Thoughts and observations on baseball thus far.

Mar 31, 2025, 2:31 PM

* We need to give Knaak a litte more run support in order to save Mahlstead for the Saturday or Sunday game.

* Lack of fall hitting due to shoulder surgery, coupled with lack of production behind him, has Cam stretching his strike zone a tad bit too much. This will get better, and he will get hot at the right time.

* Preist needs to understand his role and be more aggressive at the plate. When he was hitting in the 4 hole, he was watching too many first pitch fastballs. I understand quality at bats, and working pitchers, but I also understand knowing who you're protecting in a lineup.

* Jarrell hits the ball hard and has had some tough luck. He could go on a tear at any point this season. Especially if he learns to layoff the slider off the plate.

* Bailey is a revelation, although a small sample sized one. I love his fire and competitiveness. If he gets an umpire that loves the edges, he could be even harder to touch. Umpires love guys that work fast and with command. They tend to benefit pitchers like that with borderline calls.

* Crieghton needs to hit more. He's essentially a right-handed Listi.

*Listi is an on base machine but tends to get anchored at 1st. Would love to see him force the issue on the field.

*Paino really needs to develop a better two-strike approach. He tries to kill every pitch.

*Gaffney is an elite defender at 1st and makes extremely difficult picks look routine. He is a very cerebral player. I think he will get hot at the plate soon. He showed a lot better approaches at the plate the last couple of weeks.

*Purify will be a 1st round pick next year and have a long pro career. He is an absolute freak of an athlete with a high baseball IQ. He sometimes gets penalized for an error on a ball that most 2nd baseman wouldn't even get a glove on.

* When Knaak has all his stuff working he is Greg Maddox reincarnated.

* Darden needs to have a clean 1st inning most of the time to get his mind settled. He seems to get rattled pretty easily and the wheels fall off at that point.

* GT is one of the best hitting teams in the country and Burress is probably the best pure college hitter I've seen since Kahlil Greene.

* Losing to Coastal may benefit us later. The win against us could weigh heavily towards them hosting a regional, thus not being the 2 seed in ours. That could potentially set up a super-regional matchup between us and them, thus avoiding a SEC opponent in the Super's.

* Am I the only one taking notes during mid-weeks at opposing pitchers that could be potential transfer targets? We have faced a lot of great, young mid-major arms.

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I agree with this 100%, my only takeaway thus far is that I would say about every regular player is about as good as they are going to be (without mechanical or gameplan changes, looking at you Paino and Priest).

Cam has done way better recently, I think he understands now that he doesn't have the protection he did in previous years. So far, he leads the team in walk rate and has the third lowest strikeout rate (20.9% and 14.9% respectively). Behind him, like you said, Priest needs to become more aggressive, and has every tool to be successful, he just waits too long for a good pitch that will never come and rolls over to second base. Right now, his BABIP is the lowest amongst qualified batters, which if he can look to swing first pitch, he will hit the ball much better and erase some of that bad luck (4/5 of his home runs this year have come within the first two pitches of his AB's and two on the first pitch).

I think Darden got caught out this weekend due mainly to the wind honestly. This is the first game all year he's given up more flyballs than grounders, mixed with the wind tunnel GT's stadium had led to homeruns flying all over the place. Right now, he's sitting at a 5.85 ERA, and depending on which predictive stat you want, most of them show that he'll probably settle out at around a 4.50 to 5.00 ERA, which sounds bad but over 6 innings gets you between 3 and 4 earned runs, completely beatable with our late-game bullpen options.

I will say at this point B.J. Bailey is more than a small sample size overall, as he's third on the team in innings and batters faced. But as a starter he definitely has a small sample size as you stated. If he can keep up his performances, with a little regression (I don't know a single starting pitcher that can maintain a 0.65 ERA), he could easily be the 2nd best starter behind Knaak, and maybe even surpass him, depending on how you value advanced metrics (FIP, SIERA, kwERA, etc.).

Thoughts and observations on baseball thus far.

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'ppreciate the thoughts...***

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Whats with the SEC fear? Geez!***

Re: Whats with the SEC fear? Geez!***

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