Post on game today v. tomorrow

[Sandman14]

First off, my luck has been bad lately, so don't trust my prognosticating.

Unfortunately, my bad luck came to an end when I didn't like Cohen starting Fitts. Not that Fitts pitched badly, but we lost. Overall, I'd just rather have gone Pollo, Graveman, Lingren. Or else I'd have played a different rotation the last few weeks of SEC play.

Having said that, let's talk management of the game today.

Ok so we pitch Fitts and he looks pretty good. Frazier lets him down. We go down 2-1.

We tie.

Then on comes Gentry. So at the point in the game when Gentry gets into trouble, why not pull him? I played devil's advocate on Cohen's side in discussing with a friend. We leave Gentry in over Cox, Girado, or Bracewell.

We have to assume Cohen was thinking he refused to burn our top guys without a lead. I guess he figured he'd rather roll the dice with Bracewell, Girado, and Holder all fresh tomorrow...and go ahead and let them burn what staff they have left.

Although I'm sorta pissed we didn't at least get Bracewell in there and see if he could roll through 4-5 innings scoreless.

Or why not girado to shut em down and try to win this one...

I keep saying the new trend among college coaches is to pitch "for the tourney" and not "for the day." I think this goes against old school tradition. I'm torn on this. I like pitching for the day, but I hear the other side.

Why doesn't Cohen use Bracewell more? I hope it is because we want to save him..if he goes all tourney without throwing, I think that's a travesty. He's a damn good pitcher. He seems perfect for tonight. Hell he could have even started, even though that did not go well last time.

Why did we choose to give this one away? Solely bc we wanted to save up for tomorrow? I sure hope so, because otherwise it seems mighty questionable.

[Political Hack]

Cohen clearly rolled the dice on a 2 for 1. "Lets see if we can get them without having to unload the big guns." In the end, the bats killed us so wasting our studs late wouldve probably hurt us. Now we've got a pen full of arms and they're down another good pitcher. I don't like giving them hope because they played so much better than us, but going into a game 7 I'd much rather have our arms than theirs.

[msstate7]

Cohen clearly rolled the dice on a 2 for 1. "Lets see if we can get them without having to unload the big guns." In the end, the bats killed us so wasting our studs late wouldve probably hurt us. Now we've got a pen full of arms and they're down another good pitcher. I don't like giving them hope because they played so much better than us, but going into a game 7 I'd much rather have our arms than theirs.
I'm sure we'd rather had our arms yesterday too. A complete game 4 hitter says we were wrong. If we don't start hitting, we'll lose today too

[Will James]

I'm sure we'd rather had our arms yesterday too. A complete game 4 hitter says we were wrong. If we don't start hitting, we'll lose today too

So... Essentially you're saying that everyone that reaches the postseason has decent pitching therefore offense becomes the important variable.

[msstate7]

So... Essentially you're saying that everyone that reaches the postseason has decent pitching therefore offense becomes the important variable.
Pitching wasn't the problem last night...

[Will James]

Pitching wasn't the problem last night...

Eaxctly. It's what I've said all year. It's why Arkansas is back in Fayetteville. In the postseason everyone has arms, they wouldn't have made the postseason without them. The important variable in the postseason is offense.

[Ghost of Hank Flick]

We have to assume Cohen was thinking he refused to burn our top guys without a lead. I guess he figured he'd rather roll the dice with Bracewell, Girado, and Holder all fresh tomorrow...and go ahead and let them burn what staff they have left.


There's your answer as to why Bracewell didn't pitch. I can't say I disagree with Cohen's decision there. After we tied it up in the 6th inning Gentry went back out - he was doing pretty well having gone 2.1 and getting out of the 3rd inning jam, plus he was just coming off that great game vs. USC and had pitched 5+ against UCA in the regular season series without giving up a hit. When he gave up a leadoff hit maybe you bring in Bracewell right there, but he wasn't warming up and based on how Gentry had performed of late and vs. UCA I wouldn't have had him warming up either. Then after Gentry gives up the lead I don't think you bring in Bracewell. It was the right move to go with Cox. You don't want to burn your best guys - you just have to hope they can hold them down while you try to get the offense back in it. It would've been much worse to have burnt Bracewell last night and lost then where we are now.

You could definitely argue that BB should have been warming up in the 6th and brought in after the first base hit, or after the sac bunt put a RISP.

[Coach34]

Frazier gave them 2 runs

We only scored 2 runs

Cohen/Butch managed it perfectly on the pitching- we have quality arms left for today's do or die game- and UCA's should be gassed

As Will said- it comes down to offense today for us- and playing sound D....we'll get the pitching necessary to win the game

[Sandman14]

Frazier gave them 2 runs

We only scored 2 runs

Cohen/Butch managed it perfectly on the pitching- we have quality arms left for today's do or die game- and UCA's should be gassed

As Will said- it comes down to offense today for us- and playing sound D....we'll get the pitching necessary to win the game

yeah and I don't mind this...I'm about 60-40 buying it...but some could argue that we could have played the entire game yesterday without giving up 2 runs if we had gone to our big dogs. Play it to the wire and then do the same thing today if we came up short. I'd have to think Ross Mitchell can give us some work today in a bind...graveman too...as far as an inning or two apiece.

[CadaverDawg]

Eaxctly. It's what I've said all year. It's why Arkansas is back in Fayetteville. In the postseason everyone has arms, they wouldn't have made the postseason without them. The important variable in the postseason is offense.

I completely agree with your overall offense standpoint...Athough, Not being a good hitting team has nothing to do with this Regional, because we have a better hitting team than UCA and still lost. We just shit the bed last night at the plate, on the same night that our defense imploded. We are Super Regional good when it comes to our current hitting...but not Omaha or National Championship good. Nowhere close.

Overall we have GOT to get better on offense. We can't rely on 3 singles per inning to get a single run home. Our offense is solely built on stringing together hits and hoping we get a clutch one with RISP. If we had not been so clutch with 2 outs this year...we probably have less than 35 wins on the year, and are already bounced from this Regional. We have GOT to get some bats in our lineup that can get an extra base hit. We have 2 guys that are capable, and one of them sucks all of the sudden, and the other is slower than shit so he's limited on "extra" bases.

I really hope that this next batch of Freshman will help us with some power and gap hitting...but I think we need to focus next year's recruiting efforts on some bigger framed guys with some pop. We have plenty of 5'8" lefties...let's get some 6'0"-6'2" guys that have a little less speed but a lot more power. It's not like we use Frazier, Bradford, Robson, Henderson, Frost, etc, to steal bases and put pressure on people anyway. Its like this year we are playing a LSU style offense with a Central Arkansas lineup.

[Coach34]

..but some could argue that we could have played the entire game yesterday without giving up 2 runs if we had gone to our big dogs.

No they couldnt- we gave them 2 runs on routine plays. The pitcher at the time didnt matter- they did their job