost 20 years. UK under Henderson had some amazing starters that were high draft picks, some of which are still pitching in the majors. What we didn't have was a full bullpen of above average guys. Under Belanger, we didn't bring in any top pitching prospects to be weekend starters nor did we find and develop the rest of the bullpen to be above average. To this point, under Roszel we haven't really found any stud aces to start, but we have what I would consider a bullpen with very little drop off from top to bottom. That means that during the midweek we might be able to rely on guys to give us great outings even if they aren't used as heavily during the weekend.

Other teams, possibly like this Indiana team, might have weekend pitching as strong as ours, or stronger, but there might be a big(ger) drop off from the weekend guys to the midweek. So, at least from a hitting standpoint, it can be hard to put a ton of stock on the midweek games because they can be very different from what a hitter will face during the weekend. A hitter might see 2-3 mistake pitches all weekend, but during the midweek they might see 2-3 a game; and those can lead to very different outcomes.
 
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At this point, it's hard to be anything but pleased how the season has gone. Winning games we are supposed to win. Several sweeps. Road series wins. No big injuries. Pitching depth looks good.

A little worried about lack of power in the lineup, but I also love the plate discipline. We don't swing at a lot of bad pitches. Hoping for a series win this weekend.
I would agree with you so far. Pitching has been a real bright spot.

Still a little concerning with the numbers of LOB and the HR numbers.
We also need some of the guys to step up hitting wise or they need to be moved out of the lineup.
 
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I would agree with you so far. Pitching has been a real bright spot.

Still a little concerning with the numbers of LOB and the HR numbers.
We also need some of the guys to step up hitting wise or they need to be moved out of the lineup.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens in league play. The offense is somewhat fascinating at this point. UK is still 6th in overall batting average in the league. Run numbers thanks to at least 2 games have gone up significantly and we're now 11th in that instead of 13 or 14 with 138 total. Auburn is tied with us at 138, Vandy (117) and Missouri (111) are behind. HR numbers are still way lacking for us as TAMU has 6 more home runs than us and everyone else has almost double or more than we do.

I think we have done very well with walks and we have gotten hit by a boatload of pitches. It seems to me that we have then done a solid job of taking advantage of those mistakes. Take yesterday's second inning... we loaded the bases (twice) and scored one run without ever recording a hit. We got 2 more with a timely 1 out hit before a hard luck double play. Similarly, in the 6th we got a walk... what is labeled an infield hit off of a would be sac bunt but was a missed tag so could have been an E (a gift either way) and another walk to load the bases. Then a sac fly and another HBP to load them again before Pitre and Gilliam blew it open with hits/homers. We saw an inning similar to that in the Sunday Illinois State game where we had 1 hit and scored a couple runs with walks, passed balls, errors, etc. So, really seems like when pitchers begin to struggle with control, we take advantage.

The question we will get an answer to moving forward is whether this continues or not or whether we begin to really string together hits to create offense without the reliance on so many walks/HBPs/errors. Offensively, the runs count the same, but we might have to rely more on stringing together hits to score those runs rather than say getting the bases loaded without ever recording a hit, like we essentially saw in both big innings on Tuesday. Can we string together those hits to score runs, or will runs still be at a premium as we see better pitching?
 
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I think it will be interesting to see what happens in league play. The offense is somewhat fascinating at this point. UK is still 6th in overall batting average in the league. Run numbers thanks to at least 2 games have gone up significantly and we're now 11th in that instead of 13 or 14 with 138 total. Auburn is tied with us at 138, Vandy (117) and Missouri (111) are behind. HR numbers are still way lacking for us as TAMU has 6 more home runs than us and everyone else has almost double or more than we do.

I think we have done very well with walks and we have gotten hit by a boatload of pitches. It seems to me that we have then done a solid job of taking advantage of those mistakes. Take yesterday's second inning... we loaded the bases (twice) and scored one run without ever recording a hit. We got 2 more with a timely 1 out hit before a hard luck double play. Similarly, in the 6th we got a walk... what is labeled an infield hit off of a would be sac bunt but was a missed tag so could have been an E (a gift either way) and another walk to load the bases. Then a sac fly and another HBP to load them again before Pitre and Gilliam blew it open with hits/homers. We saw an inning similar to that in the Sunday Illinois State game where we had 1 hit and scored a couple runs with walks, passed balls, errors, etc. So, really seems like when pitchers begin to struggle with control, we take advantage.

The question we will get an answer to moving forward is whether this continues or not or whether we begin to really string together hits to create offense without the reliance on so many walks/HBPs/errors. Offensively, the runs count the same, but we might have to rely more on stringing together hits to score those runs rather than say getting the bases loaded without ever recording a hit, like we essentially saw in both big innings on Tuesday. Can we string together those hits to score runs, or will runs still be at a premium as we see better pitching?
That is the question. I expect that opponent pitching will tighten up considerably going forward, especially in the SEC. We haven't shown much timely hitting. It certainly helps confidence to win so many games but our competition level has been pretty low. The softball team, on the other hand, has played a murderer's row of competition out of conference. They need to because the SEC is a very tough softball league. The problem for baseball is that the SEC is also extremely strong in baseball so a weak OOC schedule often leads to disappointment in the SEC when opponents can do everything better than what you have seen so far.
 
That is the question. I expect that opponent pitching will tighten up considerably going forward, especially in the SEC. We haven't shown much timely hitting. It certainly helps confidence to win so many games but our competition level has been pretty low. The softball team, on the other hand, has played a murderer's row of competition out of conference. They need to because the SEC is a very tough softball league. The problem for baseball is that the SEC is also extremely strong in baseball so a weak OOC schedule often leads to disappointment in the SEC when opponents can do everything better than what you have seen so far.
I think we don't know the level of competition of our OOC schedule yet. Wright state has slaughtered a couple teams. Elon had a good win a couple nights ago, SIU is an anticipated conference champion. You arent going to find OOC competition that's going to be on par with the SEC... it just doesn't really exist. I'm curious what the rest of the season looks like for these teams we played pre- conference season. SIU and Wright State are traditionally good mid majors, and Elon and ISU have not been terrible. I hope they are great this year!
 
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