Thanks for suggesting it; you always have a finger on the pulse of the community.
I imagine Schmolke gets exiled to the bullpen for a while. 2 appearances, 1-1/3 total innings, 7 walks, no strikeouts. Let him make a few low leverage (way ahead or way behind) appearances out of the pen and see if he can relocate his control.(1) Thank you for a baseball chat room
(2) Busse is a difference maker. Goodness, I hope our coaching "braintrust" doesn't try to turn him into a starter or anything like that!!
(3) Overall, pitching does appear to me to be much improved this year. Coaching decisions on pitching? Not so much...
(4) I remain baffled beyond words about the start by Scholmke. Why start a kid if you're not pretty sure he'll at least throw strikes? Sometimes I think our guys are so afraid to groove one that they instead try to be perfect with every pitch on the corners. Problem with that is that it's harder to do that, plus even if you do hit the corner, the college umps may only give you the strike half the time. But is it our coaching or our ballpark or just nervous freshmen that cause that result?
(5) Looking forward to seeing more pitchers this coming weekend. There are some guys who looked good last weekend who I want to see more, as well as seeing some of the other arms.
(6) our defense worries me. I couldn't watch the game, but Jackson at SS seems a little shaky. However, we've been much worse than what we have shown so far this year. I'm just a perfectionist.
Let's sweep Tennessee Tech and get to 7-0.
In Schmolke's defense he was throwing balls on the outside corner in the exact same spot (or better) that were called strikes later in the game. A couple of those get called strikes and it's a whole different inning. I can somewhat understand leaving him in after the bases were loaded to let him try to get out of it and not ruin his confidence, especially since it was the first inning. But he never should have been allowed to pitch to the 5th batter. I am guessing that happened because the bullpen wasn't ready to come in yet. On a more positive note, Busse looks like our next great transfer success story. He has the demeanor you want to see from a closer. He doesn't seem to let anything bother him and he has the control and nasty stuff that intimidates the batters. I have been pleasantly surprised by Mannelly so far. He and Busse has been a lethal lefty, righty combo at the end of the game that makes it tough for the batters to dig in. Say what you want about the bad start tonight but the bullpen was fantastic. When was the last time we have been able to say that.
I couldn't watch so didn't miss too much except for Wiley and some of his tangents. Really nice to see Mannelly seemingly turn things around this year. He struggled pretty much all last season. And Busse looks like a great add. Can’t remember the last time we had a shutdown closer (maybe all the way back to Wieters?).
Two of the three guys you listed are true freshman. You have to pitch these guys early to help develop them not sit them lol then you run into situations with undeveloped arms deep into the season.You should be thanking me for changing the karma and going to watch TV.
The morning after I don't see any reason to be negative giving up 5 baserunners with no outs to start the game. Not.
But the one run over the next 27 outs was a nice change.
Peace.
Oh yeah, when I get time I'll look up how many DPs per game we are averaging versus last year. I think we are better in this very young season. We turned another 2 yesterday and the Jadyn error was not considered an error by Wiley and the other announcer, too deep in the hole to expect an out.
Team ERA of 7.00 is bad. (17 of 30 ER are Samol, Schmolke and Siegel in 6.1 of 36 IP) Very bar bell distribution and early. It's up to the coaches to pitch the right guys; we have guys who are pitching. Those who don't go well should go to the end of the rotation. Results matter.
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Add Siegle wasn't terrible until the 9th. The consensus seemed to be CDH left him in too long.
I go back and forth on that issue. One argument is that if you keep bringing in new pitchers every inning, you're bound to find one who doesn't have good stuff that night who will get lit up...so stick with the guys as long as they look to be effective. Your argument is obviously what MLB does, and I am sure they have some reasoning or data to support it, but I'm not sold, personally.
I'm with you. I don't see anything wrong with it. As you alluded to MLB usually limits their closers to one inning because they play 4 out of every 5 days. In this case we played on a Tuesday and don't play again until Friday giving Busse three days to rest before he potentially has to pitch again. He only threw 27 pitches. I think Mannelly is looking like the set up guy who will pitch the 8th in the future but he was brought in early in a tight game because we needed a lefty to shut down their power lefties and since they didn't want to stretch Mannelly to a third inning Busse came in to pitch the 8th. Personally, I think we used the bullpen perfectly in this game.
