A Sea Of Red

Look at scrimmages plus potential roles. Roster should be out in next day or so. Lots of competition!

https://risewithus5.blogspot.com/2023/0 ... l?spref=tw

Good stuff @jinxy . Thanks for providing some clarity on where we stand to start the season.

Roster is up:

https://www.liberty.edu/flames/baseball/roster/

Does anyone know why Trey Gibson is not on the team? Did he transfer or quit baseball?

He wont be on the team this year. Hopefully he’s back next year. Believe they are still adding a few guys but that’s pretty close.

Go time. I think we have a good chance to take 2 of 3. They can mash but pitching beyond the ace is very very untested. Very similar to Florida last year but a better lineup I believe. Both had an ace and lots of ? After that. Could be good to catch them early.

https://risewithus5.blogspot.com/2023/0 ... l?spref=tw

I've said it before, but props to HCSJ and company for putting together awesome non-conference schedules. This should be a great series.

I'm looking forward to seeing the new faces and getting a first look at some of the spring hype behind Moran and Tepper. If a couple of our defense-first starters have indeed made some strides on offense (as seems to be the word out of spring so far) and can get their averages north of the Medoza Line, this could be a very solid lineup.

It was great to see Horn bounce back there in the third. After getting into that mess, he threw some really nice breaking balls that died off the plate.

Horn has looked really good overall. A few instances where he struggled with control a bit but really impressive.

The offense however…it’s cold and windy and hitting sucks in bad weather. It’s the first game everyone isn’t expected to have their timing down. This is a dominant pitcher that’s really good. There are a lot of new faces including some young guys.
…but my goodness how many weak ground balls can we hit.

Did the preseason exhibition games our pitchers seemed to outperform our hitters. I was hoping it just meant our pitchers are just that good and we would still hit but that doesn't seem to be the case. At least not in the first game. Our pitching did look pretty good though

It makes for a long night of viewership when nobody gets past first base. I suppose it's only onward and upward the remainder of the weekend offensively.

On the bright side, Horn was solid and some of the young arms out of the pen looked sharp. The staff has the potential to be pretty deep this year.

The offense will definitely get better as the year goes on (I say that because I’d be nearly impossible for it to be this bad or get worse) but I’m just not sure where we will get consistent production. There’s no reason to over react after 2 games against a really good team but this does seem slightly concerning.

On the other hand the pitching has been pretty stout so far, although the bullpen blew a 1-0 lead today.

flamehunter wrote: ↑February 18th, 2023, 8:51 pm On the other hand the pitching has been pretty stout so far, although the bullpen blew a 1-0 lead today.

Oh no doubt. We don’t need many runs. If we can find a way to put up 4 runs consistently I think we can win some games.

Sometimes I forget how much bigger the strike zones can get in college baseball. This guy has been calling strikes in the other batters box. No wonder neither team is scoring much.

That’s a rough start to the season and it’s not really getting much easier with us traveling to Duke next. The offense will get better. It has to but this appears to be the same team we’ve had for a few years now dominate pitching with an inconsistent offense that’s susceptible to immense struggles.
Really not sure what else to say about the opening weekend.