Dores try to salvage a game in the Dodgertown Classic and will face a tough foe in TCU.
Not a lot to say after two 1-run losses other than:
-- pitching has been great, as expected
-- hitting has been less than great, as expected [especially so without AMar yesterday, today, and 1/2 of Friday]
-- clutch hitting with RISP has been atrocious, worse than expected.
First off I have a thought on the pitching. We've walked 5 batters in both games. That's very, very high compared to our first 14 games. Coming into the weekend our pitching staff as a whole had a BB/game rate of 2.95 This almost doubled this weekend to 5.6 BB/game. As my Grandma Junior used to say, "That ain't right!" and she would have been correct in saying so were she still alive, RIP Grandma Junior, you had a good 109 years I'm guessing expect maybe those last 3 months when you couldn't walk, couldn't hear, couldn't see, and couldn't eat but also couldn't die because somebody has decided that we all have to die a "natural" death despite it being quite "unnatural" to our usually every-day existence.
My theory is that "West Coast pitching" and "West Coast umpires" really are quite different than the SEC. The strike zone they use is NOT the same one used in the SEC. UCLA and USC are used to it and pitch to please the ump and their West Coast Strike Zone. Our pitchers pitched like they always do, to the SEC Strike Zone. As a result we got the results we got.
Baseball is a lot about "adapting", both pitchers and hitters adapting to the strike zone for any given game. It's vital to success. Rocker was particularly thrown off course by this and did not adapt to the strike zone being called. It's a great learning experience for him in his still-young career. Eder did much better in that regard.
Overall, however, our pitching has been stellar. ERA this weekend is 2.25, quite good. We have 20 K's in 16, average of 11.25 per 9 innings, just a tad below the season's average coming in of 12.7 K/game.
Our team hitting this weekend is a cumulative .136 and that's less than half the season's average.
Our RISP hitting this weekend is a paltry .100 and that's 1-10 which is indicative mostly by the fact that USC only have us 2 RISP opportunities -- both by the last 2 hitters of the game, both of whom were struck out by USC's hot shot Closer.
As bad as our season's RISP has been (not really all that bad, it was .260 before this weekend, just not great) it has been really, really bad this weekend. Both UCLA and USC threw the best pitchers they had at us and i don't blame them for doing us. We are not the Marquee Baseball Program in the US, not either of them.
My conclusion is two things have results in our two one-run loses to very good teams:
1. overly poor clutch hitting
2. pitchers not readily adapting to the West Coast Strike Zone
Hopefully, both UCLA and USC can visit The Hawk some day and see how fast they can adjust to SEC Strike Zones.
Not a lot to say after two 1-run losses other than:
-- pitching has been great, as expected
-- hitting has been less than great, as expected [especially so without AMar yesterday, today, and 1/2 of Friday]
-- clutch hitting with RISP has been atrocious, worse than expected.
First off I have a thought on the pitching. We've walked 5 batters in both games. That's very, very high compared to our first 14 games. Coming into the weekend our pitching staff as a whole had a BB/game rate of 2.95 This almost doubled this weekend to 5.6 BB/game. As my Grandma Junior used to say, "That ain't right!" and she would have been correct in saying so were she still alive, RIP Grandma Junior, you had a good 109 years I'm guessing expect maybe those last 3 months when you couldn't walk, couldn't hear, couldn't see, and couldn't eat but also couldn't die because somebody has decided that we all have to die a "natural" death despite it being quite "unnatural" to our usually every-day existence.
My theory is that "West Coast pitching" and "West Coast umpires" really are quite different than the SEC. The strike zone they use is NOT the same one used in the SEC. UCLA and USC are used to it and pitch to please the ump and their West Coast Strike Zone. Our pitchers pitched like they always do, to the SEC Strike Zone. As a result we got the results we got.
Baseball is a lot about "adapting", both pitchers and hitters adapting to the strike zone for any given game. It's vital to success. Rocker was particularly thrown off course by this and did not adapt to the strike zone being called. It's a great learning experience for him in his still-young career. Eder did much better in that regard.
Overall, however, our pitching has been stellar. ERA this weekend is 2.25, quite good. We have 20 K's in 16, average of 11.25 per 9 innings, just a tad below the season's average coming in of 12.7 K/game.
Our team hitting this weekend is a cumulative .136 and that's less than half the season's average.
Our RISP hitting this weekend is a paltry .100 and that's 1-10 which is indicative mostly by the fact that USC only have us 2 RISP opportunities -- both by the last 2 hitters of the game, both of whom were struck out by USC's hot shot Closer.
As bad as our season's RISP has been (not really all that bad, it was .260 before this weekend, just not great) it has been really, really bad this weekend. Both UCLA and USC threw the best pitchers they had at us and i don't blame them for doing us. We are not the Marquee Baseball Program in the US, not either of them.
My conclusion is two things have results in our two one-run loses to very good teams:
1. overly poor clutch hitting
2. pitchers not readily adapting to the West Coast Strike Zone
Hopefully, both UCLA and USC can visit The Hawk some day and see how fast they can adjust to SEC Strike Zones.
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