This forum is pure hardball. Bring the heat in this discussion of Flames baseball.

Moderators: jcmanson, Sly Fox, BuryYourDuke

User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641338
We are 17-9 overall 4-5 tied for third in the east division of the ASUN. FGCU and KSU are both 7-2. Stetson is also 4-5. We are currently 53 in the RPI.

This is a huge week for us. A 3-1 or 4-0 week would do wonders for our RPI as well as the conference standings. Although unlikely, with our pitching talent and depth, 3 or 4 wins is certainly possible.

Wednesday we travel to Charlottesville to face #3 UVA. This is a great baseball team. They are 25-3 and #10 in the RPI. I don't know who will pitch the midweek game for them so I won't look into the pitching staff but the offense is ridiculous. They have 6 starters hitting over .300 good for a .333 team average with a .992 team OPS. They are led by Jake Gelof with a .435/.541/1.011 slash...slugging over 1.000...leading the county in homers and eighth in average.

This weekend FGCU will come to Lynchburg. They are 63 in the RPI. This is another really good baseball team. Leading the conference in homers, average, OBP, and slugging. Six starters hitting over .300 with and 5 of them have an OPS over 1.000. Ian Farrow leading the team with 10 HRs and Alejandro Figueredo leading the team with a .425 average. This is a really tough week lets hope we avoid going 1-3 or 0-4.

I encourage anyone that hasn't checked out the format for the conference tourney to do so. I looked over it this weekend and it seems kinda wacky to me. I have no idea if any other conferences do something similar but it's definitely interesting. Eight teams make it to the tournament. The top 3 from each division and then the next two highest in RPI regardless of division. So I think we should be good to make the tournament even if we don't finish in the top 3 of the east since we do have a good RPI.

Here is the format for the championship
https://asunsports.prestosports.com/spo ... hip_Format
jmclaughlin liked this
User avatar
By jmclaughlin
Posts
#641342
aredd33 wrote: April 4th, 2022, 11:43 am We are 17-9 overall 4-5 tied for third in the east division of the ASUN. FGCU and KSU are both 7-2. Stetson is also 4-5. We are currently 53 in the RPI.

This is a huge week for us. A 3-1 or 4-0 week would do wonders for our RPI as well as the conference standings. Although unlikely, with our pitching talent and depth, 3 or 4 wins is certainly possible.

Wednesday we travel to Charlottesville to face #3 UVA. This is a great baseball team. They are 25-3 and #10 in the RPI. I don't know who will pitch the midweek game for them so I won't look into the pitching staff but the offense is ridiculous. They have 6 starters hitting over .300 good for a .333 team average with a .992 team OPS. They are led by Jake Gelof with a .435/.541/1.011 slash...slugging over 1.000...leading the county in homers and eighth in average.

This weekend FGCU will come to Lynchburg. They are 63 in the RPI. This is another really good baseball team. Leading the conference in homers, average, OBP, and slugging. Six starters hitting over .300 with and 5 of them have an OPS over 1.000. Ian Farrow leading the team with 10 HRs and Alejandro Figueredo leading the team with a .425 average. This is a really tough week lets hope we avoid going 1-3 or 0-4.

I encourage anyone that hasn't checked out the format for the conference tourney to do so. I looked over it this weekend and it seems kinda wacky to me. I have no idea if any other conferences do something similar but it's definitely interesting. Eight teams make it to the tournament. The top 3 from each division and then the next two highest in RPI regardless of division. So I think we should be good to make the tournament even if we don't finish in the top 3 of the east since we do have a good RPI.

Here is the format for the championship
https://asunsports.prestosports.com/spo ... hip_Format
Good post! Big week ahead and will likely be the rudder for which way this season goes. We cant get out of the ASUN fast enough. The whole baseball format is strange from division play only in the regular season to the wonky conf tourney. The tourney will also be in 2 separate location in Ft. Myers. I know that the Red Sox and Twins spring training sites are in Ft. Myers, so maybe they play in one of those stadiums in addition to FGCU??
User avatar
By Cider Jim
Registration Days Posts
#641343
For some unknown reason, I think even Ballcoach respects UVa's baseball team. :dontgetit
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641361
jmclaughlin wrote: April 4th, 2022, 3:30 pm We cant get out of the ASUN fast enough.
I actually really like the ASUN for baseball even with the wacky tournament format. Right now the ASUN is 11th in conference RPI. But we have more top 100 RPI teams (5 LU, FGCU, KSU, JU, EKU) than several conferences ahead of us.
CUSA-4
AAC-4
Big 10 also 5
Missouri Valley-3 (which is 6th and carried primarily by Dallas Baptist at #2)
With that being said the bottom of the conference is pretty rough with three 230+ RPI schools luckily all in the west. I'm glad we are in the east with all the Florida schools. It's definitely better than the Big South days. I think there is a legitimate chance the ASUN is a two bid league again this year.
Looking to the future CUSA won't be a very strong conference I think. As it stands right now...
LU-53
JSU-139
SHSU-112
NMSU-246
WKU-244
MTSU-79
LTU-31
FIU-229
Hopefully I didn't leave any of our future conference mates out. Maybe some of these schools are usually good and are having a down year, I don't know, but it's not good right now.
jinxy liked this
By Chippy
Registration Days Posts
#641367
aredd33 wrote: April 5th, 2022, 3:38 pm
jmclaughlin wrote: April 4th, 2022, 3:30 pm We cant get out of the ASUN fast enough.
I actually really like the ASUN for baseball even with the wacky tournament format. Right now the ASUN is 11th in conference RPI. But we have more top 100 RPI teams (5 LU, FGCU, KSU, JU, EKU) than several conferences ahead of us.
CUSA-4
AAC-4
Big 10 also 5
Missouri Valley-3 (which is 6th and carried primarily by Dallas Baptist at #2)
With that being said the bottom of the conference is pretty rough with three 230+ RPI schools luckily all in the west. I'm glad we are in the east with all the Florida schools. It's definitely better than the Big South days. I think there is a legitimate chance the ASUN is a two bid league again this year.
Looking to the future CUSA won't be a very strong conference I think. As it stands right now...
LU-53
JSU-139
SHSU-112
NMSU-246
WKU-244
MTSU-79
LTU-31
FIU-229
Hopefully I didn't leave any of our future conference mates out. Maybe some of these schools are usually good and are having a down year, I don't know, but it's not good right now.
The same can be said about softball as well. ASUN a major upgrade from BSC and better than CUSA. Like baseball there are 5 teams in top 100 with LU at 39.
User avatar
By Ill flame
Posts
#641372
I would rather play in an 8 team conference with an average rpi of 141 than a 12 team conference with an average rpi of 137. This way we only have to play 7 conference series a year instead of 10 which allows us to play more higher profile non conference games.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641375
But with how the schedule is setup with 2 series against every east team that’s 18 quad 1 games in conference we are getting. As opposed to 6 in what would be this years CUSA. Another thing to consider is the ACC starts conference play very early playing 30 conference games. So when we shorten our conference slate to 21 games we will probably only be able to keep the midweek games against the ACC and not add any weekend series.
The schedule has definitely been much better in the Jackson years compared to Toman so it’ll be interesting to see how we fill that void. I’m sure Jackson won’t fill it with as many cupcakes as possible like Toman.
Ill flame, 7 conference series with higher profile non conference games certainly isn’t a bad approach and I wouldn’t be upset about it.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641391
Rough start against UVA a lead off double by Betts and he doesn’t score and then an error let’s UVA score in the first. 1-0 after the first inning.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641395
flameshaw wrote: April 6th, 2022, 9:01 pm Horrible defense.
Yeah, we just look sloppy all around. Such a huge difference from last year and the first 2 weeks of this year.
The wheels fall off in the fifth to put this one out of reach. 5-1 after 5. The odds of this offense scoring 6 runs against a great UVA pitching staff is essentially zero.
User avatar
By jmclaughlin
Posts
#641401
Little things snowball in baseball. Bunt coverage, backup coverage assignments, advancing runners, making the right play as opposed to the heroic one, etc. We are not a baseball team doing the little things well at this point. Jackson has his work cut out for him to regroup the troops. The expectations after 2 weeks into the season might have been a bit overzealous and what we are seeing is more the reality than a digression.
All that said, UVA is really good and shouldn't take a lot out of loosing this one.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641402
I agree about expectations after the first 2 weeks. At no point were we ever truly the 14th best team in the country.
This reality is very frustrating because of last season. We should be better than we are but its clear we aren't. Going 6-9 in the last 15 is now the majority of the season.
The theme of the Jackson years has been good to great pitching with enough offense. This team has taken that to a new level. I'm not sure how to fix the offensive issues. Probably a combination of recruiting and a new hitting coach.
With all that being said we do have the pitching to win the tournament and make it to the NCAA tourney.
I desperately want something positive to talk about with this team but it's just not there right now.
User avatar
By Ill flame
Posts
#641404
I knew we were never a top 15 team but I thought we would be good enough to get an at large bid. Now I just want to get into the tournament any way we can. If we go on a hot streak an at large bid isn't out of the question but the shot at hosting a regional is long gone at this point.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641411
For anyone that knows the pitchingninja Trey Gibson was featured on his YouTube channel from the UVA game…along with the uniform reveal from early in the season.
User avatar
By TH Spangler
Registration Days Posts
#641417
Betts is playing well.

Orndorff needs to get hot again. He's been hit by a bunch of pitches and the one to the head was dangerous. Might be affecting him at the plate.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641422
Great win tonight. Fantastic to see the offense come alive and have multiple innings with crooked numbers.
I was at a wedding so i didn’t get to see any of it but the pitching staff with 7 walks and FGCU leaving 15 runners on base is very concerning. But anyway, we won that’s all that matters.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641439
Maybe I need to stop watching games. Another great win that I unfortunately missed again. What a performance by Dylan Cumming. Let’s get the sweep tomorrow.
User avatar
By aredd33
Registration Days Posts
#641446
Another great pitching performance this time by Adametz to complete the series sweep of FGCU. What a great weekend. It really changes things in the conference standings. We are now tied for 2nd at 7-5 with FGCU.
By LUDad
Posts
#641451
Wow. Starters going triple digit pitches against a good hitting team. Logan making good contact. Enthused dugout. Good to see them righting the ship. Looking forward to VT game and KSU series.
NCAA Realignment Megathread

Does Gonzaga and St Mary have D1 football ? When[…]

LaTech

We are halfway through the season, yet we are stil[…]

Dondi Costin - LU President

HEB is alright, but honestly Trader Joe's is my […]

JMU for 6 games

The fact of the matter is, JMU and Liberty could n[…]