Most if those hits were ground balls that normal would be outs, but were unreal in how they were in the gaps.
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Most if those hits were ground balls that normal would be outs, but were unreal in how they were in the gaps.
I'm no pitching coach and my opinion is for shit but I have watched the last 3 games online and each game it seems teams are just hitting opposite field grouders or singles to the outfield on him a ton. That must be the scouting report. The announcers even said this in each game. For you gurus, what is Hudson doing that these teams have caught on to and are taking advantage of?
Hudson isn't my only concern though... We've given up 10, 10, 10, and 8 in our last 4 sec games. We desperately need sexton to get our pitching staff going in the right direction today
Lsu is 2nd in conference play with hitting. Aggies are #1. Hudson will be fine.
If you watch his ball placement, Hudson has given up almost all his bigger hits by getting "up" in the strike zone. Having been a pitcher myself, years ago admittedly, that is an indication of tired legs. A pitcher gets both his power and accuracy from his body mechanics, and that starts with his legs and hips. If he can't rotate his hips fully, it makes the ball go higher. He also added a cut fastball this year, which is most effective delivered on the corners at the knees and forcing the batter to go fishing for it. If it is delivered too high, it takes both a little bend off and speed off and has been hit. The umpires the last few outings have not been kind to him, frequently calling perfect cutters at the corners balls, which forced him to also bring the pitch up.
In short, if I were the pitching coach, I would have him on the bike until the day prior to an outing. I'd also make him wear weights on his ankles all season, with them taken off during warmups and the day prior to an outing. The greatest fastball pitchers know where their power comes from. They had great arms, but strong legs and hips.
This is what I was seeing with Hudson last night. He appeared to be using the fastball almost exclusively two times through the lineup and that is when he was giving up the hard grounders through the infield. I was telling myself that he needs to start mixing it up and when he finally did, LSU quit hitting him the way they were early in the game. I'm sure that is a game plan that they were following.
Another thing with Hudson is that he is going to do some head scratching shit from time to time. Trying to flip it home with his glove on the safety squeeze was a bed shitting moment. Still early enough in the game that you just take the out. I was curious as to why lsu made that move, but they might have been seeing if we would screw it up, which we did.
It also seems that he goes through spurts where his command just leaves him for awhile. It seems like we get a lot of good arms that are inconsistent.
I was at the game last night and I will say this, if LSU was allowed to stand on home plate and throw the ball instead of hit it, they couldn't have placed their hits in better spots. I realize it is what good hitters do but they just simply hit ground balls where our players weren't.
Hudson is fine....I also think he got rattled by their fans last night too. It was so damn loud and he started to unravel a bit.
He will be fine.
My bigger concern is our fielding right now. Collins misses that liner, yes it was screaming, but he had his glove up and just missed it. Plus Gridley and Stovall can't turn what should have been 2 routine double plays. When you are battling a top 10 team at their house, especially at a place like the Box, help your damn pitcher out.
We make those 3 plays and we smoke LSU last night.
I am also a little baffled at how we continue to mess the sheets damn near every time we attempt to field a bunt. I just don't get it.
Lot of fun last night watching the crowd unravel as they realized we were going to lose.
We miss Belmont really bad. Gridley has zero range and the arm strength of a wet noodle at SS. He needs to be at 2B. Collins is a bad DH, i.e. can hit the occasional bomb but won't crack .260. He's gotten better defensively, but he couldn't have gotten much worse. Cutting Reynolds was just a really dumb decision on so many levels. But no use beating the dead horse, got to find another way to fix it. Belmont getting healthy should go a long way. If no one at 2B is gonna hit, might as well go back to Belmont and our best defensive lineup. We're pretty much screwed at 3B unless we want to give Stovall a shot.
The numbers may not be good (and he did get lit up by A&M), but he did not pitch bad last night. If you watched the game you saw a bunch of softly hit ground balls that found a hole, and you saw our infielders not turning routine double plays and dropping line drives that hit them right in the glove.
He's keeping the ball up, falling behind in counts and is very average from his goofy stretch. It all flows from keeping the ball up, which could be a minor mechanics issue or a tired arm. I'm concerned.
PS I hate mid-season "awards". They are almost always a harbinger of late season setbacks.
In his earlier in the year starts, he came out blazing throwing fastballs and 60+% strikes. Now he is hitting batters and walking players in no-out situations in the 1st 3-4 innings which forces him out of the full windup. I think he is very weak from the stretch and loses too much off the fast ball. Somebody can do the stats but I would bet over 50% of his hits against come off him pitching from the stretch.