As Yogi Berra said "Good pitching always beats good hitting - and vice-versa." :)
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Amen to that! Thanks, Base, I'm doing pretty good for an old man! I'm more annoyed than anything because my doctor has me limited in what i can do! Got a cast on left arm, boot on right leg so I'm about as good as a one legged dog. Honestly I feel blessed because if I hadn't been wearing my seat belt y'all would be singing my praises in the past tense, lol! I love all y'all and the tremendous outpouring of prayers and good thoughts! Now back to the baseball rants, lol!
Well, CC24, you are probably better on one leg than most of us old guys are on 2! Keep getting better!
C34 said "Our problem has been pitching and everyone knows it". Problem, singular. That's what got me pointing out the problems on offense and defense. Then Todd said "I've seen bad hitting and fielding teams win championships", implying it doesn't matter if we get better there. Then you said "baseball is about Pitching". You can pretend you meant "Pitching is more important than offense or defense", but that's neither what you said nor what makes sense in the conversation- all I was saying is we have problems off the mound. I never said offense was more important than pitching. At no point has Cooter, C34, you, or Todd even admitted we need to improve in the areas I point out.
Do we all agree the defense was crap, the offense has unperformed our recruiting rankings, and it would be good to improve in those areas? Can we at least agree on that and quit pretending the pitching was our only flaw these past 2 seasons?
We were a middle of the pack hitting team with 3 17ing FR starting. We got rid of our big error problems. We sign Montgomery, we upgraded RF. We already upgraded 3B. Got C depth. I figure we'll be a top 5 hitting team in the SEC. Defense will be fine. Pitching? That's the 17ing major question. I can't make it any clearer for you.
Did UCLA win it all without scoring any runs? Amazing!
You're defining every score by the pitching. Say there was a 1-0 game. You'd say "wow what great pitching, but the winning team was just a little more consistent on the mound". Say we had a 3-2 game, you'd say "the team that scored 2 runs didn't pitch as good as the winning team". Say there was a 8-7 game. You'd say "the team that scored 7 really crapped the bed on the mound" . Under no circumstances would you credit the offense of the winning team for getting the runs, just blame/credit the pitchers. Of course by that framework pitching is all that matters.
Like you look at UCLA and say "they were a bad offensive team that had a low ERA, so they won it all because of pitching. OK, so lets look at LSU: Best offense in the SEC, 6th in ERA. So they won it all behind their offense, right? I mean that's the logic you just used for UCLA. Oh no, you don't admit LSU won because of their offense? You say "LSU had some arms step up in the postseason, that's why they won". And yeah, that's true! Every team that wins it all has some dues step up, or they would have gotten beat. But guess what? UCLA had some bats step up and score runs on serious pitching, but you don't extend the same credit to them. They shelled Ross Mitchell and Holder when nobody else did, for example, yet you act like their pitchers were all that suited up
And for the record, we lost of UCLA 3-1 in game 1. 2 of UCLA's runs were unearned because of an error. Defense matters
Is this your way of saying "the problem is fixed, shut up" but without admitting I was correct in saying we've had more problems than just pitching?
There's this BS revisionist history going on that pretends our only problem has been pitching. I'd like the truth of these past 2 seasons to be publicly agreed upon so when we suck again next year we can all agree on firing Lemo
Watch, there will be people coming out saying "we have to give Parker time to fix this staff". Especially if Selmon is still too scared to do his job and fire someone.
Remember, 2 months ago there was a not a single personon this board saying we should gove Lemo anoyther year. C34 called Lemonis "Lemonizick" all season, and Todd at one point this year advocated for firing Lemo and making Polk the interim. Only once the AD decided to keep Lemo did they flip to saying keeping Lemo is best for the program. I get it, we don't want to say our Athletic Director p*ussied out, but he did. And we don't want to say "were sacrificing another year or 2 of the baseball team to save on buyouts", but we are. I hope I'm made to look like an idiot next year, but I don't see how I can have faith in the same coach that tanked the program.
Here's the way I see it:
If you were taking a test that had 9 questions. The first 8 questions make up 50% of the total grade. Question 9 made up the other 50% of the total grade. Obviously #9 has the biggest impact on your overall grade. It's true that you can't just get #9 right and still pass. It's also true that you can't get all of the other questions right and miss #9 and still pass. #9 has to be right and then you have to add enough of the other questions. The more of #'s 1-8 you get right, the closer to an A you get.
By the way, question #9 is - "Do you have pitching?"
See this is a resonable take. I've never taken issues with the idea that pitching matters most. I've taken issue with 1) people who say our only problem last year was pitching, and when i point out our other flaws they follow up with some variation of "pitching is all that matters". That's theb2nd thing I take issue with, because questions 1-8 in your analogy DO matter.
If they had said "we had problems on offense and defense last year, but pitching affects the team more than those 2 and I believe we've already fixed the offense and defense going into next year" I literally wouldn't comment. But instead, they start by saying our only flaws last year were on the mound, and when forced to admit we sucked elsewhere they say "well that doesn't matter anyway".
Holman is visiting today. It?s time to lock him up!