Opening Weekend Review

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First of all, Western Carolina is much better than the teams we usually open up the season with. They're ace is going to be a pain in the ass for some #1 seed in a regional and will make them a really tough out come tourney time. WC also has a very solid lineup with some good college hitters and a TON of lefties. Winning that series is a good way to start the season.

I'm also glad we didn't have a totally ridiculous melt down on Friday night. Losing that game was not a huge deal at all, and anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that sometimes you just run into an ace and there's not much you can do about it- I think that shows we have some pretty smart baseball posters over here. That said, there are some things we need to do better, but let's start with what we did well:

The Good-
Mitchell and Holder are still Mitchell and Holder.
Matthew Britton looks great defensively. That DP he turned today was a really difficult play, and he made it look easy with his range. We won't miss Frazier's glove too much this year.
Trevor Fitts looked very solid- he'll probably be a weekend starter.
Dakota Hudson is a future stud. No doubt about it. He was hitting 96-97 today and it looked effortless- hell, Gene even said he clocked him at 98 once. I just don't want expectations to be too high for him this year. Hudson will take some lumps, but his future is BRIGHT.
Preston Brown was good, and he'll contribute this year.
CT Bradford really swung the bat well. I like his new stance, and it should help him stay on top of the ball. He's also finally healthy.
37 BB/HBPs show that we know how to get on base, even when the bats aren't rolling. Good sign.
We really don't have a hole anywhere defensively- very, very solid every position, just like we thought going in. Our weakest spot is probably catcher, but I expect them to continue to improve.

The Bad-
The bats we just plain bad this weekend. I'm not sure if we had 20 hits all weekend, plus there wasn't much pop in the lineup. We simply looked overmatched at times. It's early and we're still experimenting a lot, so I'm not overly concerned.
Armstrong at DH? Really? I'm sure he's a great kid and will be a very good role player for us, but we have other options who really need live ABs (Garner, Humphrey, etc.). I'll just chalk it up to another weird, Cohen experiment.
I'd really like to see us be more aggressive on the bases with double steals, hit and runs, etc. If we're going to put a bunch of fast singles hitters in the lineup- we need to let them run a little bit.

The Ugly-
We HAVE to get more out of Woodruff and Lindgren than what we saw Friday. Again, it's still very early, so I'm not too worried yet.
33 strike outs. That cannot happen in a weekend- especially when we already don't have a ton of power.

I was at the first two games and watched the third on HSTV, so if I missed something, feel free to comment.