MSU vs Auburn Game one of the CWS thoughts

[Todd4State]

THAT WAS AMAZING! That will be one of the all time MSU games and one of the most memorable MSU baseball games of all time. It seemed like nothing went right for 8 innings. And then the 9th inning happened.


First the Mayor hammered a double off of a guy that had the best slider of his lifetime going. Then Auburn's heroes of the game started to kick the ball around on the infield. And then Big hit Mac did what he does- he got yet another big hit. And then Auburn kicked the ball around on the infield again. Finally Marshall Gilbert delivered the coup de gras off the pitchers glove and of course it went right by their second baseman who was doing his best Roberto Alomar impression all night long.


I'm going to say it- it looked like a LSU CWS baseball win. Just this time it was the good guys.


I think Butch got a little too cute at the end. He put in a guy who was making his first relief appearance with a guy who is our biggest stolen base threat on second and who on top of that had a shoulder injury. And Liverpool- THAT is why you don't throw a guy who is injured. He completely melted down and it was really over when we tied it because Auburn had used their best bullpen arms up at that point and we had only used Cole Gordon for an inning and had Colby White still in tow.


Ethan was good but not his usual untouchable self and then getting squeezed by the umpire didn't help matters. Still- congrats on setting the school record for K's in a season. You know you're good when it's really only one guy that is hitting you. The bullpen was very good. Riley Self looked the best I have seen him all year. Leibelt was solid and the one run he allowed wasn't totally his fault. Cole Gordon was nasty. Pitching Small was the right choice. Now we can maximize using him. And good job by Lemonis for not riding him out after he threw a lot of pitches against Stanford. A lot of coaches would have.


Skelton had a great night at the plate. A complete 180 from last year when Oregon State abused him. Now he's scoring the game winning run and taking really good at bats. The Marlins are getting a steal. Owens was a tough match up for Tanner Allen but he still managed to get on base three times tonight. Foscue had a tough night. He has to be a little bit better defensively and take some better at bats. Gilbert also had a tough night defensively but as usual he makes up for it at the plate. His one hit was the biggest of the game for us. Good job of hitting it right up the middle and good fortune that their pitcher didn't glove it. Westburg had some tough at bats and had some good and some bad.


Mangum and MacNamee were seniors tonight. They absolutely stepped up when we needed them to and in the toughest moments. Their leadership has been incredibly valuable this year and they will be missed. They had both of our extra base hits tonight- and we need to start getting more guys to tap into their power so that we can reach our full potential. We got hits and we walked a lot- 6 walks to only 3 K's on the night is good. But too often we swung at pitches that they wanted us to swing at and got weak contact. Rowdey didn't really do a lot tonight other than get IBB. Our two DH's pitched in and got a couple of hits and Halter was able to get enough of the barrel on a ball to drive in a run for us.


I'm still enjoying and processing what happened and haven't really thought about Vandy that much less than three hours later after the end of the game. I don't know who we will pitch- but I'm good with either Ginn or Plumlee. I will say that we need to keep our normal approach and not be overaggressive or Kumar is going to strike out another 19 guys. Winning the second game is to me almost as important as winning game one. Win on Tuesday and we're going to have two shots to get to the National Finals. It's a good things that we have tomorrow off because I need to enjoy this for a day.


Hail State!

[Dawgtini]

#HailState Good Summary TIT4S!!! Love your insights!

[DancingRabbit]

Good post, Todd. Maybe it's us with the horseshoe finally.

Couple of things.

-Rare mistake pitch for Ethan, but he battled. I credit the third run to the ump who was 17'd up for nearly 2 innings, squeezed Ethan when he was giving them the call. But outside of those two innings it seemed even enough. Bullpen did their job.

-I think Skelton, Mac and Jake are scary locked in.

It wasn't a very fun game for most of 8 innings, and then Sunday magic.

[I seen it dawg]

Every team that wins the whole thing has a game over headed to the loser bracket pull it out of nowhere win...we got one finally...

[Cooterpoot]

I?ll say it, we played like crap and pulled off a miracle the last inning. And every time this team wins that way, they go on a tear. Get ready! We?re about do something incredible!

[justwin]

nice writeup, a few other thoughts

we only had 3 Ks last night. Westburg, Gilbert, McNamee. I think McNamee was borderline. That's remarkable considering the stage and facing hte oppositions ace.

I'm so sick of college officiating ruining sports. In football, Bama gets the 5 deciding calls / game which is why they win. In baseball, our starter, especially Small tonight, has to throw 4 strikes consistently. The box on the screen of the strike zone basically forced teh announcers to say something. I just don't understand how if all you do & prepare for as an ump is call balls/strikes that you're that bad. I have a feeling that if someone takes the time to develop an independent UMP academy to eventually replace what we have currently, they have a million dollar business. I would like Lemonis to come out at least once in first 3-4 innings or every game and pull a Manieri of sorts and just get vocal on displeasure of strike zone. Say what you want, but squeaky wheel gets the grease. The batter before the auburn HR should've K'd on 3 pitches before he ever hit the tough grounder to Gilbert to get on. Same with the guy in the 8th that Liebelt hit who scored...he should've K'd on 3 pitches before the 4th pitch hit him.

their SS & 2B played the defensive games of their lives last night. We barreled so many balls to them. I was surprised to see that 2B not glove the game winning deflection and toss to 2nd to force extras.

[drunkernhelldawg]

I would call it an all time great comeback, but not an all time great game. We played okay for most of the game. Broke out at the last opportunity.

[StarkVegasSteve]

THAT WAS AMAZING! That will be one of the all time MSU games and one of the most memorable MSU baseball games of all time. It seemed like nothing went right for 8 innings. And then the 9th inning happened.


First the Mayor hammered a double off of a guy that had the best slider of his lifetime going. Then Auburn's heroes of the game started to kick the ball around on the infield. And then Big hit Mac did what he does- he got yet another big hit. And then Auburn kicked the ball around on the infield again. Finally Marshall Gilbert delivered the coup de gras off the pitchers glove and of course it went right by their second baseman who was doing his best Roberto Alomar impression all night long.


I'm going to say it- it looked like a LSU CWS baseball win. Just this time it was the good guys.


I think Butch got a little too cute at the end. He put in a guy who was making his first relief appearance with a guy who is our biggest stolen base threat on second and who on top of that had a shoulder injury. And Liverpool- THAT is why you don't throw a guy who is injured. He completely melted down and it was really over when we tied it because Auburn had used their best bullpen arms up at that point and we had only used Cole Gordon for an inning and had Colby White still in tow.


Ethan was good but not his usual untouchable self and then getting squeezed by the umpire didn't help matters. Still- congrats on setting the school record for K's in a season. You know you're good when it's really only one guy that is hitting you. The bullpen was very good. Riley Self looked the best I have seen him all year. Leibelt was solid and the one run he allowed wasn't totally his fault. Cole Gordon was nasty. Pitching Small was the right choice. Now we can maximize using him. And good job by Lemonis for not riding him out after he threw a lot of pitches against Stanford. A lot of coaches would have.


Skelton had a great night at the plate. A complete 180 from last year when Oregon State abused him. Now he's scoring the game winning run and taking really good at bats. The Marlins are getting a steal. Owens was a tough match up for Tanner Allen but he still managed to get on base three times tonight. Foscue had a tough night. He has to be a little bit better defensively and take some better at bats. Gilbert also had a tough night defensively but as usual he makes up for it at the plate. His one hit was the biggest of the game for us. Good job of hitting it right up the middle and good fortune that their pitcher didn't glove it. Westburg had some tough at bats and had some good and some bad.


Mangum and MacNamee were seniors tonight. They absolutely stepped up when we needed them to and in the toughest moments. Their leadership has been incredibly valuable this year and they will be missed. They had both of our extra base hits tonight- and we need to start getting more guys to tap into their power so that we can reach our full potential. We got hits and we walked a lot- 6 walks to only 3 K's on the night is good. But too often we swung at pitches that they wanted us to swing at and got weak contact. Rowdey didn't really do a lot tonight other than get IBB. Our two DH's pitched in and got a couple of hits and Halter was able to get enough of the barrel on a ball to drive in a run for us.


I'm still enjoying and processing what happened and haven't really thought about Vandy that much less than three hours later after the end of the game. I don't know who we will pitch- but I'm good with either Ginn or Plumlee. I will say that we need to keep our normal approach and not be overaggressive or Kumar is going to strike out another 19 guys. Winning the second game is to me almost as important as winning game one. Win on Tuesday and we're going to have two shots to get to the National Finals. It's a good things that we have tomorrow off because I need to enjoy this for a day.


Hail State!


I text my dad once we tied it that it was basically over. I knew Auburn had nothing left and wouldn't go back to Burns even if he got out of the 9th. Butch outcoached himself in the late innings. He went to Greenhill far too early. He basically sold out to win Game 1. Limited CWS experience can hurt you in those types of games.

Thought our bullpen looked phenomenal tonight. Self was consistently 87-90 on the cutter, which is as fast as that has been for him since his FR. year. If he can get back to old Riley Self our bullpen would become lockdown. Liebelt struggled with command and made a stupid mistake not backing up the 3B on that ball that scored the 4th run. I was afraid that'd be the one to cost us. Weird enough I think that actually worked in our favor. I feel like if we were tied Julien would've just gone for the tag on Mac. Postseason Cole is an absolute sight to see. That breaking ball is damn near unhittable. The thing starts at the top of their head and ends up belt high.

Overall just excited to get the win. Good teams find ways to win on their worst nights and tonight was one of our worst.

[BuckyIsAB****]

Skelton has quietly become maybe the best player on the team

[Johnson85]

I text my dad once we tied it that it was basically over. I knew Auburn had nothing left and wouldn't go back to Burns even if he got out of the 9th. Butch outcoached himself in the late innings. He went to Greenhill far too early. He basically sold out to win Game 1. Limited CWS experience can hurt you in those types of games.

Thought our bullpen looked phenomenal tonight. Self was consistently 87-90 on the cutter, which is as fast as that has been for him since his FR. year. If he can get back to old Riley Self our bullpen would become lockdown. Liebelt struggled with command and made a stupid mistake not backing up the 3B on that ball that scored the 4th run. I was afraid that'd be the one to cost us. Weird enough I think that actually worked in our favor. I feel like if we were tied Julien would've just gone for the tag on Mac. Postseason Cole is an absolute sight to see. That breaking ball is damn near unhittable. The thing starts at the top of their head and ends up belt high.

Overall just excited to get the win. Good teams find ways to win on their worst nights and tonight was one of our worst.

That can't be right, can it? Who would have been responsible for backing up the throw home (where the play presumably was) if the pitcher backed up third? Is the first baseman supposed to hoof it to home to backup the catcher?

[R2Dawg]

Aub fans today were pretty sore at work. Typical and I'd have felt the same way, we gave it away, etc. MSU didn't do anything to earn the win. Blah, blah, blah..

If anyone hasn't learned, never count this team out. I said at home in 8th inning, we had 50/50 chance to still win. We haven't won 28 come from behind wins for nothing.

[Lord McBuckethead]

MSU didn't do anything to earn the win? We out hit them and without two distinct bail outs by the home umpire they only score 1 run off of a potential bomb. Auburn did nothing to win the game, they just expected us to leave 14 men in scoring position all game? Come on, Auburn.

[Bdawg]

That can't be right, can it? Who would have been responsible for backing up the throw home (where the play presumably was) if the pitcher backed up third? Is the first baseman supposed to hoof it to home to backup the catcher?

Pitcher was in the right spot behind home plate. No way to know Foscue was going to throw behind the runner. The original play was at home.