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Texas @ Texas Tech Series Thread


ztejas

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This team reminds me of the '05 team. If Pierce can get this team to Omaha they will win the whole fucking thing, but like the '05 team it is probably going to be a bumpy ride filled with a lot of nail biting. And if they do get there they sure as hell will be the most battered and tested team there. You aren't going to find many preseason #1 teams that play 15 of their first 26 games on the road. You can argue it was borderline stupid but we have without a doubt played the toughest schedule in the country and if we salvage a win tomorrow will have gone 19-7. Most would have taken that, at least I would have.

There are 2 teams on our schedule with a below .500 record, Central Arkansas and Rice.

ETA: We have a 7-2 win over a team that is 20-1 and seemingly beating the fuck out of everybody they play.

Edited by chase25
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8 minutes ago, chase25 said:

This team reminds me of the '05 team. If Pierce can get this team to Omaha they will win the whole fucking thing, but like the '05 team it is probably going to be a bumpy ride filled with a lot of nail biting. And if they do get there they sure as hell will be the most battered and tested team there. You aren't going to find many preseason #1 teams that play 15 of their first 26 games on the road. You can argue it was borderline stupid but we have without a doubt played the toughest schedule in the country and if we salvage a win tomorrow will have gone 19-7. Most would have taken that, at least I would have.

There are 2 teams on our schedule with a below .500 record, Central Arkansas and Rice.

ETA: We have a 7-2 win over a team that is 20-1 and seemingly beating the fuck out of everybody they play.

I'll take that comp..it's all preparation for omaha..just qualify

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8 hours ago, ClubWhatever said:

It’s too bad the pitching meltdown overshadowed an incredible and probably unprecedented offensive performance the last two games from Melendez and Stehley.   I don’t recall two hitters terrorizing a staff like these two have this weekend.  And those dumbasses kept pitching to them.      
 

Our bullpen is young.  We are relying a ton on two freshmen and a sophomore for the bulk of the relief innings at crunch time and they have been inconsistent.  Have to just keep throwing them out there and taking our lumps while they fight through their control issues.   That includes Nixon.  
 

On the plus side Morehouse and Eckhardt both had good outings.  That’s two in a row for Eckhardt.  Morehouse has a swing and miss arm and will get better as he develops his breaking ball.   He’s getting valuable experience here.   We don’t have a true setup guy but we have enough arms to throw bodies at it.  It seems like it’s going to have to be setup guy by committee and Pierce has to have a very quick hook.  
 

Meanwhile the bottom of the order just isn’t going to get solved this year.   It can get better if Daly ever gets his stroke back.   DH is just going to be a frustrating revolving door of suck.

It seems that Pierce's MO is to keep "putting them out there" until they either succeed and learn from it, or show themselves to be "incorrigible" or whatever word you like.  That seems to apply to hitters as well as pitchers.

A lot of baseball yet to play, so there's time for people to get it together and step up.  About this time last year, I think we were wondering exactly what Mike Antico brought to that team.  In the short term, it's frustrating as hell, though.

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59 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

Nixon has to get his fastball command back. If he doesn’t, he is in danger of becoming Beau Ridgeway.

That’s kinda the answer to all of our pitching woes. Tristan is a pitcher that usually works ahead by pounding the edges of the zone, but was getting behind and leaving stuff over the middle yesterday. Southard has great stuff but he can’t seem to consistently work ahead. If we can get those 2 and Nixon back on track we’ll be in pretty good shape 

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It’s not only the fact that our bullpen guys can’t seem to get ahead in counts and walk too many guys, it’s that none of them have overpowering stuff, which more balls are being put in play. When Nixon, Quintanilla and Witt were ‘on’ late last year, they were overpowering teams. 

I’m still fairly upset at the schedule we forced ourselves into. We knew we had 2 of our toughest conference series in the first 3 weeks of Big 12 play and still scheduled murderers row in non conference play and had basically one series to try to get arms right. I understand you want to battle tested but we took it a step too far. Even if we still had Witt all the present issues would remain.

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23 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

It’s not only the fact that our bullpen guys can’t seem to get ahead in counts and walk too many guys, it’s that none of them have overpowering stuff, which more balls are being put in play. When Nixon, Quintanilla and Witt were ‘on’ late last year, they were overpowering teams. 

I’m still fairly upset at the schedule we forced ourselves into. We knew we had 2 of our toughest conference series in the first 3 weeks of Big 12 play and still scheduled murderers row in non conference play and had basically one series to try to get arms right. I understand you want to battle tested but we took it a step too far. Even if we still had Witt all the present issues would remain.

This is the second year in a row with this "schedule is too hard" bullshit.  You know where the schedule is hard?  Omaha.   

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6 minutes ago, petscii said:

This is the second year in a row with this "schedule is too hard" bullshit.  You know where the schedule is hard?  Omaha.   

I’m not saying don’t play a tough schedule, but we took it to an extreme this year, especially with the double midweeks crammed between our toughest non conference series’.

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3 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

I’m not saying don’t play a tough schedule, but we took it to an extreme this year, especially with the double midweeks crammed between our toughest non conference series’.

Yes, and I think over the long term it will benefit this team to have some adversity.  We could have loaded up on cream puffs and still hit the same bone.   It's clear to me at least,  David Peirce knows what he is doing.

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10 minutes ago, petscii said:

Yes, and I think over the long term it will benefit this team to have some adversity.  We could have loaded up on cream puffs and still hit the same bone.   It's clear to me at least,  David Peirce knows what he is doing.

I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt because we’ve seen past seasons under him follow similar trend lines. I’ve been on record saying that we should be able to stack a lot of wins in the middle and back half of the conference schedule.

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Double midweeks and the roadtrip were tough, but our slate hasn’t been overpowering. Tennessee and Tech are the only to date opponents likely to host. We’ve just played a lot of solid (3/4 regional seed) type teams. Good news is the conference isn’t too bad. Okie and TCU are the only really tough opponents left.

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8 minutes ago, Loop 1604 said:

Why does LHN/Texas baseball social media continue to push the “Hispanic Titanic” nickname? It’s so cringey and could easily be misconstrued as racist.

Isn’t Melendez on record saying he doesn’t like the nickname anyway?

I think his family wanted something else.  These things have a life of their own, and you sadly never get to pick your own nickname...

At least titanic is a happy ending and not some albatross level name...........



 

Edited by petscii
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A lot of drama in here. For starters - we tore the fucking cover off the ball yesterday. We've also now come back from a 2 run deficit and a 5 run deficit to take the lead in the T8 - and in both games got the game to extra innings.

There's a lot of complaining about the bullpen. Our relief yesterday gave up 4 runs in 8 innings. Friday we got to Nixon after our starter gave up 3 in 7 and our first reliever only walked one guy on. 

The biggest issue that - ultimately, when everything counted in nut cutting time - lost us both games is Nixon letting a guy steal home and Nixon not taking the 2nd out at 1st and letting Tech tie the game. Also Silas turning one base into two on a missed gun down on a steal attempt. ALSO Ivan trying to throw home instead of letting them tie the game and get the out at first (hmm... sounds familiar).

As shitty as Duplantier is he did get an out before giving up the GS. 

So yeah - we have some shaky young arms in the bullpen but that should get better over the season. We have a pitcher that maybe shouldn't see any playing time at all for awhile. Those really aren't crushing issues for a team to have this early in the season. 

What's more frustrating, to me, is four pretty big fuck ups in 2 games LATE in the game from guys that should be leading this team and making clutch plays to drag some of our young arms to wins. That and the inconsistency we've seen from Stevens and Hansen.

If our two starters play a little bit better and we button up some of the dumbassery at the end of games we're 2-0 on the road against a tough Tech team. 

The team did a lot of impressive stuff yesterday. Some of y'all are calling these guys mentally weak and that couldn't be farther from the truth. Two comebacks in a row that wound up in extra innings. We could stand to be mentally less fucking retarded in some key moments but big picture wise that doesn't make these guys soft or weak. 

Pitch a little bit better and close a little bit better and we'll be just fine. Ivan isn't going to forget how to hit the ball just because he had another nice day yesterday. He doesn't have a 1.500 OPS (yes that's the real number) because he got hot one afternoon in Lubbock and we wasted it. 

Also LOL at the "I wish we had a bunch of clutch .250 hitters on the team" yeah fuck that I'm gonna take the two guys flirting with 1.000 slugging and a .500 AVG but you do you. 

Edited by ztejas
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23 minutes ago, Spaceman_Spiff said:

Double midweeks and the roadtrip were tough, but our slate hasn’t been overpowering. Tennessee and Tech are the only to date opponents likely to host. We’ve just played a lot of solid (3/4 regional seed) type teams. Good news is the conference isn’t too bad. Okie and TCU are the only really tough opponents left.

It's hard to get a grip on the strength of schedule so far. Rice seemed absolutely awful, but I haven't checked out their results lately.  AL is 1-4 in SEC play with no road wins at all, but no one has had issues hitting their pitchers to the extent we did. South Carolina is 4-1 against us and Vandy and 8-10 against everyone else (and zero road wins).  I think all of the travails so far will toughen up these guys come May and June.  As I reminded South Cackalacky fans in Columbia, no one's getting a trophy for winning a series in March.

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4 minutes ago, zlavydra said:

no one's getting a trophy for winning a series in March.

Besides Tech getting their "beat Texas twice" trophy made after the weekend. Or do they just add a line onto the one they made earlier during basketball season?

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1 hour ago, Loop 1604 said:

Why does LHN/Texas baseball social media continue to push the “Hispanic Titanic” nickname? It’s so cringey and could easily be misconstrued as racist.

Isn’t Melendez on record saying he doesn’t like the nickname anyway?

How could it be misconstrued as racist? He’s Hispanic

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