Great series win for MSU! Hope O'Sullivan had a shitty St. Patrick's Day weekend and was miserable watching our pitchers shove it and guys like Mangum and MacNamee pimping on them. I don't have a problem doing that on Florida considering how O'Sullivan acted after they won their SR in 2011. I honestly wonder if he gives recruits a golden ticket when he offers them because he looks like an extra on Willy Wonka. The seniors in the outfield and Small and Ginn kind of carried us this weekend. Really tough series for us considering this was our first road game of the year- I don't count tournaments at a AA stadium as a true road game. And then the DH kind of complicated things for us some- but we still won the series. I thought it could go either way really going in because despite their midweek losses Florida is a good team- just not as good as the past 2-3 years- and as I mentioned it was our first games on the road.
Small and Ginn are now going to get some more attention from around the college baseball community. Both had 10+ K's and were dominant. I think we left Ginn in a little longer because of his pitch count being low, the fact that he was cruising, and the fact that we had a second game to play and needed to conserve our bullpen because we know Keegan is only going to give us 3-5 on a good day. Leibelt really stepped up this weekend when our normal bullpen aces scuffled. I think Cole will put this behind him and Colby learned some things about the SEC as well. I thought it was good to see Self, Price, and Barlow have productive outings. Keegan not going deep into games is an issue. We're going to have to figure something out the next two weeks- after this week we only play one midweek game a week and that will help a little bit. Not playing DH if the weather cooperates will help too. It's time to stop trying to make Keegan go through a lineup 2-3 times because he can't do it.
Skelton had a good weekend at the plate hitting two doubles and four hits and got a bunt down to boot. He's easily our most improved player on the team and all of a sudden he is hitting close to .300. It looks like Tanner Allen has busted out of his slump and I hope he didn't take out any kids or people dressed up like cartoon characters at Disney World with that bomb that he hit. Halter is hanging in there. He had a double but he's going to be bottom of the order guy throughout the year. I'll take .281 from him at this point. Foscue's home run in game one really set the tone for our offense on Friday and he's going to be among the league leaders in home runs. Good to see Westburg back. He had some issues defensively at times and didn't get a ton of hits but when he did he did damage with two doubles and a couple of RBI's. I think he was about to bust out when he bruised his hip but his best days are ahead of him this year.
Rowdey went 0-for and was finally sat down. Gautreau will work with him and I think he will come back in a big way by the end of the year. Hatcher filled in nicely for him though and got hits every game and is up at .500 right now. When Rowdey does come back I think Hatcher has to stay in the lineup at DH or first base with Tanner Allen going to DH. Mangum and MacNamee were the co-MVP's on the weekend. The way that they played shows why it is important to have seniors on a college baseball team. Their experience really led us this weekend. Or they just really like playing in Florida. Mangum had five hits including a home run and a double. His home run really set the tone for us in game two off of a guy that had the lowest ERA in Florida's weekend rotation. MacNamee's catch in game one was maybe the key play in the game considering how the 8th and 9th went. He had seven hits including a home run and two doubles himself as well and now leads the team in average at the moment. Florida made a couple of great plays that kept us from sweeping them- but that's how it goes sometimes. If you throw strikes and play good defense in general you are going to win most of your games and that's what our focus needs to be.
I really separate the season mentally down into sections. The first section is the pre-conference section. The second part is the first five weeks of the SEC season. This is where to me a lot of the adjustments and growth occurs. Unfortunately that sometimes means taking lumps like we did last year. This team is much better and we already have as many SEC wins as we did the first three weeks. But there is still some growth that I think will occur in the meantime. After that growth occurs then the next section is the last five weeks of SEC play where things start to really gel going into the last section which is the postseason. I'm hoping to see some guys like Cerentola, Hayden Jones, Landon Jordan, and Cumbest make some strides and grow the next few weeks and other guys like Cole and Rowdey get things straightened out. Other teams are in the same situation kind of- and I think we will continue to pile wins in the meantime despite playing really tough competition. The tough thing about this week for us is we have five games this week. We go home to play UALR and I think we will be OK but we're going to see Cerentola make a start there and then we have a good RPI opportunity against Samford on the road the next day. I expect Plumlee to start that one. Auburn will be a tough series as well. We all know how good Butch Thompson is with pitchers and they have some good ones like Tanner Burns who is going to be a first round pick next year unless he gets hurt or does something illegal. Their SS Will Holland is also a top prospect as well and probably a first round pick himself. Their most impressive wins are over UCF on the road which they took two of three and then this weekend they are up 2-0 on an improved Tennessee team at home. It looks like some low scoring games this weekend- at least the first two. But this time we will be at home and hopefully the weather will actually cooperate. Another weekend, another war.
Hail State!
