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Spaceman_Spiff

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Posts posted by Spaceman_Spiff

  1. Feels like the season is riding on Ace and Grubbs. If they can settle into starter roles there are still the pieces for a half decent, if below standard, season.

    If not, well, buckle up.

    Feeling a lot better here two days later. Baylor is not a good team, but we just maybe might have a bit of pitching. And we’ve definitely got the bats. Hope the starters keep it up, the BP starts to settle, and that Pierce works his magic with the defense and the lineup.
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  2. Losing to Baylor sucks, but thats baseball. We’ve hit a few grand slams this year, so it’s just crap timing to have back to back killer GIDP. We probably win that game 8/10 times. Not our day, but time to go win the series.

  3. Feels like the season is riding on Ace and Grubbs. If they can settle into starter roles there are still the pieces for a half decent, if below standard, season.

    If not, well, buckle up.

  4. Florida: 12-8 (2-1), 37th in the RPI, 2-4 against Q1 teams, #8 SOS, ranked #6 by D1 baseball
    Texas: 12-8 (2-1), 48th in the RPI, 3-4 against Q1 teams, #14 SOS, unranked
    Obviously this is going to change a lot but 20 games in I just found this comparison interesting. Goes to show the fault in how humans judge things and how weird baseball can be

    Polls hang on desperately to previous year’s teams even though 50% of the squad turns over. And discount midweek games far too much to fit their narrative.
  5. You can't escape the judgment call element, but if the current season falls flat he will get one, maybe two years in the SEC to "fix it".  Postulating about what if he flip flops between subpar seasons and top 10 seasons is not a useful exercise.  It's always going to be a judgment call about "trajectory".  Right now he is not meeting the standard.

    Agree with this. He at least gets this and next year to show he can get the roster to a championship level and deliver. From there it depends on the combination of results, approach, available candidates, and money.
  6. We won’t and shouldn’t fire Pierce this year, obviously. A repeat of 2019 puts him on a very hot seat, but I think anything else and he’s ok. Though I do think CDC starts to look at available names because after next year we’ll likely either need to extend or fire him.

    I’ve been adamant for a long time that Pierce has been a poor recruiter (though great eye for pitching and coach). In his tenure our HS recruiting rankings have averaged 25th in the nation on PerfectGame. We’re out-recruited every year by teams we think we should be on par with or beating: Vandy, LSU, Tennessee, TCU, Arkansas, Florida, Texas Tech, A&M…The 2021 class, which should have multiple senior players leading this team a la Hansen, Faltine, Zubia, Campbell landed at 97th and may not have a single meaningful contributor if Harrison doesn’t recover.

    ‘21-‘22 were great because we had a solid, senior HS core and hit on multiple all-star JUCOs/transfers. Now, with injuries and recruiting it could be a rebuild this year (though I’m waiting to see how the next 3 weeks or so go).

    BUT, I do think there are several promising signs. Our past two classes have been better and ‘24 and ‘25 are ranked 3rd in the country (the first time that Pierce classes even sniffed the top 5). That plus better NIL performance and I think we can improve quickly.

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  7. I think on paper we returned more this year. But we also had a much weaker core with basically no freshmen to build off of. This year was such a success because we struck gold (again) in the portal. Next year, we return less but feels like we’ll have a little bit more of a young core to build on. Target is about the same, and probably anticipating a bit of regression because so much aligned. But Pierce has been masterful in the portal so far, so we’ll see.

  8. Disappointing to lose Minchey, he was one of our brightest young pitchers. I would hope they could have pitched him on the upside of growing his role a lot. Don’t see why he wouldn’t be in play for a weekday starter or 40IP+ reliever role. That should be seriously attractive at a program like Texas. How do you not point to Gordon and LBJ, who hardly did anything Y1, and say “you could be them?” Maybe guys just want the promise, idk.

  9. Unrelated, but man losing Carlson for the season sucks. Big difference having him in the lineup, he was a key driver of turning outs into walks or hits. Get Daly sucks, but Flores and Belyeu is a rough back of the lineup

  10. Took some time to process the loss this weekend. Painful as it was, I think we can recover and the core of our pitching staff is still good.

    The last two weekends are a wicked combination of bad luck, mediocre and untimely hitting, questionable usage, and the final straw on a few members of the pitching staff.

    Here’s how I’d manage the staff going forward.
    Friday: Gordon, under appreciated for a great if not totally dominant year.
    Saturday: LBJ, has the stuff and has shown the glimpses to get it done.
    Sunday: Hurley, Baylor was a dumpster fire but there just isn’t a third starter to keep him sidelined or out of the pen.

    Tuesday: Sthele, just not good enough. Tracking at less than 5IP and 3+ ER per game. Maybe you hope he can give you 3-4 good innings Sunday and then go to Hurley for 3. But he has a pretty consistent body of work that seems to confirm he’s a 5+ ERA guy on weekends.

    Morehouse probably needs the Kubicheck treatment. Potentially sit him. Maybe work in low leverage weekday innings or big lead middle inning stuff. But barring something dramatic, I don’t see how you justify another shot with any sort of stakes.

    The pen actually has several solid arms. Shaw, Tole, Burke can cover quality leverage innings. Lummus, Minchey, and even AD can eat low leverage innings and even stretch when needed. Witt could be a real X-factor.

    The cracks are definitely showing and we just got punched in the mouth. But Im not ready to write off this team. If they can regroup and if the coaches use the hitters and pitchers we have well to put them in a place to succeed, I still think we can be dangerous.

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