A Sea Of Red

ECC29 wrote: ↑March 5th, 2024, 11:52 am A couple of us already made mention of this in the beginning. If pitching becomes a struggle again this season, this will be a long season.

Yupp, even with our seemingly improved offense that has more pop than last year we aren’t going to out slug very many teams.

Another loss today.
Home this weekend against an extremely good ECU team. Hopefully we can find a way scratch out a win and avoid a sweep.

Swept again. Pushes the losing streak to 7. Not much to say about this team.

This stretch was a big, challenging opportunity to bolster the postseason resumé against solid baseball teams. Unfortunately, it was a complete swing and miss. If there's any silver lining, they were largely competitive and starting pitching had some nice moments; they could (and maybe should) have won two of the Coastal games and had their chances vs ECU. Hopefully they can figure out who they trust in the bullpen and get over the hump come time for conference play.

At this point, though, it's win the conference tourney or bust. Might as well get the young arms and bats some legitimate reps so you know what you'll have to build on for next year. Hopefully they can find some moxy this week with a former Big South foe and Canisius.

We are nearly 25% done (5-10) with the season already so I decided to look at a few numbers and gentlemen...it's rough.
Before I say anything I understand two things.
1. We have played a difficult schedule (but we always have under Jackson) and the tougher conference schedule hasn't started yet.
2. There is still time to turn this around (honestly though I think it's unlikely).

We are 173rd in RPI
We are slugging .399 good for 196th in the country
.351 on base percentage-225 in the country
13 homeruns-172 in the country...for comparison there are 3 individuals that have 10+ right now
.246 average-228 in the country. There is one player on the team with significant at bats hitting over .270
34 double-53 in the country. I honestly thought we'd be higher than that. We seem to hit a lot of doubles but 53rd is pretty good.
1.61 WHIP
5.70 ERA-146 in the country
20 wild pitches and 20 HBP in only 15 games is absolutely absurd.
84 walks-247 in the country

During our 7 game losing streak we gave up an astronomical 26 runs in the 7th through 9th innings. And in several of those games we didn't have to pitch in the 9th.

Here is our record against each team we've played along with their current RPI. We have UNCA and Canisus coming up this week.
3-0 Quinnipiac-267
0-1 Duke-7
1-2 Hofstra-83
1-0 UNCW-153
0-3 Coastal-31
0-1 CoC-187
0-3 ECU-32
UNC Ashville-147
Canisus-116

With all that being said...what's going on?
Jackson has won a lot games here. We have multiple conference championships and multiple at-large bids with him guiding the program. But what has happened last year and this year? Our pitching has clearly taken a step back but has our offense always been this bad under him? Was the pitching so good it covered up the offense so it basically went unnoticed?

He has done more than enough to try to right the ship here. I started following the program in 2008 during my freshman year and last year was the first time we've had a losing season and I fully expect this year to be the same. I am absolutely not saying this because I want Jackson gone or I think we should move on for next year. It's just frustrating that we seem to suddenly have a severe lack of talent...especially offensively.

Anyway, I just love to hear what everybody else thinks.

I haven't followed baseball closely, other than look at box scores. But problem seems to be pitching.

aredd33 wrote: ↑March 11th, 2024, 11:53 am We are nearly 25% done (5-10) with the season already so I decided to look at a few numbers and gentlemen...it's rough.
Before I say anything I understand two things.
1. We have played a difficult schedule (but we always have under Jackson) and the tougher conference schedule hasn't started yet.
2. There is still time to turn this around (honestly though I think it's unlikely).

We are 173rd in RPI
We are slugging .399 good for 196th in the country
.351 on base percentage-225 in the country
13 homeruns-172 in the country...for comparison there are 3 individuals that have 10+ right now
.246 average-228 in the country. There is one player on the team with significant at bats hitting over .270
34 double-53 in the country. I honestly thought we'd be higher than that. We seem to hit a lot of doubles but 53rd is pretty good.
1.61 WHIP
5.70 ERA-146 in the country
20 wild pitches and 20 HBP in only 15 games is absolutely absurd.
84 walks-247 in the country

During our 7 game losing streak we gave up an astronomical 26 runs in the 7th through 9th innings. And in several of those games we didn't have to pitch in the 9th.

Here is our record against each team we've played along with their current RPI. We have UNCA and Canisus coming up this week.
3-0 Quinnipiac-267
0-1 Duke-7
1-2 Hofstra-83
1-0 UNCW-153
0-3 Coastal-31
0-1 CoC-187
0-3 ECU-32
UNC Ashville-147
Canisus-116

With all that being said...what's going on?
Jackson has won a lot games here. We have multiple conference championships and multiple at-large bids with him guiding the program. But what has happened last year and this year? Our pitching has clearly taken a step back but has our offense always been this bad under him? Was the pitching so good it covered up the offense so it basically went unnoticed?

He has done more than enough to try to right the ship here. I started following the program in 2008 during my freshman year and last year was the first time we've had a losing season and I fully expect this year to be the same. I am absolutely not saying this because I want Jackson gone or I think we should move on for next year. It's just frustrating that we seem to suddenly have a severe lack of talent...especially offensively.

Anyway, I just love to hear what everybody else thinks.

I few years back LU was second best defensive team just behind Notre Dame in the country and the offense to go with it. Jackson had an assistant coach that was instrumental to that success. Same goes for pitching. They had strong pitching for a while because of their pitching coach. Neither of those assistant coaches are there anymore. Jackson was not the main person for their success in the past. Jackson over the years have made terrible decisions during games that cost him some games that they should have won. Such as leaving pitchers too long and they blew it. Some people are not too fond with changes. If one suggests that LU needs a new coach to take them to the next level, some people will crucify you here.

Personally I’m not ready to say move on from Jackson yet. But things are clearly trending in that direction if something doesn’t change.

Staff decisions are always more important than people realize, especially in sports with larger rosters. Great point about assistant coaches, @ECC29

That said, in-game decisions like leaving a pitcher or not are a mixed bag. If the kid hits his spots and gets out of it, Jackson be praised! If it’s a trend, it’s usually residual of deeper issues, i.e., recruiting, pitching staff management, roster building, etc.

Back in the win column today. We use a big 7th inning to take down UNCA 12-2. Great feeling to end that streak.

We drop game one to a not good Canisus team 4-0. We managed 3 hits. But it’s not all negative. Gotta look at the positives too…3 hits is more than if we only got 1 or 2 hits.

Offense came alive today for a 12-1 win to even the series. We scored at least one run in each inning from the 2nd through the 6th.

Nice extended relief outing from Blair today. He's been quietly solid.

A whole lot happened over the last few innings of this one. And while neither bullpen wanted to win the game we come out on top to take the series.

We couldn't hold on to a late inning lead and fall to 8-12 on the season. The offense battled back at the end and made it interesting but it just wasn't enough to overcome the bullpen/defensive deficiencies. We were 161 in the RPI coming into the game. We have yet to beat a top 100 team. This weekend we travel to MTSU who is 231 in the RPI at the moment. We have only won 1 road game so far this year so hopefully we can find a way to take 2 of 3 this weekend to open CUSA play.

Made interesting at the end.

As an aside, I don’t love seeing our SS with a prominent ankh necklace…

LU 57 wrote: ↑March 19th, 2024, 7:32 pm As an aside, I don’t love seeing our SS with a prominent ankh necklace…

That’s certainly an interesting choice to say the least.

It’s nice to start the conference season with one of the weaker teams in the conference MTSU is 216 in RPI (NMSU is the only team that’s lower). We take care of business in game one. We should be able to win the series now.

We fall 10-0 today. Not only did we get shut out but we got no-hit. Not only did we get no-hit but we made 6 errors. Pathetic performance today…no way around that. We are now 9-13.

We got no hit yesterday. Today we had an 11 run first and 10 run sixth to win 25-9 with a school record 8 homers.

That's baseball for you and why you won't see my calling for Jackson's head on a pike everytime we lose. Conference games just started.

Since getting swept by ECU a few weeks ago we have won 3 straight weekend series with a chance to sweep SHSU tomorrow. The bats have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting over that time averaging 8 runs a game. Our 4-1 conference record puts us tied for first place.

The results of Thursday and Friday have legitimately surprised me. Other than the no-hit six error game this has looked like a new team recently. Very refreshing and very good to see.

We finish the sweep of SHSU today and I for one absolutely did not see this coming. On a side note there is no reason we shouldn’t wear today’s uni’s every single day.

SHSU is a solid team. They were projected to finish in the top half of the conference and played Dallas Baptist very close during their series who is looking like a team that could end up in Omaha this year.