OT: Boogs 2020 Not Men's Softball
- Thread starter WDE_Tarp
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Blessed I don’t care much about AU baseball but had a little LBS flair up seeing we lost to Bama. Somehow my social media feed been reminding me we’ve lost to them at everything the last year. Tough stuff.
Good thing last year didn't count, with Covid and all.
Doubtful. Offensive numbers have actually been pretty good. Pitching is what is killing us, but the injuries there are unreal. Tough to fire Tim Hudson in year 1 with all he has had to work around.
4th in batting average
5th in fielding percentage
2nd to last in pitching.
Thought I would make the short trek to see the game tonight, but not gonna subject myself to it unless I change my mind.
Wonder how the conversation to fire a volunteer coach goes.
“Thanks for working for free but we still don’t want you here anymore”
Add to this, “thanks for the Milli, but we’re good without you”!
Great post on tbb by @DufnerFanBoy, as per usual. Overview of the 1 run games in Butch’s tenure. Kind of destroys the “weak mentally” narrative that a few non baseball minds like to spew on AU boards.
I'm on the replace Huddy train. Just don't think Butch can do nothing there. It's not like we just got a little worse. It's been like falling off a cliff and nothing is working with the adjustments being made. I think Butch is going to have to make a change. But that position is going to be really tough to replace because of it's volunteer status.
I'll post it here too.
"This whole one-run game thing is killing me. So, I went back and looked at just the one-run game numbers during Butch's tenure. And what I found is interesting to me. In his 5 seasons coming into this year, Auburn was 29-29 in one-run games. Here's the yearly breakdown:
2016: 1-11 (0-3 in extras), 5 saves, Cardenas led with 2
2017: 12-7 (0-1 in extras), 14 saves, Cole Lipscomb had 6/Andrew Mitchell had 5
2018: 9-7 (1-0 in extras), 17 saves, Calvin Coker 7/Greenhill 5
2019: 7-3 (5-0 in extras), 16 saves, Greenhill 12
2020: 0-1, 2 saves, Greenhill 2
2021 so far: 3-8 (1-3 in extras), 2 saves, Barnett 1/Fitts 1
What stands out to me when looking at the stats from those years is the lack of a closer. FtWorthMatt has mentioned it a few times that moving Greenhill was a mistake, and there might be some merit to that argument. I still think we needed him in the rotation, but there's no denying that we lack a reliable closer or at the very least a stopper or two. And based on the above numbers, we're much better at the end of games in seasons where we have guys who can finish games. This might be the single biggest need for this roster next year and going forward."
I sometimes wonder if people that were really good as players don’t make as good of coaches, because they believe the way they did things will always be the right way to do it. And coaches that weren’t good as players are more willing to adapt to new ways of doing things, since they didn’t have success as players doing it a certain way.
i, of course, have no data or proof to back it up. Just a theory
It just seems like his mindset is that of minor league baseball coaching where it's all about growth and experience and working on things. In MiLB, there's very little worry about wins and losses and much more emphasis on working on things in real time and figuring out strengths and weaknesses through games and mound time. There just doesn't feel like there's a sense of urgency in the moves or the pitch calling or the approach to handling the staff. I'm not asking him to panic and make changes after one walked hitter, but knowing your roster and where they've struggled and being able to see when it's going south and making changes should be apparent by now.
The game at GT is a prime example. Cam Hill comes in and gets the first out and looks strong to start the second hitter. But that guy gets down a bunt that we make an error on. Hill then walks the next two hitters on almost no competitive pitches. IMO he should've never seen the second hitter he walked because his track record to this point says things are going south fast. Same thing with Trace Bright. Start of the fourth inning he gives up two warning track line drives. Both balls were pissed on but just right at guys. Then he walks the third hitter of the inning on four pitches with 2 outs. Very next pitch, he gives up a 2-run HR when we were up 3-2. We should've pulled Bright after the walk because of the history of his performance. Maybe early in the year, you let him work through that. At 12-16, it's time to worry about the best decisions to win baseball games, and too often, we're not making those decisions correctly IMO.
What free coach is going to be better is the question? Butch just has to take the reigns and make the decisions. And let it be known that the decisions going forward are his. Huddy is a stud icon. Nobody should argue that. But Butch is in charge. If he’s letting Huddy run that show, he has to reconsider. If he’s running it, he should own it. I think it can all be done without running Huddy off. But there absolutely has to be a public pronouncement that changes are coming.
It's not a free position. We pay that position out of camp money and booster club money that Butch can raise. Huddy is just doing it for free or very minimally because he can. We paid Steve Smith pretty well from my recollection. But I agree. Letting it hang in the wind without assigning true responsibility or completely owning it isn't the way it needs to be handled because right now Huddy is taking all the blame and it's possible not much of it is his fault if Butch is pulling the strings. Just needs to be clarity there before we revolt against one of our favorite sons.
My bad. I always thought we could only have two paid assistants. I guess it’s like a HS supplement, probably on steroids, for guys like Smith and Huddy.
We can only have two people paid by the university. Those two paid assistants also get benefits like any other university employee would get, but the volunteer coach doesn't. The big argument for making that position university paid is to improve the coach-to-player ratio (baseball currently has the highest of all major NCAA sports) and to help the upward mobility of younger coaches. It's hard for more young coaches to get into the game when they have to take that volunteer job that might "pay" but doesn't provide the benefits of being a true employee of the school.
We got one from the turds. Would love to take the series from them tomorrow. Not sure if we have the pitching for that though.
We have Gonzalez starting. We should have Skipper available for an inning. Barnett hasn’t thrown all weekend. Seb Thomas, Brooks Fuller, Hayden Mullins, Will Morrison, Blake Burkhalter, Cam Hill should all be available and all be on short leashes.
The problem is we’re facing one of the best pitchers in the SEC this year, although he hasn’t pitched since week one. Need to jump on him early and keep the pedal down.
Yeah if Gonzo gives us a quality start those names might be enough. If he has a tough start like last weekend, I don’t think those names are enough. That being said, Barnett not pitching at all this weekend might be indicative that they are saving him for a long relief roll like Fitts had on Thursday.
so what's going on with Boog baseball. Kind of read through the thread a bit. But can't get a firm idea. Is there a lack of talent? Was this expected to be a down year? Did a bunch of people leave or something? How did the boogs go from the CWS to this?
Not really an easy or clear answer. We didn’t lose a lot from last year, but what we did lose were major pieces. Tanner Burns and Bailey Horn were in the starting rotation last year and got drafted. Ryan Watson was a solid piece in our bullpen and would be the most veteran and experienced guy we’d have this year had be returned. IMO it all falls on the pitching staff. We had some injuries that caused some shuffling of duties in the bullpen. And to this point, Fitts and Owen haven’t returned and consistently pitched like we thought they would. And I think we’re seeing a product of a bunch of young, inexperienced arms not getting a chance to throw in SEC play last year when they wouldn’t be quite as relied on now being relied on and not handling the adversity well at all.
I think questioning the depth of talent is valid, but I think experience and development are more responsible for the issues. I’d like to think some of these guys will be much better next year for having to deal with the tough times this year, but it’s been so rough that you have to wonder if some of them will be able to get over the mental hurdles they’ve created.
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Appreciate the info. I understand why people want to move Greenhill back to the pen. Not entirely sure I believe it’s doing anything other than robbing Peter to pay Paul. I guess the end of the game is the most stressful situation, so maybe it makes sense.
That's all we can do at this point. Seems like the move is being done in the hopes that Fitts will be more like the guy we saw Friday or the guy from game one this year. He had a good outing, and any outing that he goes 4+ IP and only allows 2 hits (even if both hits were HRs) should be considered successful. So, you get Owen to go 6-7 a night and Fitts 5-6 or more and get it to Greenhill or Swilling or Skipper in his first appearance and go from there. Then, you figure out Sundays however you can.
I looked it up earlier. We have 6 upperclassmen on the staff right now and 10 players who are freshmen this year or were last year. So, that's basically 10 freshmen this year. Only Florida and Vandy have less upperclassmen and as many or fewer young pitchers throwing. And we are tied for the smallest available pitching roster in the SEC with Bama and aTm.
I dislike the move myself. 100% agree on robbing Peter to pay Paul but maybe a starter will emerge. My biggest complaint with it is his availability. If he could pitch an inning+ on 2/3 consecutive days, I’d be all for it. If he pitches on a Tuesday and is not available again til Friday then not again til Monday I’m not sure it’s his best role. I understand we need to shake things up but until he can close Friday and Saturday and Sunday games consecutively, we’re just painting the turd IMO.
I think the plan is to have him throw multiple times a weekend.
But of the plan if to use him in long relief one time, I'm not a fan either
I would be okay with that, I just don’t think he’s consistently been able to do that in the past.
I feel like moving our #1 starter puts more pressure on the worst part of our team. Hope I’m wrong and this gets us going .
