Pitching

[twofortheroad]

I'm not a fan of red shirting when a college baseball player is ineffective. It just eats up roster / scholarship positions. If he can't make it in four years, then we shouldn't make it five (e.g. Pitts). If he becomes good, he'll get drafted and leave at the 3 or 4 year point.

Gooden is redshirted due to injury, I heard it is a shoulder issue. I am all for red-shirting when an injury is in play such as with Tristan. With his injury, you had to be red-shirted. Ineffective or injury/coaching with our pitching lately I don't think you can lay all the blame on the player? I don't know. I had heard that another player, a Freshman would be red-shirted too but I had not heard it would be Brace. Was expecting more from Shirah, by entering school early and missing out on the Fall ball you really have to be ready to go and make a statement. Not sure he was ready and probably should have waited till next year. Hope he can come around. It's a lot to take in.

Suprised to hear that Danny used electronic data to manage the line-up this weekend, I hear he is very old school and doesn't like to use any programs that other schools are using. Hope that's a good sign that he is open to making things happen. Other programs are very open to pitching programs, data collection etc and sometimes I think we are stuck in the past.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Zay just got an award for ACC Pitcher of the Week and his first response to was to deflect attention onto the rest of the pitching staff.

 

[FredJacket]

Zay just got an award for ACC Pitcher of the Week and his first response to was to deflect attention onto the rest of the pitching staff.

Thanks for posting this... Xay is VERY easy to like! Such a battler. I'd like to see him get some plate appearances. On days off... pitch hit in key situations (see the "battler/winner" intangible)... or DH. Although... we are not 'hurting' at the DH spot in any way.

His career batting stat line (all in 2017): 3 for 6 (.500) / 3 RBI / 1K / 1 SAC bunt

 

[dawgbasher]

Kid has always been able to hit. Big waste by not using his bat. Kid can hit .300 with his eyes closed.

 

[FredJacket]

After Hurter's last 3 starts, I have been wondering if we should move him to the weekend rotation and use Thomas out of the pen. I feel like having Thomas in the pen could really stabilize it and we would have 2 reliable pitchers in him and Archer. Then, Chapman could start the weekdays. Just a thought that I had.

Grabbed @THWG 's thought from another thread. This a very interesting idea...and I do think CDH (and Howell) has a lot to think about regarding managing our pitching staff going forward. Last year... you could argue his job was "easy" because the staff was so inexperienced and poorly performing that it was a "pick your poison" deal when looking at optimum combinations...there were none.

This year... the pitching has improved and been a difference maker; but I think it is fair to say we are still pretty thin which (correct me if I'm wrong) is what I think @THWG may be attempting to address with this idea. One way to get less thin is to have Carpenter heal up. Anybody have an update on him?

Back to what we know... assuming all things are equal regarding who has the mental makeup to come out of bullpen v start (I wish I knew this too)... but assuming none is more or less suited for those roles, I think I like the weekend rotation the way it is; although, I could be easily persuaded to do it differently. Curry, Thomas, English. Gives you RHP > LHP > RHP rotation... not sure that matters; but there's that. That give you top 3 out of bullpen of Archer, Hurter, Datoc (not necessarily in that order). English out of the bullpen (Hurter starts over English) is probably the next one I'd consider...but more a feeling than anything else.

Back to who's suited (physically and mentally) to be a bullpen guy vice a starter. As much as I'd like to say suck it up and do the role assigned.. some guys just seem to be better at one over the other. Ultimately, I think that's how you decide... just impossible for me to judge so far removed from it.

Lastly.. this is a pretty good problem to have. 3 very strong weekend starters... a freshman (Hurter) demonstrating he can consistently perform. Getting ahead of the situation...but those 4 come post-season. I like the way that would look on paper for the ACC tournament and a 4-team regional tournament.

 

[Madison Grant]

I've never seen a player get so little credit as English gets on this board. Midseason PG and D1 1st team A-A, nearly double the rbis of anyone else on the team, and he's an afterthought in discussions around here.

 

[FredJacket]

I've never seen a player get so little credit as English gets on this board. Midseason PG and D1 1st team A-A, nearly double the rbis of anyone else on the team, and he's an afterthought in discussions around here.

He should not be an afterthought by any stretch. Not only a great story on the Flats... a great story for college baseball. I can't wait to see what he does as season progresses. He was severely missed on Tuesday night.

 

[RoosterJacket]

I've never seen a player get so little credit as English gets on this board. Midseason PG and D1 1st team A-A, nearly double the rbis of anyone else on the team, and he's an afterthought in discussions around here.

Don’t you know we only talk about the players who underperform....and CDH of course.

 

[FredJacket]

I've never seen a player get so little credit as English gets on this board. Midseason PG and D1 1st team A-A, nearly double the rbis of anyone else on the team, and he's an afterthought in discussions around here.

Don’t you know we only talk about the players who underperform....and CDH of course.

It's also important to point out for this specific @Madison Grant post... he/she gets credit for complaining about posters... no credit for pumping up English. ...part of the problem?

 

[65Jacket]

I don't know what some of our posters would do if we had a perfect team. I guess they would still find something to complain about.

 

[MWBATL]

All I know is English is MVP of this team, by a long shot.

 

[twofortheroad]

I am wondering what is going on with Shirah? He came in under the radar but high on draft boards, lefty that was supposed to just show up and be ready to go? I said it before, he should have come in with his class in the fall. CT is definitely getting the bad hand but he has made some errors as well...recalling the bad throw to first when he should have let the 3rd baseman take the ball, 3rd base being a freshman and maybe at that time not confident enough to say I got it. I am hearing he is really the best and most talented pitcher on the team but he makes mental errors that cost us - recall the Uga game at Suntrust last year when he came in. You can't just throw, you have to have baseball sense. Not saying he doesn't but he has got to make better decisions.

I am still a little confused by the pitching situation....there are too many pitchers on that team that are not making strides - Lee, Jon-Boy, Micah (came back too early), Combs, Brace, Chapman, so many more. Not sure what is going on, we should be confident in our pitching more consistently. I don't think we embrace newer technology for pitchers, we seem to always be a hitting team but pitching gets ragged on all the time but just don't see the investment in making pitching happen by the team. See other teams posting pictures of pitchers doing visualization practice before practice, not sure what we are doing. We should be turning out pitchers from this state and really producing quality guys...I don't think it's the individuals, I just think it's the process. How are they placing these kids in the summer?

Someone talked about having 'washed up' peaked at age 14 players on the team and we should look outside of the metro area, I think that is a little harsh. If you look at this team and where they are from 11 out of 35 are private, inside the perimeter players all others are outside of the perimeter representing Florida, Ohio, North Carolina; Tift, Fanin, Jefferson counties as well as Alpharetta, Norcross, Gwinnett. It's really a diverse group.

Hope we have a good run at FSU.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

All I know is English is MVP of this team, by a long shot.

I said earlier in the season that English and Bart would probably play in the MLB.

I still think Bart is, or is close to, the MVP. Listening to Jim Poole's praise for how Bart calls the pitches is part of the reason I think so.

But English being our best 1st base and pitching and hitting makes him damn good .

 

[ball4life66]

 

[MWBATL]

Back to back weeks with Pitcher of the Week awards in the ACC....who'd a thunk it?

 

[FredJacket]

We're 32 games into 2018. There really are some pretty incredible pitching numbers when comparing improvement over 2017. Who would have seen this big of an improvement coming in these categories?? ...this is just a few to highlight... every pitching stat is improved over 2017.

ERA - 2018: 4.66 / 2017: 5.36

Strikeout to Walk Ratio - 2018: 2.72 / 2017 1.52
This #2 in ACC and #28 nationally in this category (2017 - #13 & #221)

Walks/9IP - 2018: 3.22 / 2017: 4.76
This is #1 in ACC and #32 nationally (2017 - #14 (dead last) & #233)

FSU was ranked #1 nationally coming into last weekend's series in drawing walks. The Ga Tech pitchers gave up 5 total walks all weekend:
4 in Friday loss
1 in CT's complete game
0 in the beatdown on Sunday.

An improvement like that.... who gets credit? Someone (or multiple people) deserve some.

 

[MWBATL]

Fire Danny Hall!

 

[RoosterJacket]

We're 32 games into 2018. There really are some pretty incredible pitching numbers when comparing improvement over 2017. Who would have seen this big of an improvement coming in these categories?? ...this is just a few to highlight... every pitching stat is improved over 2017.

ERA - 2018: 4.66 / 2017: 5.36

Strikeout to Walk Ratio - 2018: 2.72 / 2017 1.52
This #2 in ACC and #28 nationally in this category (2017 - #13 & #221)

Walks/9IP - 2018: 3.22 / 2017: 4.76
This is #1 in ACC and #32 nationally (2017 - #14 (dead last) & #233)

FSU was ranked #1 nationally coming into last weekend's series in drawing walks. The Ga Tech pitchers gave up 5 total walks all weekend:
4 in Friday loss
1 in CT's complete game
0 in the beatdown on Sunday.

An improvement like that.... who gets credit? Someone (or multiple people) deserve some.

I think Curry stayed home last summer and just worked with his own pitching coach (what was his K/BB ratio last year?). We never saw the real CT last season. We never even saw Tristin the last two years on the mound. Hurter started shaky and has adjusted very well so far.

The fact we have 4 starters who we can pretty much rely on as opposed to only 1 starter last year is beyond huge. After Shadday went down last season, we literally didn’t know who would be starting on Saturdays, Sundays, or midweek. Lee stepped up at the end of the season, but it was a little too late by then.

The turnaround has been amazing from our pitching staff.

 

[THWG]

I think Curry stayed home last summer and just worked with his own pitching coach (what was his K/BB ratio last year?). We never saw the real CT last season. We never even saw Tristin the last two years on the mound. Hurter started shaky and has adjusted very well so far.

The fact we have 4 starters who we can pretty much rely on as opposed to only 1 starter last year is beyond huge. After Shadday went down last season, we literally didn’t know who would be starting on Saturdays, Sundays, or midweek. Lee stepped up at the end of the season, but it was a little too late by then.

The turnaround has been amazing from our pitching staff.

The last time we had 3 guys that I trusted, let alone 4, was when Pope, Bradley, and Farmer all pitched on the weekend.

 

[FredJacket]

NM..posted something here in wrong thread