I think we all know the answer here and it's Harding. Will need another lefty to step up outta the bp to take his place if that happens.
Printable View
I think we all know the answer here and it's Harding. Will need another lefty to step up outta the bp to take his place if that happens.
I get what you are saying - but there is also no guarantee that any of the changes or decisions would have altered the course of anything. I can tell you that if I were in Lemonis' shoes - I would have benched Hatch long ago. But, I also saw the diving play he made on a foul ball into the visitors bullpen Friday night that I don't think anyone else that is a 1B option would have made. So I understand why Lemonis would not want to experiment with position and line up changes against our tougher SEC opponents. The thing about baseball is it is never as cut and dry as bench this guy or pull this pitcher at X point. I think Lemonis has earned the benefit of the doubt by the end results so far.
Tale him out.....Leave in.....Baseball might be the most second questioned thing to do for any Coach much less any of us fans.
Innings pitched this year:
Rocker - 69.0
Leiter - 64.1
Hoglund - 62.0
Nikhazy - 51.2
MacLeod - 49.0
Bednar - 43.0
Fristoe - 41.2
My hope is that our starters will be fresh come Regional/Super/CWS time. And that hopefully translates to solid starts. Also, the lack of innings by our starters means that our bullpen guys have gotten some needed innings in order to learn and develop. So hopefully that translates to a deep and experienced bullpen come Regional/Super/CWS time. In baseball, it's not how you start. It's how you finish.
The reason our numbers are low is because we can't make it through the order twice and they have to be pulled. We'd have fairly similar numbers if our guys could get it done. But it's not all on the pitchers either. Defense has killed them. Pitching and defense wins, not just one or the other.
Well that?s kind of a useless number just looking at IP without context. IP per game start, number of pitches per game, game situation and usage by coach. Those are a more accurate picture. We need them to go deeper, I?m not saying that but just pure IP (Bednar also had 2 appearances without a start and a 2 inning start vs Grambling with no intention to go more by the coach). So you have to put it in context. Leiter has not been as sharp after going over 100 pitches (124 in a game as well) early in the year.
The main deal for us is that all these other boys, except Leiter, are older and/or more experienced than Fristoe.
We basically have two Red Shirt Freshman and a true Freshman. When you look at real experience.
Due to injury and Wuhan Virus - Christian MacLeod only pitched his first SEC inning until this year. Both OM pictures have far more experience than our top-2
At least we get another season from Fristoe.
You also have the fact that Lemonis is never going to pitch his guys a lot of innings. He's generally going to try and get 6 innings out of his starters. If you go back to 2019 Small had 18 starts and pitched 107 innings which averages out to 5.9 innings a start, so 6. We just need CMac and Bednar to be able to give us one more inning per start and we can go to Johnson/Simmons/Smith/Stinnett/Tullar and let them bridge to Landon. Sunday's are always going to be a crapshoot and if we can get 4 out of Jackson or Hootie down the stretch then I'd consider it a victory.
Small also was hitting 100 pitches in 5-6 innings after coming off TJ surgery. I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that is the way Lemonis coaches. He seems to lean more towards protecting pitchers arms but it also should keep us fresher in the post season.
I don't know how LSU and Oregon St keep getting pitchers with how they overused so many traditionally. Oregon St might have ruined that freshman's arm but they did get a National Title out of it.
Small was coming back from TJ - but JT Ginn only threw 5 a game on average, and Plumlee 4.7 innings per start.
BUT - they all threw at least 1 longer than average outing in the post season - Small went 6,6,5 in 3 starts; Ginn went 6 against Louisville; Plumlee went 5 against Miami and 6.2 against Stanford. All 3 had some of their highest pitch counts of the season in those games. All of them had multiple 100 pitch games throughout the season.
I think it's pretty obvious Lemonis has dialed back the pitch count on these guys pretty drastically. MacLeod is the only pitcher to break 100 pitches in a game and he's only done it once. Bad outings aside - Lemonis seems to have taken an approach of keeping his starters on short counts and doesn't want them noodle armed in the post season.