Regular Season Almost Wrapped Up Thoughts

[StarkVegasSteve]

One of the more important weekends in the last few years of MSU baseball on deck for the weekend. We need to come out guns blazing and step on our throats. We need to find that swagger we played with on Saturday against Vandy and sustain it for the rest of the season. A few thoughts as the regular season is winding down:

1. Tanner Allen is exactly who we thought he was. Kid is an absolute gamer and if you can't thank Andy Cannizarro for anything else then thank him for TA. He's a special talent. He deserves to be SEC POY, but I imagine they'll give it to Kopps at Arkansas.

2. Landon Sims is something we've never seen before and we need to enjoy him for the next year. I've seen a lot of people try to compare him to Holder or Papelbon and he's definitely got the swagger of Papelbon and he's got the aura of Holder when he enters the game, but trying to find an in game comp for him at the college level is almost impossible. I'd have to probably go the early Chapman to find a comp. Just absolutely overpowers people with his fastball.

3. The loss of Landon Jordan hurt more than we could've imagined at the time. I think when he left we thought we had it figured out at 3B, but as the season has went on there's definitely times we could've used him. Having Leggett be able to play 3B has definitely softened the blow a bit, but I think most of us will have to eat a little crow on saying we didn't need him.

4. Our starters have been good, but not great. Coming into the year we thought we had 3 good starters, with two very special ones in Mac and Bednar. We again fell into the trap of believing that Cerrantola had honed in on the command. Now I won't say that our starters have been bad because they haven't but their inability to consistently go deepish(5+ innings) in games is definitely concerning. Now our bullpen has been able to bail us out most of time, but we really need our starters, especially Mac and Bednar to be able to go 6-7 innings a start here over the last month or so.

5. Our fielding started off bad and it really hasn't gotten any better. Our fielding just is what it is at this point. We're going to have to live with the errors and try to minimize their impact.

6. We have some young talent on this team that is going to be very good and Kellum Clark leads that bunch. Having TA and Rowdey this year has really helped soften the blow on the talent that we've lost over the past two years. I think without those two we're struggling and probably closer to .500 in the league and not even in the hosting conversation. However, having guys like Clark, Cumbest, Forsythe, James, and Leggett get high pressure at bats this year is going to pay off for us in years to come. And folks, Kellum Clark is going to be SPECIAL.

7. Brandon Smith, Preston Johnson, Stone Simmons, Cam Tullar, Houston Harding, and Parker Stinnett are going to determine how far this team goes. I know it sounds crazy to say that your middle relievers will decide the season but they will. We've got to have these guys be good enough to bridge it to Landon. We really need one more to step up and be a matchup guy for us. I hoped that would be Chase Patrick, but his sinker has trouble finding the zone consistently.

All in all I like where our team is at right now. Last weekend was disappointing, but go take care of business this weekend and you're hosting to Omaha. Let's Ride.