Quote Originally Posted by Commercecomet24 View Post
And Baseball America and Warren Nolan have us hosting. It all hinges on this weekend. Win the series we host.
Pretty much this. That's the bottom line. One might be enough- definitely would put us on the bubble.

I don't think our hitters are spent. I think we just needed to shake up the lineup.

To me, Mangum is more of a traditional number two type hitter than a lead off hitter. He doesn't walk a lot, and he swings at a lot of pitches but he also doesn't strike out a lot and puts the ball in play. Really a perfect set-up for us would be like last year where we had Robson leading off before he got hurt and then Mangum behind him because Mangum's aggressiveness and bat control and then Robson's speed open up a lot of possibilities. Since we don't have Robson I like Gridley in front of Rooker. He's a lot more patient so at the beginning of the game we're less likely to have Gridley make an out on the first pitch forcing out best guy to go up there in the first without seeing what the pitcher has while he's on deck. It looked to me like Gridley was pressing to do something big every time they walked Rooker during the Georgia series and he usually ended up doing something unproductive. Plus Gridley isn't a great base stealer so we're not really missing much in terms of base stealing. Mangum doesn't care what they do to Rooker- he's always going to put the ball in play more times than not and Cody is a pretty good hitter behind him that can do both small ball things and hit with some power. That means we can use Mangum's speed more than we could and then the other team won't just walk Rooker.

MacNamee and Vansau are both hitting over .300 in SEC play so even though they didn't do much against Troy I'm fine keeping them at 5-6 right now. Lovelady has to play and he has his moments with the bat. LA is kind of the same situation a little bit. At least when he does get a hit he tends to do damage. He just has to learn to not chase pitches.

Stovall is pretty awesome and is the best nine hole hitter in the league.