Hogs vs Auburn—-Baseball

[Thin Red Swine]

That was a pretty generous strike to get Stovall. 

If it caught the zone, it was the extreme northeast corner. 

[BASS]

Their baseball team borrowed gus' horseshoe

[Feral]

Top 8th.

Diggs up. Flies out to LF. 1 away.

Aloy up. Fouls out to the pitcher in front of the Auburn dugout. 2 away. 

McLaughlin up. Walks on 4 pitches. Runner on 1st, 2 outs.

White up. Flies out to the warning track in LCF.

No runs, no hits, 1 walk, no errors.

7-6 Auburn.

[BASS]

Time to steal their souls

[BASS]

That first ball to diggs was the exact location of stovall's called strike three

[Feral]

Bottom 8th.

Fisher still on the bump.

Weiss up. Hits a hard grounder to Stovall, who does his best Bob Moore impression on the 4-3 put out. 1 away.

Irish up. Hits one off the scoreboard in CF. 8-6 Auburn. 

Peirce up. Grounds out to Aloy, 6-3. 2 away.

Pitching change for the Hogs. Stone Hewlett in to porch for Colin Fisher.

McMurray up. Goes down looking. Sit down, bitch! 

1 run, 1 hit, no walks, no errors.


8-6 Auburn to the 9th.

[Thin Red Swine]

When is Dietz coming back?

[Barton Fink]

When is Dietz coming back?

Rumor is next 1-2 weeks

[BASS]

5,087 is an Auburn attendance record.


Hahahahahahahahahahaha

[Feral]

Top 9th.

Souza up. Strikes out on 3 changeups in the dirt. 1 away. 

Sandlot up. Flies out to the RF on the run. 2 down.

Edmunson up. Goes down swinging.

8-6 Auburn, F

[Thin Red Swine]

Maybe Souza needs an eye checkup. 

[BleedinRed]

Didn't piss a drop in the 9th.  

Another series win.  

[Feral]

That might be it for me doing PBP.

Pretty sure the last time I did it was the OSU loss in Arlington.

[Pigsmoke]

That's baseball Susan, road series win is acceptable. Go win the midweek and get ready for LSwho

[jdcatty]

As much as we would like to, we aren't going to win every game.  Give me a series win for every conference series, and I will be very happy.

[BleedinRed]

Our series record dating back years is really impressive.  Nothing to be ashamed about this weekend.  

[Feral]

As with most series, there are takeaways good and bad.

The Good
- Hagen did Hagen things.
- We made some big outs defensively when we really needed them to get out of some jams, specifically Friday night.
- Helfrick's nuts might've dropped.
- Edmunson emerged as a potential platoon guy in the outfield.
- McEntire might be our second best pitcher, or at least most valuable one after Hagen.
- We've likely seen the last of Rowland on the weekends.
- I thought Hobbs did a really good job managing on Friday night in one of the weirder games memory. He seemed to make the right moves and push the right buttons, and it paid off in a win.

The Bad
- Tygart seems to have developed (or redeveloped) his command issues. I'm not sure what we do about Saturdays, because I'm not sure Tygart can go more than 4 innings even on a good outing.
- Hopefully Diggs broke out of his funk, because he was slumping.
- Bullpen got eaten up, but it's probably not the worst thing for the freshmen to hit some adversity and grow from it.
- Our fielding (particularly in the OF) looked like 8U travel ball at times, and will likely be an area of focus this week. To be fair, Plainsman is an extremely weird park that isn't well lit in the outfield.
- We derped hard on the basepaths

Other
- Molina will be fine — he pitched okay, just couldn't hit his spots and still left the game with a 5-1 lead.
- Holt got very limited PT this weekend, only coming to the plate once for a PH strikeout. Curious what his role will be, but there's nowhere to platoon him in the IF if Stovall and Sandlot keep hitting.

Around the SEC
- Taking a look around the SEC, and the parity is on display.
- Vandy went from dominating Auburn last weekend to on the verge of getting swept by USCe.
- Mizzou finally won a game
- Most of the other series are going to end 2-1, with a ton of rubber matches today. I don't believe anyone can sweep except for Georgia and South Carolina, both of which would be against top 11 teams.

[Barton Fink]

Solid write up.

We've been spoiled by having a big league infield the last several years.

[Son of Spam]

Actually, I think we were pretty lucky to take 2 of 3 from Auburn. They left a LOT of guys in scoring position. However, we did what it took to win. Close games come from being ranked #1. Everyone will throw and play their best games against you. We have to weather the storm every weekend. Our bats sure need to wake up.

[Feral]

Our bats sure need to wake up.

Unfortunately, I think this is likely who we are at the plate outside of someone doing a complete midseason 180 like Cali did last year.

McLaughlin, Stovall, Diggs, and Sandlot are our reliable hitters.

Aloy is Slavens 2.0 — a 3 outcome hitter who can hit the ball over the fence but is going to strike out on a lot of offspeed pitches, especially low and away (which was Slavens' achilles heel).

The outfielders (save for Diggs) are going to be crapshoots. Wilmsmeyer looks to be the weak link in this lineup.

White is the best hitting catcher but that's not saying a ton. I'm not sure he needs to DH on days where he's not catching.

We're going to have to manufacture runs with free base runners, clutch hits, and capitalizing on errors and mistakes.