End of pre-SEC play Baseball Thoughts
Most of this my two cents on what I have seen most fans on here and Twitter talking about.
Our pitching staff is elite. I'm pleased with how everyone pitched this weekend for us and we're starting to see some roles take shape. Landon Sims is emerging as the closer. Brandon Smith looks like he will be the relief ace- multi inning guy which of course will be very important on this team. We are seeing Preston Johnson starting to pitch on the weekend and I'm going to call him the set-up guy. I'd like to see Parker Stinnett get some more action as well- even though he has had rumored control issues they certainly haven't shown up thus far in a small sample size. 2 IP and 5 K's and BB's. And then we have a veteran in Carlisle Koestler who can eat up innings if needed.
The big question is the rotation. And what I would do if I were in Lemonis's shoes is go MacLeoud, Bednar, and Fristoe in that order. Now, that said I do think he will probably keep the rotation the same for LSU and throw Cerentola on Saturday and I think there is some merit for that. Cerentola had his best start, he has had one less start than everyone, and he has a history of success against LSU. And honestly against EMU he pitched as well if not better than Fristoe did. Fristoe has had the better year, but he is also only a freshman. So, essentially we have five SEC quality starters right now if you also include Houston Harding. The thing is we have to get Bednar back in the rotation at some point. That will happen sooner than later. So the question is who is the odd man out? The good news is we have some flexibility. One thing we could do is piggy back starters like we did today with Fristoe and Bednar. Of course we WANT Bednar out there in a full start potentially so really this comes down to piggy backing Fristoe and Cerentola in my mind. We also could see assuming Cerentola has maybe turned the corner is alternate Cerentola and Fristoe on Sunday's. That would allow us to kind of bring both along as the year goes on. Another option would be to move Harding to the bullpen for now and just move Cerentola to midweek. I think that would be what I would prefer to see because that means we could keep pitching Fristoe on Sunday's who has been our most consistent pitcher so far and if he hits a wall we can simply move Harding into the Sunday spot. I still don't trust Cerentola's command at this point and our midweek schedule for the rest of this year quite frankly is not the most difficult I have seen. In other words we can survive slow starts by Cerentola against most if not all of our midweek competition. And who knows? We may be able to build up Cerentola's confidence similar to Zac Houston in 2016.
Defense was an issue until we moved Kam James back to third. Now we're pretty solid, and I think the only question is left field. Of course that caused us to lose Landon Jordan but the reality is sometimes that happens for the best. We don't need unhappy players that are not going to do what is best for the team. I've seen some people worried about "Well what's going to happen if we have to get down to our third SS and who is the third string 1B now"- look if we get that far down the depth chart that's an issue ANY year. Odds are it won't happen like that- but if it does we deal with it when it happens. Shoot- we went to a SR with three of our OF's having roles in the bullpen and our head coach possibly texting work out pics in the dugout in 2017. We've overcome worse than some fantasy situation that our fans can come up with. If an INF gets hurt we'll use Tanner Leggett at one spot. We can move James back to SS if we want to an have Leggett play third. Leggett can play all the INF spots adequately. Davis Meche can also play second. Pimentel, Kace Garner, and TA can play first. Could potentially play Luke Hancock at a couple of INF or OF spots if we had to- we'll be OK depth wise.
Back to LF. I think we need to look at some other options there. Cumbest has played better than McGowan. And I think Kyte McDonald should also get a look as well. The real issue is Brayand Skinner being injured. We've all seen how fast he is but wrist injuries are not easy for a baseball player to come back from. I think he's close to getting some AB's/PA's though and IF he can round into form he will probably take over CF and then we'll probably move Rowdey to LF. Which makes us better defensively now as possible better offensively.
So, let's talk about offense. I'm not worried about it like I've seen some fans. We all talked about how the offense would have some potential questions and issues in the offseason. And yes, us Internet fans were right about dropping Rowdey out of the leadoff spot and that has helped him and the team out some. We have some young power hitters like Tanner and James and some veteran guys who are really good players but not superstars like Mangum. Today almost everyone in the lineup got a hit- but there are a lot of 1 for 3 or 4's. That's a little more of an issue for a team without a ton of power right now. But the reason I'm not worried is because we do have some veterans like TA, Rowdey, Hancock, and Hatcher who will hit and James and Tanner are going to get better as the year goes along. Dubrule has hit in college before and Forsyth will regress some but he has been better than expected. If we get Skinner back and he hits well that could cause us to have a boost. But the big thing to remember is Gautreau's M.O. is that his teams typically improve and hit better as the season goes along. Because we have some veterans along with a talented group of young hitters that is what I think will happen this year as well. We may also see a guy like Brandon Pimentel do like Elijah MacNamee and "figure it out" later in the year and become a force. The other reason I am not worried is because our pitching dominance plays up in SEC play. We are striking out a TON of guys, not walking very many outside of Cerentola, and are mowing people down. And we've played some good teams like Texas and Tulane and beat them so it's not like we're doing this against Henderson State. This team hasn't peaked yet- and we don't want them to at this point anyway.
LSU worries me because I'm bout 90% sure we'll start Cerentola and we do have a few issues here and there and Manieri treats us like the World Series. But if we can get into their bullpen we have a chance to win the series. We have a better pen that UT-San Antonio or whoever they played so the key is going to be getting off to a good start and getting into their bullpen ASAP. Great weekend for now and looking forward to the rest of our year! Y'all need to enjoy it too.
