But it's a lot better to be pissed off because we lost to UCLA in extra innings because of a joke of an umpire rather than a midweek game against Troy or Austin Peay. A lot different too.
Looking at this weekend- it was a good weekend overall for MSU. We made a statement that we are back. We took Arizona State and Virginia Tech to the shed like they were Austin Peay.
One of the biggest things that hurt us against UCLA was our freshmen pitchers not being able to close out those games. They all got shelled this weekend. They're freshmen and I'm not going to rail on them too hard- but they're all going to have to learn how to locate better.
We learned a lot about our team though and I think it was good that we went to this tournament and got us a couple of wins and went toe to toe with the number one team in the country and probably outplayed them in many ways. I think we know our team better now and some of the personnel mistakes we made aren't going to be made again.
The biggest thing is we have to stop using Ben Davis like Kevin Kopps. If we keep extending him past two innings- he is going to end up like KC Hunt eventually. BOC said something about his stuff going down in the third inning so that gives me hope we will stop overextending him. Now, Ben can give us two dominant innings. And that is awesome. At the same time, we need to pitch Webb and Pitzer more. They're both really good. Sweeney is the long relief guy that they want Ben to be and if he can do that it will set us up well every weekend with the bullpen. Gleason has been great too. I think he can give us two innings if not more every time out. Dane Burns needs to work on his command some but he can give us an inning or so too.
McPherson and Valinicus were really good starting. Stone did better than Foster- but my hope is he can go an inning or two deeper into his starts. We need to get Foster right- not sure that Hattiesburg is the place for that though. Might try Jackson Logar or Pitzer on Tuesday instead.
Raymond is taking the catcher job. James is a gamer and I like him, but his defense has to improve some.
The rest of lineup- DEEP. Stallman is a different dude than he was last year and Bevis has played well also. Frei is as advertised and maybe better and Wyers has hit well overall when given the opportunity. Ace has played like a Golden Spikes candidate most of the year although he had kind of a tough weekend in spots and Ryder Woodson has turned it around. Bryce Chance has been maybe our best all around player and he's probably the best 9 hole hitter in the league right now. Teel has played better although he "struck out" four times against UCLA and I think Nunnalee will come around but if not Vytas has played really well and then Jacob Parker had a big home run that should help his confidence. Noah Sullivan came up big a couple of times as well with home runs and he seems to be getting on track.
I really like where we are right now. We're doing a lot of really good things but we have a few things to fine tune. We have to understand our abilities a little bit better and no keep running on elite catchers. And I think we have to understand the abilities of a couple of our guys in the bullpen a little bit better. I think we're going to be a pissed off team going into USM although that will be a very difficult game. If we lose, we have Lipscomb coming up and we can fine tune those things I was talking about and get back on track before Tulane and Arkansas.
