[LUDad]

HP leading Radford in 7th 6-3 in first game of DH

*Edit* Radford scores 4 in 8th to win 7-6

*Edit* PC and CCU tied 6-6 going into 8th.

*Edit* CCU scores 2 in 9th to win 8-6

[WestPAGator]

Liberty up 4-0 top of 7th

[WestPAGator]

Liberty wins 5-0. Complete game one hit shut out for Lyons

[Chris Lang]

Jared Lyons was straight filthy. Read about it here:

http://www.newsadvance.com/sports/liber ... 6bd3c.html

[olldflame]

Only hit came on the first pitch of the game.

Too bad there are no mulligans in baseball.

[WestPAGator]

Winning the whole game today 2-0. Eventually GW hits a solo HR and its 2-1 going into top of ninth. Toman pulls Cole and brings Close in to close. Hits given up, an error made on a routine ground out and GW ties it up. Maryland game all over again. Who is doing the thinking out there?

[Chris Lang]

Game story from today. Done with work by 1:30? I'll take it:

http://www.newsadvance.com/sports/liber ... 97c6a.html

[olldflame]

Winning the whole game today 2-0. Eventually GW hits a solo HR and its 2-1 going into top of ninth. Toman pulls Cole and brings Close in to close. Hits given up, an error made on a routine ground out and GW ties it up. Maryland game all over again. Who is doing the thinking out there?

Well, Toman didn't commit the error. You can argue he should have left Cole in, but he had thrown 100 pitches. Close is apparently the "closest" thing we have to a "closer", so he brought him in.

Anyway, we won it in the 9th.

[jinxy]

Perritt was the dominant closer for 2 years. Coach screwed that all up at the begining of the year and we still havent gotten everything fixed. I thought aaron fitts tweets at the maryland game were telling. He basically said our pitching (perritt specifically was unrefined). I agree with the lack of development from guys like bean and stafford.

[olldflame]

Perritt was the dominant closer for 2 years. Coach screwed that all up at the begining of the year and we still havent gotten everything fixed. I thought aaron fitts tweets at the maryland game were telling. He basically said our pitching (perritt specifically was unrefined). I agree with the lack of development from guys like bean and stafford.

Perritt stopped being dominant toward the end of last season, and Toman clearly didn't believe he could play centerfield and then come in and close for a whole season this year. I tend to agree with him. Making him a starter clearly wasn't the answer though.

[SuperJon]

A real pitching coach would help our pitching.

[WestPAGator]

Winning the whole game today 2-0. Eventually GW hits a solo HR and its 2-1 going into top of ninth. Toman pulls Cole and brings Close in to close. Hits given up, an error made on a routine ground out and GW ties it up. Maryland game all over again. Who is doing the thinking out there?

Well, Toman didn't commit the error. You can argue he should have left Cole in, but he had thrown 100 pitches. Close is apparently the "closest" thing we have to a "closer", so he brought him in.

Anyway, we won it in the 9th.

I didn't have a problem with pulling Cole at that time, but the decision I question is why bring in Howard at first base when Yacyk is already in the lineup? And, why don't we try Bean as a closer? We don't have a closer with a true "out" pitch. Maybe Bean would fit the bill.

[WestPAGator]

A real pitching coach would help our pitching.

The pitching coach doesn't work with these kids. He just chews them out. There is no coaching going on at all.

[BJWilliams]

Well, despite the lack of a "real pitching coach" the Flames get the win 3-0 and sweep the Runnin Bulldogs right out of town. Liberty has only lost 1 series in conference on the year and failed to sweep two others as the CCU series looms large graduation weekend, but first there is this week.

[Chris Lang]

Game story from Sunday:

http://www.newsadvance.com/sports/liber ... 4a4c5.html

[Rooster Cogburn]

I'd love to know what makes Garrett not "Real". He seems like a very involved coach from being at the parl for nearly every game.

[ballcoach15]

Excellent pitching. Held GW to 2 runs in series and only a few hits.

[jinxy]

Did what we had to do and as a result were still breathing. Its a long shot but we have to keep winning just about every game the rest of the way.

[SuperJon]

I'd love to know what makes Garrett not "Real". He seems like a very involved coach from being at the parl for nearly every game.

If you were willing to look at things more than wins and losses I'd explain it to you. But you aren't willing to look at the negative side of things with anything Liberty related.

[Rooster Cogburn]

It's more about being at games and pre-games on the field and seeing the details of Quinn working with the pitchers. Go for the negative, I'll listen / read. I know it and see some of it, I just choose to find the positive.

Since we are pointing out flaws, How about your disdain for Toman? Wonder if that spills over to Quinn?

[olldflame]

Did what we had to do and as a result were still breathing. Its a long shot but we have to keep winning just about every game the rest of the way.

3-way tie at the top of the BSC. LU, CCU and Radford all at 12-4. As far as seeding is concerned, we have our destiny in our own hands with the beach chickens, but will need a little help from Chuck South against Radford to get the top seed. Radford and LU are both playing a lot of in-state non-conference games in the next 10 days. Radford has a 3-game series with JMU, 2 at home and one away.

[ATrain]

We have JMU tomorrow and ECU on Wednesday

[Chris Lang]

Liberty's only real shot at winning the league is winning the series at Coastal and sweeping High Point, and having Radford drop two games. Those odds aren't very good, truth be told.

[olldflame]

Liberty's only real shot at winning the league is winning the series at Coastal and sweeping High Point, and having Radford drop two games. Those odds aren't very good, truth be told.

Radford has UNCA and Chuck South while we play Coastal and HP. We need to win one more than they do, since they have the tiebreaker by taking 2 of 3 from us early in the conference schedule. Tall order.

[SuperJon]

It's more about being at games and pre-games on the field and seeing the details of Quinn working with the pitchers. Go for the negative, I'll listen / read. I know it and see some of it, I just choose to find the positive.

Since we are pointing out flaws, How about your disdain for Toman? Wonder if that spills over to Quinn?

If you're willing to listen, I'm willing to talk. I'll answer your last question first: Part of my disdain for Toman has to do with what Quinn is allowed to do.

Here are the reasons I don't think Quinn is a good pitching coach:

1) We don’t know how to manage the staff. Our preseason work is horrible because we don't prepare guys for roles. In the fall you can mix and match and roll guys out and see where the chips fall. Once you go into the winter you should have an idea of who your candidates are for each role. Then you prepare them over the winter accordingly. We are still running guys out in spring scrimmages to find out who the best guy is. And then we ask that guy to go 8-9 innings once the season starts. Then, to top it off, we move the Friday night starter to a mid-week game and totally mess up his routine because we don't trust or develop our mid-week guys. We react to others instead of having a plan that drives what we do.

2) We abuse arms by overthrowing (i.e. Constant complete games, over using guys in the tournament, having guys in the bullpen warming up multiple times in a game and not bringing them in). There are multiple major league teams that won't draft our pitchers because they know their arms are over used and under taught. You can also see this in the fact that we only use 6-8 pitchers each year while having twice that amount on the roster. In 2013, Josh Richardson was our closer for most of the year and then we threw him for 25 innings in ten days for the conference tournament and regionals. Even in our best time results wise, we used six pitchers to throw 50 innings in four days. We rolled out Ashton Perritt four straight days.

3) We abuse arms by throwing way too many breaking pitches way too often. Quinn uses the slider to set up the fastball and not the other way around. Watch us when a guy gets in trouble. It's spinner, spinner, spinner. It's well known throughout college baseball that we have a ton of talent but are sloppy and not coached. Better coached and prepared teams are rarely worried because they know we are going to make mistakes and turn to off speed in jams.

4) We don’t develop talent but rely on how good players are when they get there and what they learn in summer ball. It's why Bean has gotten worse. Baseball guys who know what they're doing watch Bean and can tell you what the problem is. Bean has more raw talent than all of our weekend guys but he hasn't been developed. That's on the pitching coach. They (he and Toman) truly don't believe in coaching kids up. If they miss on a kid, they write him off and go recruit someone else. I know it's business but they take it to extremes and don't try to develop guys. If guys get better it's because they play and get more innings or because they were very well coached in high school and understand the game.

Also, let me add this: I have nothing against Garrett Quinn the man. There is nothing to say he's not a good dude, a good husband, or a good dad. Everything I'm saying is fully, 100% on-the-field.

At the end of the day, here's what we have to expect under a Toman/Quinn coached team: We will have loads and loads of talent on our roster each and every year. We will be knocking on the door of a regional each year because our talent will always be better than 3/4 of our conference. We will always have trouble with well coached teams (i.e. Coastal and Radford currently) because they out coach our talent. When our talent clicks, we see the magical runs of late 2013 and early 2014. When it doesn't click, you see close losses to top 50 teams and wondering what it's going to take to get over the hump.