SEC Stats (SEC Week 1)

[Comebakatz3]

Florida (3-0)
Ole Miss (3-0)
Tennessee (2-1) - GA
Kentucky (2-1)
Vanderbilt (2-1) - USC
Arkansas (2-1) - Bama
Miss State (2-1) - LSU
Georgia (1-2) - UT
South Carolina (1-2) - Vandy
LSU (1-2) - Miss State
Alabama (1-2) -Arky
Texas A&M (0-3)
Auburn (0-3)

Team	Hitting
Florida	0.352​
Ole Miss	0.310​
Auburn	0.279​
Kentucky	0.261​
Arkansas	0.260​
Tennessee	0.240​
Georgia	0.240​
Texas A&M	0.231​
Missouri	0.228​
Vanderbilt	0.220​
Miss State	0.219​
Alabama	0.208​
LSU	0.178​
South Carolina	0.133​

Team	Pitching
Florida	2.00​
Vanderbilt	2.67​
Miss State	3.12​
Kentucky	3.33​
Tennessee	3.37​
Ole Miss	3.67​
LSU	3.67​
Alabama	4.32​
South Carolina	4.68​
Arkansas	5.67​
Georgia	5.67​
Missouri	6.04​
Auburn	8.63​
Texas A&M	8.63​

 

[Comebakatz3]

Fourth best numbers in the conference in both hitting and pitching. So, that looks good. The concern, for me, is that coming into this weekend Missouri was by far the worst team at hitting and by far the worst team at pitching. At a minimum, their pitching ERA went down after this weekend. So, we didn't exactly dominate them.

Hard to know what that means for the future, but it is pretty concerning.

Next up is Auburn. We see that they hit the ball well against Ole Miss, but they struggled pitching. However, things are very skewed because of a 19-11 loss on Sunday. Otherwise, their games were 0-1 loss and a 5-6 loss. So, without giving up 19 runs, that ERA wouldn't be so bloated.

 

[dufnerfanboy2]

So, the Auburn ERA is fairly reflective of the pitching staff at the moment. We have a pretty good arm for Friday nights in Cody Greenhill. Used to be our closer and transitioned to a starting role this year. Unfortunately, the other two prospective weekend starters to start the year (Jack Owen and Richard Fitts) are out or just coming back from injury and not likely going to start. If they pitch at all, it will be a short stint out of the bullpen. And on top of that, we were missing probably our best two LHP out of the bullpen due to injury for last weekend’s series in Oxford. So, once we get past Greenhill and a couple of bullpen arms, it becomes quite the crapshoot.

The current Saturday and Sunday starters are second year guys (Mason Barnett and Trace Bright) that have both shown flashes of really good stuff, but they’re first tastes of SEC baseball didn’t really go all that well. Walks killed both of them and really the entire bullpen on Saturday and Sunday. It will be interesting to see how they bounce back at home against your offense.

 

[Comebakatz3]

So, the Auburn ERA is fairly reflective of the pitching staff at the moment. We have a pretty good arm for Friday nights in Cody Greenhill. Used to be our closer and transitioned to a starting role this year. Unfortunately, the other two prospective weekend starters to start the year (Jack Owen and Richard Fitts) are out or just coming back from injury and not likely going to start. If they pitch at all, it will be a short stint out of the bullpen. And on top of that, we were missing probably our best two LHP out of the bullpen due to injury for last weekend’s series in Oxford. So, once we get past Greenhill and a couple of bullpen arms, it becomes quite the crapshoot.

The current Saturday and Sunday starters are second year guys (Mason Barnett and Trace Bright) that have both shown flashes of really good stuff, but they’re first tastes of SEC baseball didn’t really go all that well. Walks killed both of them and really the entire bullpen on Saturday and Sunday. It will be interesting to see how they bounce back at home against your offense.

Thanks for sharing.

I think this will be an interesting weekend. UK pitching has been pretty solid. They have limited walks and have done pretty well getting strikeouts. The schedule hasn't been great for us, so it isn't really clear just how good those pitchers fully are, but so far so good. The bullpen is shaky at times, but the bigger issue is really with the hitting. While we hit pretty well overall... we just struggle to score a lot of runs consistently. We are third in the league in batting average, but we're 11th in the league in runs scored. So, we hit the ball, but we just don't seem to consistently string together hits and score runs.

Coming into the year all 'experts,' believed UK pitching would struggle while hitting would be excellent. That has proven to largely be the opposite. Auburn has that opposite. So, we will see if UK pitchers can keep Auburn hitters at bay and if UK hitters can string together enough hits to put up enough runs to win.

 

[dufnerfanboy2]

Thanks for sharing.

I think this will be an interesting weekend. UK pitching has been pretty solid. They have limited walks and have done pretty well getting strikeouts. The schedule hasn't been great for us, so it isn't really clear just how good those pitchers fully are, but so far so good. The bullpen is shaky at times, but the bigger issue is really with the hitting. While we hit pretty well overall... we just struggle to score a lot of runs consistently. We are third in the league in batting average, but we're 11th in the league in runs scored. So, we hit the ball, but we just don't seem to consistently string together hits and score runs.

Coming into the year all 'experts,' believed UK pitching would struggle while hitting would be excellent. That has proven to largely be the opposite. Auburn has that opposite. So, we will see if UK pitchers can keep Auburn hitters at bay and if UK hitters can string together enough hits to put up enough runs to win.

We're a bit feast or famine at the plate right now. Against Ole Miss, we had a few chances in one-run games to tie or take the lead with less than two outs and struck out multiple times. But when things click, we can put up a crooked number quickly. So far, we haven't hit starters particularly well, at least against good competition, but we seem to get to relievers pretty quickly. Seems like a mental thing to me.

Going into the OM series, I thought our biggest key would be strikeouts, given that OM was 3rd in the SEC in strikeouts thrown and we were second in total strikeouts as an offense. If we could avoid them like we had pretty much all season, we'd have a good chance. But OM struck us out 36 times in 3 games, which is currently a quarter of our total strikeouts on the season, and every time we got into a situation where we had a chance to score a run or start a rally, OM came up with multiple strikeouts. And given UK's ability to strike out hitters, I think it's again a big key in this series. We can hit the ball well, and if you give this team free base runners through walks or errors, they typically cash them in. But if you make us earn every base and every hit, we don't manufacture runs all that well.

Until we get our pitching staff back fully healthy and in game shape (which could still be a few weeks), I think we're a pretty vulnerable team. My biggest hope is that being home and in a comfortable setting allows these young pitchers of ours to perform better than they did at Ole Miss.

 

[Comebakatz3]

We're a bit feast or famine at the plate right now. Against Ole Miss, we had a few chances in one-run games to tie or take the lead with less than two outs and struck out multiple times. But when things click, we can put up a crooked number quickly. So far, we haven't hit starters particularly well, at least against good competition, but we seem to get to relievers pretty quickly. Seems like a mental thing to me.

Going into the OM series, I thought our biggest key would be strikeouts, given that OM was 3rd in the SEC in strikeouts thrown and we were second in total strikeouts as an offense. If we could avoid them like we had pretty much all season, we'd have a good chance. But OM struck us out 36 times in 3 games, which is currently a quarter of our total strikeouts on the season, and every time we got into a situation where we had a chance to score a run or start a rally, OM came up with multiple strikeouts. And given UK's ability to strike out hitters, I think it's again a big key in this series. We can hit the ball well, and if you give this team free base runners through walks or errors, they typically cash them in. But if you make us earn every base and every hit, we don't manufacture runs all that well.

Until we get our pitching staff back fully healthy and in game shape (which could still be a few weeks), I think we're a pretty vulnerable team. My biggest hope is that being home and in a comfortable setting allows these young pitchers of ours to perform better than they did at Ole Miss.

Well, UK will throw two sophomore righties at you sandwiched between a senior lefty. I am not sure any of them has amazing stuff, but they fill up the strike zone and they just don't give up a whole lot of walks. Stupp, our Friday starter, has given up just 4 in almost 24 innings and Lee also 4 in about 20. Hazelwood (Saturday) has 8 through 22. So, they will make you string together hits and they tend to get strikeouts at good times. Interestingly, our freshmen and sophomore pitchers have largely done better than our more experienced ones. The bullpen guys that have the highest ERAs are largely older guys.

UK defense can also be suspect at times. We seem to have fits of errors. We will have one game with 2-3 and then won't have any for a few games. I am actually pretty interested in our outfield this weekend. Our outfield features 3 guys who are not outfielders. Anu in left is possibly the worst defensive outfielder I've ever seen. Breaks slow on the ball, takes poor angles to the ball, doesn't get behind the ball on throws, poor communication... just not a good outfielder. Schultz in center is an athlete and uses that to make up for inexperience. He just started playing OF in February. Rhodes in left is converted from third and has the most experience. UK moved him there last year, so he's been practicing there all fall and now spring, so he's the most experienced but still learning. I think this is interesting because UK has not yet played a single away game... not even a neutral site. So, this will be the first time these guys have to learn a new outfield and how to play the wind and angles and those types of things. Will also be different for defense as it will be their first time playing on a natural surface rather than turf. So, we will see if we have more issues or things stay the same.

I am excited for this one though. Should be a lot of fun. I am sure UK will be excited to play in warmer weather.

 

[dufnerfanboy2]

Well, UK will throw two sophomore righties at you sandwiched between a senior lefty. I am not sure any of them has amazing stuff, but they fill up the strike zone and they just don't give up a whole lot of walks. Stupp, our Friday starter, has given up just 4 in almost 24 innings and Lee also 4 in about 20. Hazelwood (Saturday) has 8 through 22. So, they will make you string together hits and they tend to get strikeouts at good times. Interestingly, our freshmen and sophomore pitchers have largely done better than our more experienced ones. The bullpen guys that have the highest ERAs are largely older guys.

UK defense can also be suspect at times. We seem to have fits of errors. We will have one game with 2-3 and then won't have any for a few games. I am actually pretty interested in our outfield this weekend. Our outfield features 3 guys who are not outfielders. Anu in left is possibly the worst defensive outfielder I've ever seen. Breaks slow on the ball, takes poor angles to the ball, doesn't get behind the ball on throws, poor communication... just not a good outfielder. Schultz in center is an athlete and uses that to make up for inexperience. He just started playing OF in February. Rhodes in left is converted from third and has the most experience. UK moved him there last year, so he's been practicing there all fall and now spring, so he's the most experienced but still learning. I think this is interesting because UK has not yet played a single away game... not even a neutral site. So, this will be the first time these guys have to learn a new outfield and how to play the wind and angles and those types of things. Will also be different for defense as it will be their first time playing on a natural surface rather than turf. So, we will see if we have more issues or things stay the same.

I am excited for this one though. Should be a lot of fun. I am sure UK will be excited to play in warmer weather.

Interesting comments on the OF. I've seen a couple games and noticed the LF not looking comfortable out there. Also did realize y'all hadn't played away from home. The good news about Plainsman Park is the LF area isn't huge because of the large wall. The bad news is there's a canyon in LCF where the wall steeply retreats towards the scoreboard. It's just a weird angle. So, playing balls off the wall and positioning to manage that canyon are kinda tricky. CF and RF are pretty straightforward.

Really looking forward to the series. We might get rained out tonight so our first game since getting swept might be Friday night, which is worrisome for me.