Spaceman_Spiff

Brilliant from Harrison - lets make it happen bats

Honestly surprised they’re ranked so high. I get the leeway from last season, but a series win against Missouri is about the only legit thing on their resume. Boyd’s ISR has them at 19

114

I like it tbh, maybe flip Faltine and Todd, but I think this is right. Any word on EK?

Faltine and Hodo striking out to kick it off. Melendez walks.

I think the call to pull Tristan was at least fair. But you go Harrison there, who’s been far better than Nixon lately. Nixon hasn’t looked nearly sharp enough to risk him there. Throw your best guy.

What are you gonna do now, Pierce?

Why not Harrison? Im having flashbacks of Kam Fields going out over and over, throwing games away. Pierce has faith, I guess.

I agree we shouldn’t throw in the towel. Pierce teams seem to finish strong and our schedule isn’t exactly scary down the stretch. But losing Witt was brutal, no other way to put it. That’s 100 innings going from a 3 ERA guy to a 4.5 ERA group. A lot of runs. Last year, even after Kubicheck imploded, we had 4 genuine starters + Quintanilla and Nixon. Then like 2-3 more quality arms. This year its 3 starters + Harrison and a sketchy version of Nixon. Not a lot of answers in the bullpen for the sheer load they’ll have to carry. Blessed as we’ve been, 3 ERA guys out of the pen are the exception not the norm.

Double midweeks and the roadtrip were tough, but our slate hasn’t been overpowering. Tennessee and Tech are the only to date opponents likely to host. We’ve just played a lot of solid (3/4 regional seed) type teams. Good news is the conference isn’t too bad. Okie and TCU are the only really tough opponents left.

Melendez with another one. Shit series so far, but luck has been a factor too. Going on 20 LOB yet we have like 5 solo jacks in 15 innings.

I don’t know that it will be night and day, but I could see a difference. An above average player or even star on a major team likely clears $10k+ a year (there was already a story of an LSU family giving up a scholarship because of NIL money to help the team). Slot value past R7 is less than 200k. If I’m Pierce I think you lay it out like this: “You can take your 200k and live below minimum wage in the middle of nowhere alabama as a minor leaguer with awful facilities and food as a low priority prospect. Or you can get a degree, $50k+, enjoy 3-4 years as an athlete on campus, with state of the art training/meal-plan/facilities. Then in 3 years make a play for a top-end draft pick with the big payout and club attention that comes with that” I don’t know, if Im a player or parent, thats awfully tempting even at rounds that would have been guaranteed to go pro before. Obviously R1-7ish are going to be the exact same. But even 50-100 Madden or Faltine level players making it to campuses will be a huge difference in college talent. And UT can position itself to be among the ones to benefit most (if Pierce and CDC execute).

More likely Ole Miss?

More baserunning issues

Haven’t played anyone. Swept a terrible UT Arlington team and scraped together a few other wins against crappy teams.

Beatdown. Love it.

1-0 Horns after the first

Agree its strange. Maybe more Pierce is pissed because Daly’s already underperforming? Could see extra frustration at an effort mistake given Pierce has given him a good bit of rope to work through it.

Weirdly enough, the best 6 guys in our lineup are outperforming our best from last year. But our average wOBA for the back three is .284, compared to .354 last year. Kennedy, our worst hitter last year, hit .329. Brutal back of the lineup. Hodo will continue to regress (his fundamentals look the same as last year). Faltine has to bat 5/6, Ks or not. Gotta hope Daly, Messinger, or Campbell find a spark.

That’s the big one - Campbell’s OBP is .340. Messinger’s is .218. Even with some BABIP improvement he will need to discover to walk or hit a lot better in order to avoid being the worst hitter Pierce has ever had.

Messinger is the worst hitter in the lineup. Yes, worse than Daly and Campbell. He has to bat 8 or 9.

Yeah, agreed on both the development pluses and some of the frustration. The hitting still looks good overall, so I’m not too freaking out yet. Stehly and EK are both great surprises. And I think FR taking time to develop is normal; Kody, Hamilton, Faltine, and Hodo all struggled first year iirc. The bullpen will be stretched all year but once you get into June we look good if we can lock down ~7 quality arms (Hansen, Stevens, Gordon, Nixon, Harrison, Southard/Eckhardt?)

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. PG had it ranked 60th, partially because its small, but we didn’t have much star power either. Stewart and Kash are the headline recruits, but they both will need at least a year it seems. Great to see Harrison contributing early though.

Losing Witt is looking really rough - the pen is not deep enough and Pierce really likes to ride his starters. Biggest problem is probably still the offense. Pitching has blown multiple games, but like others mentioned we lost Antico, Cam, and Zubia off this roster and its looking like the younger guys just don’t have it.

What I just asked. 22 pitches, cruising, and you pull him with 4 innings to go? Pierce keeps making it harder. Needs to take a hard look at some of the decision making lately.