Non-Conference Portion of Season

[gtbeak]

We have finished the non-conference weekend portion of the schedule. Every weekend from here on out will be ACC opponents. My thoughts so far:

The Good:
Drew Burress: Can he maintain some semblance of this performance in conference play?
Aeden Finateri & Logan McGuire: Generally good. Neither looks like an ace, but both have been steady and reliable.
Mike Becchetti & Trey Yunger: Good, solid performance, both at the plate and in the field.
Carson Ballard & Tate McKee: Good performances from these young freshmen. Please can we keep them from regressing.

The Bad:
The offense, while good numbers overall, has had 2 or 3 games where it was just totally shut down. Not used to seeing that.
Cam Hill: Trying to tread gently here, as he hasn't been terrible, but he still doesn't seem to be able to translate his summer performance to the spring season. Maybe he just likes warm weather?
The bullpen: Similar to Cam Hill, not terrible, just disappointing that they can't seem to give reliable performances.
Ben King: I know last year sorta came out of nowhere, but I was hoping it wasn't a mirage. So far it appears that it was.

The Ugly:
Terry Busse: No personal offense to the kid, and I hope he can get it turned around, but what a huge fall from where he was this time last year.
CDH: Come on coach, I know you want to schedule the northern schools to help them out, but we can't schedule TWO schools as bad as Youngstown St and Cornell. Those two are a combined 1-21, with the one coming against us.

Mods, I'm not trying to poor mouth any of our kids, I appreciate their effort and will continue to root hard for them. I suspect they would agree with me on my assessment, but if this post is over-the-line, please delete or edit out names.

 

[TampaBuzz]

Personally, I suspect we are overusing Cam Hill. Either use as a starter, or use him as a reliever, but not both (and certainly not in the same series. Gonna burn him out before we even get to the ACC games.

 

[gtbeak]

Personally, I suspect we are overusing Cam Hill. Either use as a starter, or use him as a reliever, but not both (and certainly not in the same series. Gonna burn him out before we even get to the ACC games.

I don't think we have been moving him back and forth. He pitched in relief against Radford, the rumor was that he had a bug of some sort and wasn't ready to function as a starter, but otherwise he has been the Friday starter in the next 3 series.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

We have finished the non-conference weekend portion of the schedule. Every weekend from here on out will be ACC opponents. My thoughts so far:

The Good:
Drew Burress: Can he maintain some semblance of this performance in conference play?
Aeden Finateri & Logan McGuire: Generally good. Neither looks like an ace, but both have been steady and reliable.
Mike Becchetti & Trey Yunger: Good, solid performance, both at the plate and in the field.
Carson Ballard & Tate McKee: Good performances from these young freshmen. Please can we keep them from regressing.

The Bad:
The offense, while good numbers overall, has had 2 or 3 games where it was just totally shut down. Not used to seeing that.
Cam Hill: Trying to tread gently here, as he hasn't been terrible, but he still doesn't seem to be able to translate his summer performance to the spring season. Maybe he just likes warm weather?
The bullpen: Similar to Cam Hill, not terrible, just disappointing that they can't seem to give reliable performances.
Ben King: I know last year sorta came out of nowhere, but I was hoping it wasn't a mirage. So far it appears that it was.

The Ugly:
Terry Busse: No personal offense to the kid, and I hope he can get it turned around, but what a huge fall from where he was this time last year.
CDH: Come on coach, I know you want to schedule the northern schools to help them out, but we can't schedule TWO schools as bad as Youngstown St and Cornell. Those two are a combined 1-21, with the one coming against us.

Mods, I'm not trying to poor mouth any of our kids, I appreciate their effort and will continue to root hard for them. I suspect they would agree with me on my assessment, but if this post is over-the-line, please delete or edit out names.

I don't think you had any personal attacks in there. What you said seems to be supported by the stats to date below.

We all figured this season would go as the pitching went. But for overall pitching, our 4.7 ERA given the quality of opponent is depressing to me. Our ERA should go up as we play better teams. I'm not sold on our offense being anywhere as potent when we play ACC teams but I still think our offense will end up above average.

But to the coaches credit, we've given a lot of guys a chance to pitch in real games. Now hopefully we don't see the ones who haven't performed again unless their performance doesn't matter in the game. If they do good, then let them pitch more; otherwise too bad for developing them for the draft. We have a lot of promising younger pitchers who I hope choose to stay next year.

We are about 1/4 (15 of 60 games) through the season. If we don't get better quickly I think we will be close to the bottom 2 of the ACC and @FredJacket 's ACCT watch will be on. (I won't kick the Charlie Brown football any time soon though!)

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Personally, I suspect we are overusing Cam Hill. Either use as a starter, or use him as a reliever, but not both (and certainly not in the same series. Gonna burn him out before we even get to the ACC games.

Not sure Cam is being overused; he's only had 9.2 IP so far. He had to become a started due to others flaming out. The most pitches he threw has been 75.

If your point is that he should be a reliever, I think that may be right. As a starter, he didn't do well against Cornell or Youngstown State IMHO. (I think he also started in the suspended uGag and gave up 6 ER but don't have the stats for that game. Regardless, it was too damn cold to judge a pitcher IMHO.)

 

[78pike]

We have finished the non-conference weekend portion of the schedule. Every weekend from here on out will be ACC opponents. My thoughts so far:

The Good:
Drew Burress: Can he maintain some semblance of this performance in conference play?
Aeden Finateri & Logan McGuire: Generally good. Neither looks like an ace, but both have been steady and reliable.
Mike Becchetti & Trey Yunger: Good, solid performance, both at the plate and in the field.
Carson Ballard & Tate McKee: Good performances from these young freshmen. Please can we keep them from regressing.

The Bad:
The offense, while good numbers overall, has had 2 or 3 games where it was just totally shut down. Not used to seeing that.
Cam Hill: Trying to tread gently here, as he hasn't been terrible, but he still doesn't seem to be able to translate his summer performance to the spring season. Maybe he just likes warm weather?
The bullpen: Similar to Cam Hill, not terrible, just disappointing that they can't seem to give reliable performances.
Ben King: I know last year sorta came out of nowhere, but I was hoping it wasn't a mirage. So far it appears that it was.

The Ugly:
Terry Busse: No personal offense to the kid, and I hope he can get it turned around, but what a huge fall from where he was this time last year.
CDH: Come on coach, I know you want to schedule the northern schools to help them out, but we can't schedule TWO schools as bad as Youngstown St and Cornell. Those two are a combined 1-21, with the one coming against us.

Mods, I'm not trying to poor mouth any of our kids, I appreciate their effort and will continue to root hard for them. I suspect they would agree with me on my assessment, but if this post is over-the-line, please delete or edit out names.

Pretty much spot on analysis.

I've watched every game and can't argue with much of what you said. I will say, however, Cam Hill has an ERA of 3.72. In college baseball anything under 4 is considered to be pretty decent. I think he has been hurt a bit by a few miscues in the field making the perception of his pitching to look a lot worse than it actually is. It will be interesting to see how he does with the ACC opponents.

I'm not sure what is going on with Busse. I asked in an earlier thread if anyone had any news about an injury. I assume it must be something like that because I don't believe he has pitched since the opening week or so of the season. I tried looking for him on the bench during yesterday's game but didn't see him.

Also I would add Brosius and Kerce to the good column. I know Brosius is not a freshman but he might as well be since all he did was pinch hit and pinch run along with the occasional late inning defensive replacement last year. Kearse has been playing pretty well of late and hit something like .700 this weekend. I don't know how much longer Giesler will be out but if Kerce continues playing like he has been it might be interesting to see what happens when Giesler returns. Maybe Giesler comes back as the DH and Kerce remains in the field?

In summary it appears most of the highly rated freshmen class is living up to their billing so far. The young pitchers are really helping our depth on that side of the ball. I expect McKee to be in the starting weekend rotation soon if he keeps pitching like he has. It was good to see Stanford get some productive innings under his belt this weekend. We can really use his power arm out of the pen if he can keep his control in check.

 

[gtbeak]

Pretty much spot on analysis.

I've watched every game and can't argue with much of what you said. I will say, however, Cam Hill has an ERA of 3.72. In college baseball anything under 4 is considered to be pretty decent. I think he has been hurt a bit by a few miscues in the field making the perception of his pitching to look a lot worse than it actually is. It will be interesting to see how he does with the ACC opponents.

I'm not sure what is going on with Busse. I asked in an earlier thread if anyone had any news about an injury. I assume it must be something like that because I don't believe he has pitched since the opening week or so of the season. I tried looking for him on the bench during yesterday's game but didn't see him.

Also I would add Brosius and Kerce to the good column. I know Brosius is not a freshman but he might as well be since all he did was pinch hit and pinch run along with the occasional late inning defensive replacement last year. Kearse has been playing pretty well of late and hit something like .700 this weekend. I don't know how much longer Giesler will be out but if Kerce continues playing like he has been it might be interesting to see what happens when Giesler returns. Maybe Giesler comes back as the DH and Kerce remains in the field?

In summary it appears most of the highly rated freshmen class is living up to their billing so far. The young pitchers are really helping our depth on that side of the ball. I expect McKee to be in the starting weekend rotation soon if he keeps pitching like he has. It was good to see Stanford get some productive innings under his belt this weekend. We can really use his power arm out of the pen if he can keep his control in check.

I keep (and have been for a few years now, I'm a major nerd) a spreadsheet of my own stats where I throw out what I consider to be garbage time. Yes that means I threw out almost this entire past weekend. Anyway, on that spreadsheet I'm including the Friday UGa game since it really did happen. I understand the weather was atrocious, but the players need to take that up with CDH or whomever made the decision to try to play that game. Including that game Hill's ERA rises to 7.92. This colors my thoughts on Hill's performance so far, fairly or not. It also makes King's numbers worse than they are on the official stat sheet.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Listening to Dune tonight (to get ready for Dune 2), I heard this:

'There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles. -- Muad'Dib'

Should that apply here? (To me it does, but others?)

 

[GTRambler]

Here are the current ACC baseball statistics, so we can compare our team to the others within the conference so far:

2024 Baseball - Overall Statistics - Atlantic Coast Conference

The official 2024 Baseball cumulative statistics for Atlantic Coast Conference

theacc.com

 

[MWBATL]

Here are the current ACC baseball statistics, so we can compare our team to the others within the conference so far:

2024 Baseball - Overall Statistics - Atlantic Coast Conference

The official 2024 Baseball cumulative statistics for Atlantic Coast Conference

theacc.com

My take on these stats….against by far the weakest schedule of any of the ACC teams, we have middle of the road stats. Not a promising start, imho.

 

[TampaBuzz]

Not sure Cam is being overused; he's only had 9.2 IP so far. He had to become a started due to others flaming out. The most pitches he threw has been 75.

If your point is that he should be a reliever, I think that may be right. As a starter, he didn't do well against Cornell or Youngstown State IMHO. (I think he also started in the suspended uGag and gave up 6 ER but don't have the stats for that game. Regardless, it was too damn cold to judge a pitcher IMHO.)

View attachment 15879

Correct. He started against UGA on Friday, the pitched in relief on Sat and Sun.

 

[THWG]

Correct. He started against UGA on Friday, the pitched in relief on Sat and Sun.

I think you're talking about Cam Jones and not Cam Hill. Jones is a reliever and Hill is a starter

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Correct. He started against UGA on Friday, the pitched in relief on Sat and Sun.

Interesting in that the RamblinWreck stats don't show Hill in the Sat or Sun relief pitching. And I went to StatBroadcast and it didn't have Hill pitching either.

But yeah, Jones pitched those games.

In any event, Hill has not done that well as a starter IHMO given the caliber of the opponent. We'll see this weekend how things go since we have a limited number of starters (tic).

 

[TampaBuzz]

I think you're talking about Cam Jones and not Cam Hill. Jones is a reliever and Hill is a starter

Whoops!

 

[FittedJacket]

I support all of these young men who grind day in and day out…with that being said I think that the out of conference performance bodes very negatively for the rest of the season. At minimum we would need to be at least a .500 team in the ACC and I don’t see it happening. I’d love to be wrong!

 

[CTJacket]

I keep (and have been for a few years now, I'm a major nerd) a spreadsheet of my own stats where I throw out what I consider to be garbage time. Yes that means I threw out almost this entire past weekend. Anyway, on that spreadsheet I'm including the Friday UGa game since it really did happen. I understand the weather was atrocious, but the players need to take that up with CDH or whomever made the decision to try to play that game. Including that game Hill's ERA rises to 7.92. This colors my thoughts on Hill's performance so far, fairly or not. It also makes King's numbers worse than they are on the official stat sheet.

Peak GT-ness right there. You'll get no shade from me for doing that!