Baseball: Who looked the part?

[AlSwearengen]

I missed the 9th inning Friday night and parts of Sunday, including most of Foster?s stint but a few things that I noticed include.
1. Valincius mixes his pitches and speeds a lot. He looked pretty good.
2. I?ve said it a million times but if Ben Davis can harness everything, he can be money; that power sinker is nasty. Again, i missed the 9th inning so i don?t know what happened there.
3. Duke Stone has the pitches and if he progresses with more experience, he should be good.
4. William Kirk showed a lot; more than i expected. Good velocity from a lefty and a good breaking ball.
5. Jack Gleason?s fastball is pretty average as far as velocity but the rpm numbers must be way up there. His delivery and arm action along with the rpm?s look to be making the fastball play much faster than the 91/92 that he was clocking. Without standing in the box, his delivery looks to hide the ball and be pretty deceptive which goes a long way.
6. Maddox Webb?s fastball was better than i expected but the breaking ball not as good as i was expecting. Maybe adrenaline was affecting both? If he typically has as good of a breaker as has been advertised, he can close and I think that is what he is tabbed as right now.
7. Melewski didn?t do anything in the box to make me think he will hit. He looked fine defensively but he just didn?t look good swinging the bat.
8. Chone James may get a lot of playing time at C. He looked like he can hit a little and came up with a clutch hit that drove in a couple. Defense was a little questionable but he hasn?t spent 100% of his time practicing there, which is what you need to play that spot. Catching isn?t easy.
9. Bryce Trout will probably play at least 80% of the time in LF.
10. I think Stallman plays the vast majority of the innings at 1B.
11. Frei is your 2Bman. He looked night and day better there than he did last year.

I?ll stop there and let everyone else chime in but in a nutshell, the experienced State players carried us for the most part. The newcomers, many of whom don?t have a ton of college experience anyway didn?t do a lot, but I imagine they were feeling a ton of pressure. They need experience and a chance to settle in and then we see what they have. I will remind ya?ll that I wasn?t terribly impressed with Reese early last year and we saw how that went. Granted, his numbers weren?t great against lesser competition so that is my excuse. Anyway, let?s hope everyone relaxes and performs better at the plate from here on out.

[Rawdawg]

Valincius was really really good.

Reese is in mid season form.

I like Nunnallee a lot. He had some bad luck this weekend offensively but his defense is strong.

Infield defense was better than I expected.

Milewski was trying to hit a homerun every AB instead of just putting it in play.

I like how overall we as a team hit in the gaps and got extra bases, homeruns weren?t there this weekend but we hit a lot of doubles which was a nice reprieve.

[MetEdDawg]

I guess I'm a touch shocked at who we didn't see. No Bauer, no Parker, no older Valincius, no Wyers, no Pitzer unless I missed them somewhere in the second game of the DH.

I think the hitting was meh. We missed pitches we shouldn't have, but there were times Hofstra outpitched our hitters. I know pitching is ahead of hitting early, but I was shocked at the number of times our lineup got beat by their staff.

There were also times they were effectively wild and it was hard to get into a rhythm at the plate. We couldn't get guys on ahead of Reese and Sullivan consistently and that lowered our output.

Overall Stallman looked great. Milewski meh at the plate although I loved seeing the runner thrown out early. CJ got a touch lazy behind the plate late in game 3 and I didn't like it. He can play more if he buttons it up.

I was impressed with some of the coaching decisions by BOC. Some of the timely bunting, well executed fake steal on a 1st and 3rd that scored us a run. Communication in the field. I think our guys are prepared to play baseball.

Hard to get a good takeaway but I'll say this. I think that Hofstra team plays good baseball. That's a well coached team. Not a pushover team. They got some arms and some kids that can swing it.

Sweep and move on.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Ace is going to be THE GUY for us.

Valincius looked really good on the mound.

Jack Gleason and William Kirk looked really good in relief.

Everyone else had some good and some bad. Interested to see how the lineup will change in the midweek and into next weekend. Hopefully the new guys got the jitters and nerves out of their system.

[AlSwearengen]

I guess I'm a touch shocked at who we didn't see. No Bauer, no Parker, no older Valincius, no Wyers, no Pitzer unless I missed them somewhere in the second game of the DH.

I think the hitting was meh. We missed pitches we shouldn't have, but there were times Hofstra outpitched our hitters. I know pitching is ahead of hitting early, but I was shocked at the number of times our lineup got beat by their staff.

There were also times they were effectively wild and it was hard to get into a rhythm at the plate. We couldn't get guys on ahead of Reese and Sullivan consistently and that lowered our output.

Overall Stallman looked great. Milewski meh at the plate although I loved seeing the runner thrown out early. CJ got a touch lazy behind the plate late in game 3 and I didn't like it. He can play more if he buttons it up.

I was impressed with some of the coaching decisions by BOC. Some of the timely bunting, well executed fake steal on a 1st and 3rd that scored us a run. Communication in the field. I think our guys are prepared to play baseball.

Hard to get a good takeaway but I'll say this. I think that Hofstra team plays good baseball. That's a well coached team. Not a pushover team. They got some arms and some kids that can swing it.

Sweep and move on.

Yeah, I think Hofstra is a decent team that plays solid baseball; better than i was expecting. I didn’t mention Nunalee, but he looks like a well rounded player that does everything well. I think the fact that we couldn’t pull away from them kept us from subbing players in more.

[Coach34]

It's a new year and a new team, but I was disappointed in Teel not leading off. Led off last year for Va and having an experienced guy with speed at the top of the order is a big plus. Nunn was 2-12 on the weekend. That's got to get better. We could have Bevis at 1B and Stallman in RF. Right now the line-up looks out of sync. It's easy to write in Ace and Sully in there. Batting Frei 7th makes no sense. How does Parker not get a couple of AB's this weekend but Sanders does?

The delayed steal and safety squeeze were nice- but we just saw more of the same baserunning mistakes and throwing to the wrong base as last year.

Kirk looked really good. Charlie and Duke did not. Too inconsistent but that was just opening weekend. They are def talented and very likely to be better. Davis looked really good for most of his appearance. I still wish he was the 3rd SP.

[Turfdawg67]

I wasn?t able to watch any of it unfortunately. I kept up with the score on ESPN, but there wasn?t much conversations on here? So thank you all for this analysis. I like it.

[cheewgumm]

I know the new way of thinking would disagree but do not care.

I would put 2 guys at 1 and 2 who are most likely to get on base then bat Reese , Sully, Frei, Stahlman behind them.

To me that would be Teel them Chance and tell them they have one goal - get on base so Reese can knock you in.

[cheewgumm]

Frei looked good at 2b.

That solves that problem for now. If he can do that, done.

With that, it takes having to sit Frei off the table, so now my focus turns to RF.

If Stallman is at first and Sully is DH, and those are set?. Could we see some different looks at RF.

Jacob Parker maybe?

[Coursesuper]

All in all there was more good than bad. Thing that stood out to me was the professionalism of the coaching staff. The little things were much more apparent with this staff than I’ve seen since Mac was here. When a mistake was made it was addressed quickly and professionally before the player got back in the dugout. Decision making was quick but not rash. We were never caught in a position to have to scramble. Good weekend against a team that had pretty much played together all season last year.

[AlSwearengen]

Didn’t Nunalee hit some balls hard at people? I was distracted quite a bit for all of the games but thought he squared up the most of the new players.

[Coursesuper]

Didn’t Nunalee hit some balls hard at people? I was distracted quite a bit for all of the games but thought he squared up the most of the new players.

Yes, he did as did Stallman, Teal and Woodson. We hit a lot of balls hard right at people.

[The Federalist Engineer]

With small data set

Rotation for Winning;

Valicius- Ben Davis - McP

pen for winning;

Webb- Pitzer - Stone- Sweeney

Lineup to Win Ball Games
1B- (not set) Stallman - Bevis
2B- (not set) Sanders - Frei
SS- Woodson (he will hit)
3B- Ace
RF- Nunn
CF- Teel
LF- (not set) Chance-Frei
C- (not set) Soprano for Now
DH- Sully

[Todd4State]

Starting pitching: McPherson has the best stuff and looks like a MLB pitcher. Valinicus is our best pitcher. I was surprised to see he was slotting behind Foster. Chuck Foster looked stiff and uncomfortable and I didn't like his body language when things were bad. I'm fine giving him a chance but I start him on Sunday and Valinicus Saturday against Delaware. I suspect that Pitzker is going to start against Troy. If he does well he could be our Sunday guy soon.

Bullpen: Maddux Webb looks like our closer. He's throwing harder than he did at the Citadel and his breaking ball is legit. Ben Davis to me looks like our set up guy. 97 MPH power sinker but I don't think he handles pressure as well as Webb and I think he is best used over 2 IP and not any more than that. Sweeney pitches like a SEC veteran. He's our relief ace. Very long and built like Andrew Miller but doesn't throw quite as hard. Jack Gleason looks like he can help. Lots of movement on his fastball and a funky arm angle. Spin rate has to be pretty high. Would like to see more of Dane Burns. Funky windup and throws across his body. Billingsley pitched well for one inning and then fell apart. Good fastball but seems to be a project. William Kirk was really good. Could end up being our midweek guy by the end of the year. Duke Stone- not sure I like him in a relief role. Just think he is more of a starting pitcher.

Catcher: Milewski caught better than Chone but he chased way too many pitches. I do like how he choked up on the bat with two strikes and at least looked like someone was trying to coach him. He'll hit at some point and I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up with 15+ home runs. Chone hit well and looked comfortable hitting. Surprised Andrew Raymond didn't start.

Infield: Bevis looked good defensively but his at bats weren't great. Reed is just playing better. Hopefully he didn't hurt himself too badly. Looks like a hip strain or something. Gat is a better defensive second baseman than Frei but Frei is a better all around player. Frei looked fine to me defensively. Not sure why Wyers didn't start over Gat in game two? Ace looks legit as expected. Ryder Woodson played well at SS. Looked bad at the plate at times but also did some things that make me think he snaps out of it soon.

Outfield/DH: Chance was solid. Was a little more aggressive on the bases and he executed a squeeze play to perfection. Aiden Teel didn't have the best weekend but he will be fine. Nunnalee I really liked a lot. He had a few bad moments like the delayed steal in the first inning of game one but he also had some really good defensive plays and also had some tough AB's. He'll be fine as well. Noah played well as a DH I thought other than getting thrown out at second one time but that more of a great play by their RF than a mistake IMO.