Quote Originally Posted by maroonmania View Post
Todd, first nobody here has said we don't have a significant issue with our bullpen so you can stop hammering that. EVERYONE agrees with you. However I don't know that there is any magic formula to solve that unless we bring back Lindgren and Holder. However, I am really surprised at your unwillingness to see that we have significant issues on offense as well. Let's just look at our last 14 games (still well over half of the games we've played total), we are not averaging 6.7 runs/game, we are averaging 4.4 runs/game against competition that is still not stellar. In that span we've only scored more than 6 runs in a game ONCE. Lately we've been scoring 3, 4 or 5 runs somewhat early and then we never score again. No matter what bullpen you are not going to always be able to count on winning games when that's all you are scoring. I said way back when we scoring lots in the first 10 games and winning that I could see us having problems once we ran into teams that threw strikes and played solid defense in the field and that's exactly what has happened. Yes, our bullpen has been BAD, but even if we had lost the 2 games to Bama 6-5 and 5-4 instead of 10-5 and 8-4, I'd still be just as upset about it.
I will hammer that point as long as we have fans that are ignorant enough to believe that we are losing games because we didn't score 9 runs to overcome the bullpens 8 allowed runs. I'm glad that EVERYONE has come around in your opinion on that. If you are scoring 4-5 runs per game, you should still win your share of baseball games. Asking a pitching staff to allow less than a run every other inning is not really that much to ask. But to say that "well, the bullpen blew the game so we should have scored more runs" is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life.

The fact of the matter is if we have issues on offense, then well over half the SEC does as well- and 250+ teams in the country have issues also.

The real issue is we don't have very much power. VERY different from hitting. I would still venture to say that the power is better this year than last- and that's without Collins.

I wouldn't give up on fixing the bullpen yet- Ross is still effective for about two innings, and if we move Laster to the pen, I think that would help out a lot. We also have to see what Paul Young can give us- which is an unknown at this point.

The REAL" issue with the offense" is some people don't like all the bunting- which is preference more than anything. But to use that as a pass for the bullpen is ridiculous.