Saturday March 19th, 2005
12:29amCan We Get a Mulligan?
3/18/05 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E TAMU 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 - 1 5 0 texas tech 2 0 0 5 0 5 0 1 x - 13 13 4 Wow, that was a nasty one. The game got out of control in the 4th inning when Jason Meyer just couldn't get an out. Three of the 5 runs scored that inning were baserunners who were walked....You won't win ball games if you're giving away runs like that. They scored 5 more in the 6th inning and 2 of those were walked batters.
It really didn't matter because we really stumbled at the plate again. tech's starter, Carnline, didn't have impressive numbers coming in but I'm willing to bet that he was able to change speeds well....I didn't see the game, I listened to it, so someone email me and let me know if I guessed correctly. We have been stumped several times by pitchers who weren't overpowering but could simply change speeds with their pitches and we couldn't stay back on them. I could be totally wrong but I'd be interested to hear from someone who was there.
It's not the end of the world....
"A good friend of mine used to say, 'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.' Think about that for a while."<
--Skip from Bull Durham Larry
Friday March 18th, 2005
7:10amAgs Travel To Lubbock
This evening the Ags kick-off their Big XII action against the much hated texas tech red raiders.
This will probably be the most challenging weekend of the season for the Ags through this point in the schedule because not only will they have to put up with the Tech Hecklers (although I doubt they'll ruffle our feathers too much) but Lubbock hasn't been very good to the baseball team in recent years. To quote the man we call W, from TexAgs.com:
Let's hope that the 8 year thing holds up....When looking back 15 years on the A&M vs. Tech baseball rivalry, there is one thing that really sticks out: the home team wins almost all the time.The 1997 Texas Aggies are the last team to win the A&M-Tech weekend series on the road. Matter of fact that was quite an accomplishment, since Tech was the 97 big 12 champions. Since 1997, the Ags are 1-7 at Dan Law.
The last team to win the series on the road before 1997 was the 1989 aggie baseball team. Tech has never won a series at Olsen Field, but did manage a 2-2 split of the 1995 series.
Looking ahead to this weekend, one thing is for sure...the Ags are going to have to score runs. The last 3 aggie wins in Lubbock were by scores of 5-3, 13-11, and 10-5. I really don't think 4 or less is going to get it done.
The weekend match-ups on the mound look like this:
texas tech v. Texas A&M Fri: TBA v. Jason Meyer Sat: Brian Wyatt v. Kyle Marlatt Sun: Adam Lawford v. TBAtech's pitching staff is a complete mess....48 earned runs in the last 7 games can do that to a staff. They have changed Friday night starters three times on the season already and have used 7 different pitchers to start in a weekend game.texas tech pitching (>3 IP) G/GS IP H R ER SO/BB HR ERA OBA A.Lawford..... 7/5 35.1 35 19 16 32/5 1 4.08 .252 B.Carnline.... 6/4 23.0 31 20 16 20/15 0 6.26 .330 R.Gattis...... 7/4 21.1 22 17 16 17/13 3 6.75 .259 -------------- T.McElroy..... 7/0 13.2 6 2 2 14/2 0 1.32 .133 B.Wyatt....... 4/1 15.0 10 3 3 8/4 2 1.80 .189 J.McCoy....... 3/2 11.0 9 4 4 9/3 1 3.27 .225 C.Zachry...... 6/0 7.0 9 4 3 7/1 1 3.86 .333 A.Fry......... 5/0 13.2 14 7 7 15/5 1 4.61 .269 Z.Butler...... 8/0 13.1 15 7 7 12/8 1 4.72 .294 C.Hargrove.... 7/0 13.0 16 10 9 17/8 0 6.23 .302 D.Richardson.. 5/3 9.1 15 16 14 5/10 2 13.50 .341Our offense is starting to wake up a bit. We've scored an average of 8 runs per game since the end of the Aggie Classic compared to only 5.15 runs per game through the Aggie Classic. Hopefully in the west Texas wind we'll continue to raise those numbers....although Law Field has a Park Factor of only 98 which is the same PF that Olsen Field has and there are three better hitter's parks on our schedule this year.If you looked at their offense (.343 team batting average and a .943 team OPS) you'd think that they've been hitting off their own pitching staff but they haven't....they've been hitting off of worse ones. tech's non-conference schedule is filled with teams like New Mexico, Western Illinois, Dallas Baptist, & Northern Illinois. The only ranked team they faced in February was #24 TCU, who they beat. I will say that their March schedule is slightly more demanding with single games against USC, Wichita State, & TCU all of which they lost. Basically this is going to be the most difficult weekend of their season thus far, as well as ours.
While I don't think that tech has been playing very quality opponents they can still flat out rake. Of their starters with 10 or more starts the lowest batting average is .295, which is the only sub-.300. They are led by pre-season All-American, Cameron Blair, who is one of the top offensive short stops in the nation. He leads the team in OBP, SLG, and HRs....hey that sounds like our short stop.
I think that one of the big things to watch for this weekend will be how we hold their base runners. techs has 62 stolen bases as a team out of 68 attempts and are led by Chris Williamson (13-for-13), Blair (10-for-12), & Cody Fuller (16-for-18). For comparison's sake, A&M is 28-for-37 on the bases and are led by Cliff Pennington (9-of-12) & John Infante (7-of-8), although we sure ran like fire on Tuesday stealing 7 bases against Texas State. Our catcher, Justin Pouk, has thrown out 6 of 18 (33%) runners who have attempted to steal. Kyle Marlatt and Jordan Chambless both need to be careful as base runners are successful 8-of-9 against the pair.
Player AVG GP-GS AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SLG BB SO OB% SB-ATT Callender, Joseph... .434 19-18 76 22 33 7 0 0 19 .526 6 9 .476 8-8 Fuller, Cody........ .432 20-20 74 18 32 3 2 0 16 .527 12 13 .538 16-18 Blair, Cameron...... .416 20-20 77 27 32 4 0 5 25 .662 18 9 .529 10-12 Edwards, Madison.... .387 18-15 62 18 24 6 2 2 23 .645 10 7 .459 2-3 Fouts, Cooper....... .333 17-15 42 15 14 2 0 0 14 .381 8 10 .464 0-0 Avants, Carey....... .310 20-17 58 12 18 3 2 0 12 .431 16 3 .453 2-2 Williams, Chris..... .309 20-19 68 22 21 3 0 2 13 .441 20 11 .479 13-13 Richburg, Chris..... .295 17-17 61 15 18 3 1 3 18 .525 8 18 .375 0-1 Capps, Brian........ .262 16-9 42 9 11 4 0 1 10 .429 9 7 .385 4-4 -------------- Thomas, Brent....... .333 12-2 9 6 3 0 1 0 2 .556 2 3 .455 3-3 Smith, Matt......... .313 10-5 16 7 5 0 0 0 0 .313 5 4 .500 0-0 Young, Travis....... .286 7-1 7 3 2 0 0 0 1 .286 1 1 .375 0-0 Stewart, Trey....... .267 13-6 30 4 8 1 1 0 9 .367 3 5 .324 2-2 Wilson, Josh........ .259 10-6 27 7 7 0 1 0 0 .333 3 4 .375 0-0 Steffey, David...... .257 15-7 35 5 9 2 0 3 5 .571 2 13 .297 1-1 Roberts, Drew....... .222 6-2 9 1 2 0 0 0 6 .222 2 2 .333 1-1 Smart, Patrick...... .200 12-1 10 1 2 0 0 0 2 .200 1 4 .273 0-0 Lewis, Fielding..... .000 1-0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0-0 Capuccio, Jon....... .000 2-0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0-0I think that tech is pretty sneaky with their ticket sales marketing. They are currently advertising the game as #8 Texas A&M v. #24 texas tech but there is no poll that has the two teams at those numbers....they mix-and-matched between the polls and used the highest ranking for each team (tech is only ranked in the ESPN poll & A&M ranges from #8 to #12 in each of the 4 polls). You can't do that.One more thing. Will Kimmey over at Baseball America pretty much told us they'll give us the entire scoop on what is going on with regards to the TV buzz next week.
Everyone knew the April 19 game between Tulane and Louisiana State was slated for ESPN2, but the same station's plans to show a May 13 game between Baylor and Texas A&M leaked out this week. ESPN plans to announce its full college baseball broadcast schedule for 2005 next Tuesday or Wednesday. The slate includes coverage on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU beginning in April, said Burke Magnus, ESPNU vice president and general manager. He said ESPN was in talks with the NCAA to broadcast one or two regionals and likely will show additional super-regional games that aren't part of the regional coverage already planned for ESPN and ESPN2. College Sports Television (CSTV) also plans to show a regional after finding success in broadcasting the Stanford regional in 2004. We'll have the complete ESPN and CSTV schedules, and what the coverage means to college baseball next week.Ok, now let's BTHO texas tech! WHOOP!
Thursday March 17th, 2005
11:36amSet Your TIVOs II
I feel as if I have walked right into the middle of hurricane. Yesterday I wrote all about the potential for college baseball to be on TV and then over the last 12-20 hours I've discovered that ESPN is filling all sorts of time slots with it. I'm excited because A&M picked up another ESPN 2 game against Baylor in Waco on Friday May 13th (time changed up to 6pm)....WHOOP!
I went through the TV listings for ESPN2 and ESPN U through the end of April yesterday but apparently more have been added since I went through them [edit: ESPN2 has been rechecked and updated as of 10 min after original post & ESPN U as of 30 min]. I think that some of this might have to do with there being no NHL....that couldn't be any cooler with me (no pun intended)! Here are the time slots I've come up with so far (to be edited as more announcements are made or I get more information):
(all times CST) ESPN Thu 4/28 6pm Nebraska @ OU Sun 5/15 2pm OSU v. OU (at Bricktown Ballpark) ESPN2 Sat 4/09 8pm Sun 4/10 2am Sat 4/16 6pm Sun 4/17 2am Sun 4/17 12pm OU @ texas Tue 4/19 6pm Tulane v. LSU (Zephyr Field) Wed 4/20 2am (probably a Tulane/LSU rebroadcast) Sun 4/24 12pm Tue 4/26 7pm OU @ Wichita St Wed 4/27 2am (probably OU/W-St rebroadcast) Sat 4/30 8pm Tue 5/10 7pm Houston @ A&M Fri 5/13 6pm A&M @ Baylor ESPN U Fri 4/08 5pm Fri 4/08 8pm Sat 4/09 8am Sun 4/10 12pm Sun 4/10 5:30pm Sun 4/10 8:30pm Fri 4/15 3pm Fri 4/15 6pm OU @ texas Sun 4/17 8am Sun 4/17 11am Tue 4/19 6pm Tue 4/26 7pm Wed 4/27 7pm Thu 4/28 7pm Fri 4/29 3pm Fri 4/29 6pm OU @ Nebraska Sat 4/30 1pm OU @ Nebraska Sun 5/01 2am CSTV Sun 3/20 1pm texas @ Baylor Wed 4/06 6pm Iowa @ Nebraska Wed 4/13 6pm Army @ Lafayette (taped 4/10) Wed 4/20 7pm texas @ Rice Sat 4/23 7pm Baylor @ Nebraska Sun 5/01 3:30pm UNCV @ San Diego St Mon 5/02 6pm Rutgers @ Lafayette (taped 3/27) Sat 5/07 2pm Missouri @ Nebraska Sun 5/08 11am Notre Dame @ St. John's Sat 5/14 3pm Loyola Marymount @ San Diego Mon 5/16 6pm UMass @ URI (taped 5/15) Fri 5/20 8pm Arizona St @ Stanford Sat 5/21 2pm K-State @ Nebraska Sat 5/21 8pm Long Beach St @ Cal State Fullerton Sat 5/28 TBD Conference USA Championship Sat 5/28 TBD Big 10 Championship Fox South West Tue 4/12 7pm A&M @ Rice Sat 4/16 2pm Nebraska @ A&M Sat 4/16 6pm OU @ texas Sat 4/30 2pm texas tech @ Baylor Sat 5/21 6pm A&M @texas Fox Mid West 4/23 1pm A&M @ K-StateThe dates with no schools filled in are time slots that ESPN says they have for "College Baseball" but I just don't know the teams yet. I'm sure that there are some that I've missed and that there are some negotiations still ongoing between the schools and ESPN, as well as more games in May that weren't up there yet.I don't think anyone could have come away more of a winner than OU. Their baseball is not very good this year, actually I'd be willing to say they're bad, but ESPN must not of known that and filled some of those time slots based on their football team's ability. I don't think that blowouts would be a good thing for the sport just as we're getting some national TV attention.
There are lots more games that will be locally televised for dozens and dozens of schools and this was the most comprehensive list I could find with regards to that.
If anyone sees a misprint up there or if they know which teams are playing in the empty time slots please let me know....
Wednesday March 16th, 2005
3:15pmSet Your TIVOs
This really couldn't wait until tomorrow's post....
It has just been brought to my attention that the May 10th game against Houston will be broadcast from Olsen Field on ESPN 2. This is HUGE! not only for Aggie baseball but for collegiate baseball in general. As many of you already know, college baseball is extremely popular here in Texas and some of the other southern states (Louisiana, 'Bama, Mississippi, Florida, etc.) but not up north or really to the west....mostly due to weather. California has some great teams but their attendance isn't quite comparable to the Texas schools or the SEC schools. Television exposure in any capacity is going to help the sport tremendously.
Baseball America college guru, Will Kimmey's, weekly chat on February 25th hit on this topic...
I couldn't agree with Will more.Q: David from Manhattan asks:
On April 19th the Tulane LSU game will be nationally covered on ESPN2, I personally think its great news. I was wondering if you can give us your thoughts on the significants of a mid week regular season game getting so much attention and do you know how this all came about?A: Will Kimmey: More TV exposure can only be good for college baseball. I can't believe I'm going to compare baseball to women's hoops now, but as that sport has gained more air time on ESPN and other networks in the last five years, the game has grown in its scope and breadth. It also has brought about more parity, with high school players getting exposed to more than just one or two top programs. So this could be a potential boon for teams that aren't traditional CWS participants. And as a college baseball fan, the chance to see teams on TV weekly (without some crazy satellite dish dangling from my roof) is huge.
I think the recent success of ESPN's Regional, Super Regional, and especially College World Series coverage has sort of opened the exec's eyes up at what they could eventually have on their hands. I doubt that it'll ever reach the level of college football or even college basketball, but then again I doubt that anyone at ESPN in the 80s thought that by showing some of the non-marquee games that they'd end up with March Madness on their hands.
The continued hard work and success of CSTV (they've got this coming weekend's Texas at Baylor game scheduled) and the recent start of ESPN's own "college only" channel, ESPN U, will help open up the doors even more.
You can see the growth starting up simply by looking at A&M's recent seasons. I can remember watching the Aggies play on Fox South West (FSW) my senior year of high school and we've had one of the texas v. TAMU games as well as the Big XII Tournament every recent season but this year, on top of the ESPN2 game, we have 3 games on FSW as well as two separate games televised regionally on Cox Sports TV (CST).
Two of my most memorable Aggie baseball moments were captured by CSTV back in 2001 (Neal Stephenson's game winning double to win the series against #1 Nebraska & Chris Russ steamrolling texas' 3Bman in the Friday night game). Somehow I've ended up with videoclips of them on my computer and if I was forced to keep only two things off of my entire hard-drive those would be them. Clips like that helped solidify my passion for college baseball.
I only wish there was a camera on Texas Southern's RFer in their 1st game against Rice last year in the Regionals....he made the most amazing play, running into the fence to help preserve the biggest underdog victory in college baseball history. Given the situation and the result of the game I think it could have easily made a run for an ESPY.
Basically, I'm really excited that college baseball is getting an opportunity to make its way into homes that wouldn't normally even know it existed and I urge you to support the stations that are providing these opportunities by watching the games so we can help our wonderful sport grow.
2005 Televised Aggie Games Tue 4/12 @Rice 7pm FSW Sat 4/16 Nebraska 2pm FSW Sun 5/01 OkState 2pm CST Tue 5/10 Houston 7pm ESPN2 Sun 5/15 Baylor 2pm CST Sat 5/21 @texas 6pm FSW
12:54pmOops
Sorry, I forgot to put the line scores up from Sunday and last night's games....
3/13/05 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E UCLA 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 - 3 11 1 TAMU 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 x - 5 8 1 Pennington broke out of his little mini-slump and Todd Sebek and John Infante had pretty good days at the plate as well.
3/15/05 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E TAMU 2 1 1 1 0 1 2 1 0 - 9 15 0 Texas State 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 - 3 3 2 Austin Creps was masterful in his first start of the season and literally everyone hit pretty well.
Duke
Prom 2000
(L-R) Me, Erb, Pat, & DukeJust wanted to give a shout-out of sorts to one of my best friends, Duke.
Duke played some mad ball back in high school (first team all-district at SS our Jr & Sr years in one of the toughest districts in the state & was named to the All Greater Houston All Star team our senior year) and went to BYU on an academic scholarship. He made an attempt to walk on up there but was the last player cut....the coach's son also played infield.
Anyways, he went on his LDS Church mission for a couple of years and went back to BYU. After a couple more semesters he decided he really missed playin' ball so this spring he transfered to Southern Virginia University and is playing ball up there. It's funny that he's classified as a freshman even though he graduated high school in 2000.
I just wanted to give him some love via the WWW....
AB R H RBI SO/BB 2B 3B HR E 02/08 @Gilford 3 0 0 0 0/0 0 0 0 1 02/17 @Lynchburg 3 0 0 0 0/0 0 0 0 4 02/19 @Roanoke G1 <----------n/a-----------> 02/19 @Roanoke G2 <----------n/a-----------> 02/22 @Washington&Lee 4 0 3 0 0/0 0 0 0 1 02/26 @Chowan G1 <-------DNB-Pitcher------> 02/26 @Chowan G2 2 0 0 0 0/0 0 0 0 1 03/04 EasternMennonite^ 2 1 1 0 0/0 0 1 0 0 03/04 EasternNazarene^ <----------n/a-----------> 03/05 Gordon College^ <----------n/a-----------> 03/05 Trinity Intern.^ <----------n/a-----------> 03/07 Trinity Intern.^ <----------n/a-----------> 03/07 Kenyon College^ <----------n/a-----------> 03/10 @Washington&Lee 4 0 2 1 0/0 1 0 0 1 ^EMU Spring Classic (Sarasota, Florida) Dec IP H R ER SO/BB WP BK HP IBB AB BF G/F 02/26 @Chowan G1 W 2.0 2 0 0 1/0 0 0 2 0 7 9 3/1(All those n/a mean that the team's website didn't have a box score)It seems that your glove is a tad slow to come around, eh? I'd be willing to bet that there have been a few trips to the trainer's room....I bet he could walk there in his sleep back in high school.
Anyways, I'm going to hook up a link on the side bar of the website to keep track of my boy as his season continues.
And while I'm on the topic of former teammates, I just saw a picture of my old locker neighbor, Brad Halsey, in his new uni....
It's weird when "the guy who used to take your socks and think that you didn't know but you did and were secretly taking them back" is traded for Randy Johnson.
Part of me still wishes I had one more game....I suppose that's part of growing up.
Tuesday March 15th, 2005
12:01amA Look Outside of Aggieland
I thought that this would be an appropriate time to take a look around some of collegiate baseball and see what is going on outside of Aggieland.
I suppose I can start off with texas, who finally made the leap up to #1 after weeks of complaining that Tulane didn't deserve it. Sophomore OFer, Drew Stubbs, is simply incredible. He's hitting .348 on the season with 6 of his 16 extra bases being HRs. His slugging percentage of .663 (team high) and his on-base percentage of .396 give him an OPS of 1.059. He's also 10 of 12 on the base paths. The t-sips also have had some offensive help from their OSU transfer, Thomas Incaviglia, nephew of collegiate legend Pete. On the mound they seem to be doing OK without Sam LeCure because their team ERA is 2.28 and the highest individual ERA among the 9 players who have seen the hill is 3.55 from Buck Cody. They start Big XII play on Friday night in a H-A-A series with #16 Baylor.
#12 Stanford has started the season off rather slowly and is sitting on an 11-7 record at their mid-term dead week. You may be curious why a team with a .611 winning percentage is still a top 15 team....well, of their 7 losses 3 came to texas (in Austin), 2 came from #2 Cal State Fullerton (in Fullerton), one came to USC (at home), and one came to Cal (at home). Basically they get a bit of leeway since their schedule has been a bit tough....don't worry, I'm sure that they'll be in Omaha when July rolls around. Mark Romanczuk (39.1 IP, 3.20 ERA) & Jeff Gilmore (35.1 IP, 2.80 ERA) are the backbone of the pitching staff and Jed Lowrie (.388 BA, 7 HR, 24 RBI, 1.135 OPS) and John Mayberry Jr. (.352 BA, 1.009 OPS) make their lineup extremely potent.
#2 Cal State Fullerton is doing a fairly solid job defending their National Championship. They're 14-3 on the season and have played a fairly difficult schedule taking 2 of 3 from then ranked #6 Stanford and just finished up taking 2 of 3 from last week's #1 ranked Tulane. Things won't get any easier as they host #9 Arizona this weekend then travel to Long Beach State the following weekend. Ricky Romero & Ryan Schreppel lead the pitching staff with sub-2.00 ERAs after +33 IP and their offense is extremely well balanced having 9 of the 10 players with more than twenty at bats hitting over .300 (and the one who isn't is hitting .297)
Nebraska is starting to make some waves after running their record up to 12-2. Their offense if led by Alex Gordon (2004 Big XII POY), Brandon Fusilier, and Brandon Buckman who are all hitting over .370 and slugging over .615. What is more amazing is what their pitching staff has been able to put together. In a total of 119.2 innings they have given up a whopping total of 21 earned runs for a team ERA of 1.58. They are led by Joba Chamberlain who, in his 4 starts, has 24.2 IP, 37 SOs, only 5 walks, and has given up 1 ER for an ERA of 0.36. Those are numbers similar to a first round high school kid puts up when he faces folks like you and me....just ridiculous. I'm still trying to decide if his name makes my list of coolest baseball names ever. You really just need to go look at their team stat page to see their whole staff for yourselves. I can't wait until mid-April for them to come to town.
#5 LSU just swept a weekend in which they faced Arizona State in 2 games and had 1 with Western Illinois. In the Sunday game the Tigers hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs (that's 4 home runs in a row) off of ASU's Jason Uriquidez on their way to a 6 home run day. I got to see LSU play at the end of February when they were at the University of Houston and let me tell you....those are some BIG boys.
Speaking of lots of home runs....Washington has been on somewhat of a tear of late. Over the 5 day span of March 6th-March 10th the Huskies hit 21 home runs in 4 games and have turned their season around going 7-0 since they left Aggieland. Tim Lincecum must have found something in that College Station water because he too has been simply insane since he toed the mound at Olsen.
Lincecum on the season: Date Opp Dec IP H R ER SO/BB GSc 2/13 UC-Irv L 5.2 6 4 4 4/1 45 2/20 S.Clara L 5.0 7 5 5 5/4 34 ------------------------------------ 2/27 TAMU W 7.0 2 0 0 8/1 80 ------------------------------------ 3/03 UC-SB W 6.0 1 0 0 11/6 75 3/09 Pacific W 7.0 4 2 2 14/4 71I might as well show how some of our other opponents have faired....
Tennessee has won 11 in a row to boost their record to 14-3. This has been in large part to an extremely weak schedule after leaving the Minute Maid Park College Classic....They've played Bethune-Cookman (won 2 & lost 1), Tennessee Tech (1-0), UNC-Wilmingham (1-0), James Madison (1-0), George Mason (1-0), Moorehead State (3-0), Oakland (1-0), & Radford (3-0). Fan favorite, Eli Iorg, was just named the National Player of the Week after going 13-for-19 with 13 RBI and 4 HRs in the Vol's 4 games last week. Our mound opponent, Luke Hochevar, has had an excellent month worth of work since facing us on opening day and now has a season ERA of 1.59 with 36 IP, 43 SOs and a AGs of 68.
Date Opp Dec IP H R ER SO/BB GSc 2/11 TAMU L 5.0 2 5 1 6/2 55 2/18 B.Cookman W 7.0 1 0 0 9/2 82 2/26 UNC-Wilm W 9.0 4 0 0 6/0 85 3/04 Moorehead S W 7.0 4 0 0 13/0 82 3/11 Radford W 6.0 11 5 5 9/1 38Some of you might also remember the "scrubs" that we lost to in the MMP tournament that you had never heard of before....Josh Geer from Rice and Matt Farrington from Houston. Well, Geer has compiled 38.1 IP now on the season and has given up 4 earned runs (0.94 ERA) against the likes of then ranked #15 A&M, #23 USC, #24 TCU, & a Nebraska team on the rise. As for Farrington....well he has now knocked off then #15 A&M (now #8), he beat then #3 LSU (now #5), and this past weekend he beat one of the best starters in the nation, Cesar Ramos, from Long Beach State. Talk about a giant killer. As I always say, “Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they’re not good.”
There are still two more guys that we faced that I want to mention....San Diego's Nate Boman and USC's Ian Kennedy. Boman is sitting on a 5-1 record with a 2.23 ERA in 44.1 IP with 47 SOs and has a measly .185 OBA. Kennedy doesn't have quite as staggering numbers but I doubt there is anyone else in the nation who has faced the level of competition he has faced in his 4 starts.
IP H R ER SO/BB GSc #17 Long Beach State 6.0 4 1 0 6/2 70 #13 Stanford 4.1 4 3 3 4/5 43 #15 Texas A&M 7.0 4 3 3 10/2 65 #22 texas tech 6.2 4 1 1 9/4 68So here's a recap of some of the pitchers we've faced on the year....
G/GS IP H R ER SO/BB HR ERA OBA AGs L.Hochevar.... 5/5 34.0 24 10 6 43/5 0 1.59 .197 68 J.Geer........ 6/5 38.1 23 5 4 38/16 0 0.94 .173 68 M.Farrington.. 5/5 28.0 26 8 8 19/8 1 2.57 .245 57 T.Lincecum.... 5/5 30.2 20 11 11 41/17 2 3.23 .200 61 N.Boman....... 7/6 44.1 30 12 11 47/14 1 2.23 .185 I.Kennedy..... 4/5 25.0 16 8 7 32/13 1 2.52 .182 61I feel pretty good about our team knowing that 4 of our 5 losses came to names off of that list.Somehow I knew that this topic would get some sort of Aggie twist to it….
Monday March 14th, 2005
12:01pmAgs Host Round 1 of NIT
It still amazes me how much of a turnaround Coach Gillespie has made....I mean last year we didn't win a conference game and now we're hosting an NIT game on Wednesday night!
Tickets went on sale this morning at 8am and you can go here for information on all of that.
The ladies play Tulsa on Wednesday at 5pm and the men play Clemson at 7:30pm the same night. One ticket covers both games!
The athletic department has set up a "Maroon & White Out" game plan for a cool looking arena effect.
The games won't be televised so the only way you can see'em is if you get up to Reed Arena!
I got excited just typing this up!
Sunday March 13th, 2005
1:06pmPitching Comparisons
I just posted about the pitching staff on Friday so I'm sure you all are wondering if I ever look at the offense of our club. Well, I do but I'm more interested in the pitching for a couple of reasons: 1) It's easier to keep up with the pitching staff on a game-by-game basis because there are usually only 2 or 3 of'em as opposed to 9 to 12 different guys who come up to the plate. 2) In the 5 seasons I've been enamored with collegiate baseball I have concluded that pitching is far more important to a team's post-season success.
That said, I was looking through some of my archives from last season and I ran across this look at our pitching staff prior to March 12th which happened to also be the first 17 games of last season (which is the number of games we had played when I did my look at this year's pitching on Friday. Needless to say I wanted to see how we compared now to then....
2004 G/GS IP ERA AGs 2005 G/GS IP ERA AGs J.Meyer 8/0 18.1 1.47 - J.Meyer 4/4 27.1 0.99 67 Z.Jackson 4/4 24.1 3.70 59 K.Marlatt 6/2 18.2 1.45 68 J.Moore 4/4 25.1 4.62 57 C.Turner 5/3 20.0 3.15 50 R.Ray 4/4 19.0 4.74 49 R.Ray 4/4 17.2 5.60 49 -------------------------------- -------------------------------- B.Rampy 5/0 6.2 0.00 - B.Rampy 3/0 4.0 0.00 - C.Pennington 1/0 0.2 0.00 - C.Pennington 1/0 0.1 0.00 - J.Cline 1/0 1.1 0.00 - C.Corgan 6/1 13.2 0.66 66 D.Frame 3/0 2.2 0.00 - J.Chambless 7/0 10.2 0.84 - K.Marlatt 3/2 14.1 3.77 52 C.Jones 1/1 3.0 3.00 49 K.Nicholson 5/0 13.0 4.15 - K.Nicholson 3/0 5.1 3.38 - A.Creps 3/0 5.2 4.76 - J.Cline 2/2 9.1 3.85 51 D.Donaldson 2/2 7.1 4.91 44 H.Hering 2/0 2.0 4.50 - T.Soeder 3/1 5.1 8.44 29 K.Whelan 7/0 9.0 7.00 - B.Boening 2/0 2.2 10.12 - K.Whelan 2/0 2.1 11.57 - ------------------------------------------------------------------ Totals 51/17 150.0 3.48 52 51/17 141.0 2.62 57Obviously that doesn't include the games we've played this weekend which have altered some of those numbers but it does show a pretty good comparison of where we are now and where we were a year ago.It's interesting to see that Zach Jackson didn't have a spectacular ERA (he finished the season with a 3.58) but it was his strikeouts (finished with 127 in 120 IP) and the fact that you never knew when he would twirl another no-hitter or perfect game (almost had one at Nebraska) that made him so exciting to watch.
Overall there is an upgrade in our pitchers who have 1 inning per game played as well as an upgrade from the rest of the crew. Rampy and Pennington are the same as they were last year, Nicholson has been better (although in fewer innings), but the biggest difference has been the two freshmen arms, Chambless and Corgan.
College baseball is interesting in that you have to have the right balance between your bullpen, your weekend starters, and your weekday guys (who are ideally the guys who didn't get work in on the weekends). If you have a shortage or a lapse in one of those three fields then you have to start using up your resources from one of the other which starts a snowball effect. Last season we did not have a good balance. Friday night and Saturday night we were fine from a starting pitching standpoint but we ended up riding Jackson and Meyer deep into the games because our Sunday starting was a total crapshoot as to how many innings we would get from our starter which resulted in needing many arms from our bullpen. Our weekend games from conference play last season are a perfect example of this....On Fridays we averaged 2.4 different pitchers per game, on Saturday we averaged 1.8 different pitchers per game, and on Sundays we averaged 4.5 different pitchers per game.
If we can put together a more balanced starting rotation along with a deeper bullpen we will find ourselves in more situations where we don't have to leave a guy in to try and get himself out of a jam because we won't have to worry about how many arms we're going to need for Sunday.
If I had to complain about anything to do with our pitching staff it would be that we're giving up too many free baserunners. We've given up 50 runs on the season and of those 17 have been what I consider "free baserunners"....either walks, HBP, or errors allowed them to reach base. This means that 34% of the baserunners who scored against us have reached base without getting a hit.
I also wanted to throw together a little look at our starting pitcher's run support....
Run Support per Game Started Jones: 10 = 10/1 = 10.0 R/start Meyer: 10, 10, 10, 3, 15 = 48/5 = 9.6 Corgan: 12, 3 = 15/2 = 7.5 Ray: 1, 12, 0, 13 = 26/4 = 6.5 Marlatt: 4, 3 = 7/2 = 3.5 Cline: 2, 4 = 6/2 = 3.0 Turner: 1, 4, 0 = 5/3 = 1.7Isn't it funny that the guy who needs the least amount of support gets the most?I'll try to take a look at our hitting sometime this week to help balance out all my yammering on pitching.
[edit: I added the run support & free runs]
Solid Pitching Continues
3/12/05 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E UCLA 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 6 0 TAMU 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 x - 3 8 2 Chance Corgan started his second game of the season and outside of a shaky first inning he was very solid. Kyle Marlatt relieved Chance to start the 5th inning and lowered his ERA by throwing 3 hitless and scoreless innings, followed by Jordan Chambless who went 2 innings giving up one hit en route to his 2nd save of the season, filling the closer role that I thought he would for the next few weeks.
Offensively, Coby Mavroulis and Austin Boggs have started to get thing rolling each going 2-for-4 with a run and an RBI although Coby one-upped Austin with a solo HR.
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