Official opening day game thread!!

[Todd4State]

Here's what you do. Mangum, Stovall, Alexander, Rooker, Bragg/Gordon, Poole, Gridley, Skelton/Lovelady, Marrero. I think that is a much better lineup.

THIS^. Except take out Marrero at DH. I don't like a catcher at DH for various reasons- including in case your starting catcher gets hurt.

[Todd4State]

I think what really hurt us too was Stovall running through the stop sign and getting thrown out at home for the first out. That move probably cost us a minimum of two runs and likely more.

[preachermatt83]

Bottom line...you cannot leave bases loaded twice against a good team like tech. Oh, and never again should marrero DH. That was just strange.

[preachermatt83]

Bragg isn't going to be much for us. Way too much guessing at the plate.

Yup. He did it this summer too. Batted a whopping 170

[Cooterpoot]

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap. This team isn't going to be good. Lost too much, too many arms hurt, and new coaches. And next year we lose our home games. Hell of a time for Cohen to get out. Smart guy.

[Todd4State]

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap. This team isn't going to be good. Lost too much, too many arms hurt, and new coaches. And next year we lose our home games. Hell of a time for Cohen to get out. Smart guy.

Meh. I think we will be OK. Remember last year we lost to Florida Atlantic. It's just a matter of finding out who can really do what at this point in the season. Like last year I think the Oregon series will tell us how good we are or are not. I was impressed with Barton- if he keeps pitching like that our bullpen is suddenly one of the better ones in the SEC.

As everyone else has said, we need to tweak the lineup some.

C- Lovelady/Marrero
1B- Gordon- for now.
2B- Stovall
3B- Skelton
SS- LA
LF- Poole
CF- Mangum
RF- Cody Brown
DH- Rooker

That's probably our best lineup right now IMO. We'll see how the rest of the weekend goes and re-evaluate. We need Plumlee to step up and we need to win tomorrow. I also thought Riley Self looked good too.

[MarketingBully]

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap. This team isn't going to be good. Lost too much, too many arms hurt, and new coaches. And next year we lose our home games. Hell of a time for Cohen to get out. Smart guy.

I don't think you can say that after one game against a top 20 team. After all, we are two pitches away from winning this game 2-1. We had bases loaded twice in the final two innings and just couldn't get the hit to bring them home. Tech got lucky gambled and won the gamble pitching Rooker a two strike fastball like they did. If he swings instead of looking at strike three, the game is tied at the very least as he would have hit that ball a long way. Their pitchers gambled and threw two strike fastballs that we didn't handle. Our guys threw two two strike fastballs and they got four runs out of it.

[CadaverDawg]

Meh. I think we will be OK. Remember last year we lost to Florida Atlantic. It's just a matter of finding out who can really do what at this point in the season. Like last year I think the Oregon series will tell us how good we are or are not. I was impressed with Barton- if he keeps pitching like that our bullpen is suddenly one of the better ones in the SEC.

As everyone else has said, we need to tweak the lineup some.

C- Lovelady/Marrero
1B- Gordon- for now.
2B- Stovall
3B- Skelton
SS- LA
LF- Poole
CF- Mangum
RF- Cody Brown
DH- Rooker

That's probably our best lineup right now IMO. We'll see how the rest of the weekend goes and re-evaluate. We need Plumlee to step up and we need to win tomorrow. I also thought Riley Self looked good too.

Todd, you know I respect your baseball views, but taking Gridley out of our lineup right now would be the craziest move next to removing Rooker or Mangum. I agree that Gridley doesn't cover much ground at SS, but whether he crushed it at the plate in game 1 or not...he is one of our best bats, and is our most experienced player. Gotta have him in the lineup imo.

[I seen it dawg]

9 muther****ing innings...9!!! Some of you need to leave baseball alone because you have zero ****ing clue. 9 ****ing innings played and we aren't impressed with the coach, player won't help us, player can't hit, player shouldn't get abs, pitcher can't pitch. ****ing stupid ****s.

[CadaverDawg]

9 muther****ing innings...9!!! Some of you need to leave baseball alone because you have zero ****ing clue. 9 ****ing innings played and we aren't impressed with the coach, player won't help us, player can't hit, player shouldn't get abs, pitcher can't pitch. ****ing stupid ****s.

Yep

[msstate7]

My biggest concern from today is pilk leaving so early. He continued to struggle 2nd time thru lineup just like last year. If he can't make the adjustments to get deeper into games, this season is in trouble

[InTheIttaBenaHotSun]

Not pumpin sunshine just stating fact. We've still got a shot at going 3-1 this weekend. I'll be it a long shot but it's still a shot. Let's at least wait till Sunday evening before we start bitching.

[wasabaka]

Todd, you know I respect your baseball views, but taking Gridley out of our lineup right now would be the craziest move next to removing Rooker or Mangum. I agree that Gridley doesn't cover much ground at SS, but whether he crushed it at the plate in game 1 or not...he is one of our best bats, and is our most experienced player. Gotta have him in the lineup imo.

Totally agree. Having Gridley at SS and LA at 3rd gives us the best of both worlds.

[Bothrops]

We had too much roster turnover to have big expectations this year. Some of those guys leaving screwed us.

[HSVDawg]

My biggest concern from today is pilk leaving so early. He continued to struggle 2nd time thru lineup just like last year. If he can't make the adjustments to get deeper into games, this season is in trouble

I never did get the "Pilk is a legit SEC ace talk" that people repeated enough times that they believed it. When has he proven he had Dakota Hudson / Chris Stratton type stuff for 2-3 times through the lineup? Not saying he won't improve, but shit the guy only went longer than 4-5 innings once or twice last year. I don't see why he was expected to just transform into a Friday night stud. And I don't really care what he did in summer ball or fall practice. Until he does it in games that matter, it's an unknown. I view his ceiling this year as being equivalent to a decent SEC Saturday guy. But he is our Friday guy, which is a problem.

[HSVDawg]

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap. This team isn't going to be good. Lost too much, too many arms hurt, and new coaches. And next year we lose our home games. Hell of a time for Cohen to get out. Smart guy.

This team has talent, but it's likely going to take a while to even start putting it together. As I said a week ago, anything over .500 is good with me and I really just want to see a much better team at the end of the year than today.

[Todd4State]

I never did get the "Pilk is a legit SEC ace talk" that people repeated enough times that they believed it. When has he proven he had Dakota Hudson / Chris Stratton type stuff for 2-3 times through the lineup? Not saying he won't improve, but shit the guy only went longer than 4-5 innings once or twice last year. I don't see why he was expected to just transform into a Friday night stud. And I don't really care what he did in summer ball or fall practice. Until he does it in games that matter, it's an unknown. I view his ceiling this year as being equivalent to a decent SEC Saturday guy. But he is our Friday guy, which is a problem.

He dominated the Cape Cod League. D1Baseball.com which I doubt reads any MSU message boards named him the number three draft prospect for his class two days ago. He had a bad inning where an OF took a bad route on a fly ball and the inning fell apart. I think he had what was it? Eight K's through 3 IP against a pretty good Big 12 team. Hudson got worked out of the game last year by FAU and if I recall correctly he had some command issues leading to people questioning him and about whether he was an ace or not too.

[LC Dawg]

9 muther****ing innings...9!!! Some of you need to leave baseball alone because you have zero ****ing clue. 9 ****ing innings played and we aren't impressed with the coach, player won't help us, player can't hit, player shouldn't get abs, pitcher can't pitch. ****ing stupid ****s.

I didn't get to watch today because of some civic duty but this is what I was thinking while reading this thread. Damn, people.

[Todd4State]

Todd, you know I respect your baseball views, but taking Gridley out of our lineup right now would be the craziest move next to removing Rooker or Mangum. I agree that Gridley doesn't cover much ground at SS, but whether he crushed it at the plate in game 1 or not...he is one of our best bats, and is our most experienced player. Gotta have him in the lineup imo.

LA and Stovall are better than Gridley- and don't get me wrong Gridley is a good player. LA is actually the best of the three overall. Gridley is OK at SS- it's not like he's a liability there. The real problem is we need to find a legit third baseman that can hit and defend which is something we haven't had since Jarrod Parks graduated so that we don't have to weaken our MIF defense because we have a guy that can't field his position or throw from there. I know it's one game- but Gridley needs to start playing a little bit better because LA and Stovall are outperforming him right now.

Although after Stovall's baserunning blunder right now I wouldn't have a problem at all with the coaches sitting him for that and playing Gridley in his place.

[Todd4State]

I don't think you can say that after one game against a top 20 team. After all, we are two pitches away from winning this game 2-1. We had bases loaded twice in the final two innings and just couldn't get the hit to bring them home. Tech got lucky gambled and won the gamble pitching Rooker a two strike fastball like they did. If he swings instead of looking at strike three, the game is tied at the very least as he would have hit that ball a long way. Their pitchers gambled and threw two strike fastballs that we didn't handle. Our guys threw two two strike fastballs and they got four runs out of it.

We lost this game because we took a bad route on a ball in the OF....at home. With a guy that has been here for four years. And then we had a rally going and we had a runner run through a stop sign and get thrown out at home for the first out and only got one run out of it. That totally changed the complexion of that inning for us. The way I look at that- right or wrong- we essentially made them get us out twice because we ran ourselves out of that inning. I don't know if we would have gotten four runs back that inning or not and there's no way to know that- but without question it cost us at least two.

It sucks tonight- but at the same time we did some good things. I was very pleased with Barton and Self on the mound. If we have to piece this thing together with the bullpen- so be it. We've certainly done it before. We played a team that has a chance to be Nationally ranked at the end of the year and we went head to head with them and were in the game where we had a chance to come back on them. Unfortunately the lesson we had to learn tonight was that we can't make bad mistakes in the field and on the base paths to beat a team like this. Coach Cann needs to figure out what our lineup is and that's probably going to go on until after Oregon.