SEC Week 5 (Halfway Home)

[Comebakatz3]

Craig Morgan sang about being, 'Almost Home,' and that is where we find ourselves as we touch the mid-way point of the SEC slate. As many of us know, UK is 4-11 through the first half, which puts us in a three way tie for the bottom three of the league with Alabama and South Carolina. Georgia and Miss. State lead the league table at 10-5. Texas A&M is getting the tie advantage as they are 9-5-1, and after that there is a three way tie at 9-6 between Arkansas, LSU, and Ole Miss. Auburn is 8-7 and Missouri is sitting at 7-7-1. Florida and Tennessee are hovering in the bottom half at 6-9.

Kentucky at Ole Miss
UK picked up their first series win of the season. Helped by a couple of 7 inning games on Sunday, the Cats got very very good starting pitching in both affairs and got some timely home runs, two by Collett, to help them win 4-1 in the first of the Sunday games and 4-2 in the second. The series loss really had to hurt Ole Miss as they could be on top of the league leader board had they taken care of UK. I can't tell you how proud I am of our pitching. Last weekend Ole Miss scored 40 runs against Florida, and we gave up just 11. Great showing for the arms, especially yesterday. UK will host UT this weekend while Ole Miss will head to Auburn.

Georgia at Tennessee
Georgia also let a pretty golden opportunity slip through their fingers this weekend as they dropped the series to Tennessee. The Vols actually shut out the Dawgs in the first two games of the series and won 2-0 and 3-0 before dropping the final game 7-1. Tennessee pitching started the year out extremely hot and threw shutouts in 6 of their first 9 games. They were brought back down to earth a bit in SEC play, but this may have righted the ship. They will come to Lexington this weekend to play UK. Georgia will get Missouri at home.

South Carolina at Florida
This was one of the more interesting matchups of the weekend, at least for those of us in the bottom half of the league. Florida and South Carolina have both struggled this year with Florida coming in with 4 wins and USC coming in with just 3. Florida took the series this weekend winning two of the three. This was a huge series win for Florida. Last weekend, Ole Miss averaged 13.3 runs per game against Florida in their series. UF had swept Alabama, but they had been swept by both Ole Miss and Vandy and lost the series to Miss. State. So, getting another series win for them was big. South Carolina also needed the series to try to stay out of the cellar, but it proved too much. USC looks to be in some big trouble going forward. They have played a very favorable schedule with Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama all in the front half of their schedule. They lost all three of those. They will end their season with 3 top 15 teams, a surging Missouri team, and UK. Their second half journey starts at home against TAMU, but not before they face a top 25 UNC team in the midweek. Florida heads to Alex Box to take on LSU.

Arkansas at Vanderbilt
This was a big series for the Commodores. They took care of business and swept Florida and Tennessee, but they lost both their series on the road against top 15 opponents Texas A&M and Georgia. They finally drew a top 15 opponent at home in Arkansas and they got the monkey off their back taking the first two before dropping the Sunday game 12-14. Vandy has a pretty favorable schedule going forward with Alabama (next weekend), USC and UK still to come. Arkansas will be back home next weekend, but it doesn’t get easier as they host league leading Miss. State next weekend.

LSU at Missouri
Missouri is emerging as a team to fear. They were swept in week one by Arkansas, but since then they have won every series (with a tied series against TAMU thanks to a 2-2 tie in a 10 inning Sunday game). They continued their winning ways this weekend when they took on LSU. They lost game one in 11-12 in shootout fashion, but similarly to the UK series they were able to bounce back and get the last two. They are a dangerous team that no one will be sleeping on going forward. UGA will be looking to bounce back against them at home this weekend. LSU will be looking to rebound as they host Florida.

Auburn at TAMU
Auburn is reeling. The Tigers started the year strong with a sweep of Tennessee at home, but have largely struggled since. They took one series from South Carolina, but lost to Miss. State and Arkansas before dropping two of three to TAMU this weekend. It appears that the Auburn offense is struggling as they have been shut out 3 times in the last three weeks and also only scored 1 in another game this past weekend. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Tigers drop out of the top 25 after this weekend. Things don’t get easier for them as they host Ole Miss. TAMU will get a bit of a vacation as they will head to South Carolina.

Alabama at Mississippi State
Brad Bohannon is not having the greatest time in Tuscaloosa. It does look like he could improve upon his overall record from a year ago, but he will need to find 4 more league wins in the second half of the year to match his total from last year. I don’t think it happens. The Tide will face 5 top 25 teams to end the season with their best hope for series win coming at Auburn. They will start the second half run at home against Vanderbilt. Miss. State swept the Tide this weekend and allowed just 4 runs while scoring 28 themselves. Miss. State is having a very strong season with a whole lot of wins so far. They will look to continue that this weekend as they head to Fayetteville to take on the Razorbacks.

 

[Comebakatz3]

Looking at the stats, it isn’t hard to see who is at the bottom of the league and why. Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama are all struggling to both hit and pitch. Strictly going by stats, South Carolina looks like they may be the worst team in the league. They are hitting an impossibly low, .196 as a team. They raised this over the weekend by 7 points, but they were also facing Florida who claims the worst pitching staff (stats wise) in the SEC. Florida, facing such a poor hitting team got to lower their ERA from 7.41 a week ago to 6.91 this week, but still firmly in last in the league. South Carolina is also near the bottom of the league in pitching with a team ERA of 5.36. Alabama is second to last in both ERA (6.30) and batting average (.218).

Kentucky owns the third worst batting average in the league and the fourth worst team ERA. While UK struggles for average they continue to be in the top 3/4 in home runs, behind Vanderbilt (20) and Miss State (19) and tied with USC (18). As you expect, UK continues to lead the league by a wide margin in strikeouts (176) with the next closest team being LSU with 145. UK struck out 36 times this weekend alone, averaging 12 per game and staying at our average of about 36 percent of our at bats ending in strikeouts. You will find later in my write-up where I will shame the worst offenders, because I’m mean like that. Also, UK is still the only SEC team without a sac fly.

On the bump, UK dropped their ERA from 5.72 a week ago to 5.26 this week. It still needs to be much lower, but I am extremely proud of the performance that our pitchers put up yesterday. Hazelwood making his first SEC appearance and going 5.2 scoreless is outstanding. ZT struggled, but still got the job done. Bullpen was a bit shaky, but as a group they did pretty solid in the two games with our best three giving up just the 1 earned. Still, UK has its problems. Ramsey has now thrown in 3 starts in SEC play and has 5 appearances and a 10.47 ERA. I don’t know if they will try to replace him, but that just cannot and will not get it done. This is probably mean, but he is just too easy to hit. He serves them up way too often and opponents are hitting .352 against him and he has given up 10 extra base hits. Also, he is the worst defensive pitcher I have ever seen. Ole Miss scored from second base on a bunt (or excuse me swing) that went 10 feet in front of the plate because Ramsey failed to cover home when Gei fielded the bunt.

Have to give a major shout out once again to Ben Jordan. He is being used sparingly, but he continues to be pretty strong in SEC play. He made his second appearance on Friday and picked up a strikeout in the 8th to end the Ole Miss inning. He has thrown just 2.1 innings, but they are scoreless and opponents are only hitting .125. It will be criminal if Ming continues to ignore him.

UK has given up 24 unearned run in SEC play and we have the worst fielding percentage and the most errors in the league. Still, we played two games of error free baseball this weekend and we didn’t give up any unearned runs. Although, I think Ole Miss’ scorer may have been a bit generous on what they gave as hits on Friday.

Some shout outs and shames:

Shout outs:

TJ Collett - Two bombs this weekend and both basically won UK the games on Sunday. We struggle to score runs outside of home runs, so having the big blasts is imperative. We got them this weekend and they propelled us to wins.

Hazelwood - Already talked about him, but it bares repeating... he has finally moved to the weekend and he kept Ole Miss hitters largely guessing. He gave up 5 hits in 5.2 innings (.250 against) while striking out 3 and walking 1. He was just what the doctor ordered, and I think we found our Sunday starter.

Daniel Harper - Cole Daniels struggled to find the strike zone, and Harper came in and shut the door and earned a save in the late game. He had a double play but Reed didn't get his foot on the bag. Still, he didn't let that rattle him and he got a strikeout to end it. Big time close down with runners on.

Team defense - Just 1 error. So, at least on paper it was much better.

Shame:

Ryan Shinn - Tough weekend for Shinny. His isn't a full shame, but we need him to be better. Just one hit this weekend in 11 plate appearances. 4 of these 11 were strikeouts. I am not fully sure how many times he was hitting with runners on, but he did have at least 1 LOB according to stats.

Austin Schultz - Schultz wasn't terrible. He got a couple of hits and scored a run and got an RBI. So, he was pretty helpful in the games, but for a leadoff guy he struck out way too much. 5 times in 11 at bats to be exact. He had two more at bats that ended with HBPs, but those were the only 'walks' he had this weekend. So, he officially went 2 of 9 (.222). Again, not terrible, but the strikeouts have to come down. He also popped up a bunt at one point. That annoys the heck out of me. He also tried to score from first on a double to left, but got easily thrown out at home. Seemed like he may have ignored the stop sign.

Coltyn Kessler - Kessler had a pretty good series when he was hitting. He hit well 4-11 (.364), but he also struck out 6 times. So, other than one fly out to left, he either hit the ball or struck out. Love the hits, but have to cut down on the Ks.

ARod - Had limited at bats this weekend and went 0-3 with 2 strikeouts.

 

[Comebakatz3]

Also... shout out to A-Rod and the dugout for lifting A-Rod onto their shoulders so he could yell, "No Hitter" into the stadium PA microphone in order to jinx the Rebels pitcher in the second double header game. They are the real MVPs. lol