The LSU baseball team seems to have taken a down slide and its prospects are looking a lot different now that they did just a week agol LSU has lost 4 games in a row including one to a poor UNO team. Personally, I think the offense is the chief culprit. Our bats have not been extremely hot this year and we keep leaving too many runners on base. I am curious as to what everyone else's thoughts are.
Bats are not the problem. We scored 25 at Ole Miss. That's over 8 per game and should win every time. Pitching, right now, is way down. Ross is a tremendous disappointment. I would let him watch the Florida series from the bench. It will be interesting to see how they respond. I think this is the 1st time Manieri has been publicly pissed.
It's college baseball. You win and lose based upon the decisions of high school recruits decisions to stick to their commitments or go pro. This year LSU lost out on two highly touted pitchers that decided to take the money instead of honor their commitments to LSU. It's a real crapshoot with recruiting in college baseball. It's not like you can say "Well, he'll go pro so I won't bother." Nope, you have to recruit those types anyway. But you also recruit other pitchers as well. Those "others" from the past couple of years are simply having a difficult time. This year it did not work out. Couple that with the key pitching losses from last year and there you have it. Struggles late in games. Offense is fine imo. It's the pitching that is faulty at this time.
As concerning as this is I am not overly worried. We ran into this wall 2 seasons ago and then the team woke up. I think the same thing will happen again. CPM teams seem to rise to the occasion when their backs are against the wall. Right now our backs are against the wall and we are at risk of letting the SEC get our of our reach. I think we will respond soundly and end up with taking 12-13 of our remaining games, not losing any series along the way.
last night the bats were cold and a problem. four against uno. i dont know what their pitching stats were. even then we were getting guys on, but stranded oodles of em, just like over the weekend. stranding and some base running problems seem to be hurting us. and pick offs are hurting. gibbs got picked off a few times during the ole miss series. if i remember correctly, he may have even been picked off twice in one game. i do remember that on sunday, gibbs was picked off in late innings and would have otherwise been on and in scoring position when we got a base hit and scored, to give us the go ahead. having been picked off really hurt in that instance. last night it seemed there was no fire. it was like zombie baseball. i thought after getting swept they would have been pissed and had a fire lit under em. instead, it took the life out of em. if they arent embarrassed enough at losing to uno to get a fire lit, then there are some real problems. pitching is inconsistent. not bad, inconsistent. and we cant field against a bunt to save our lives. the bunt has burned us bad a couple of times this year. auburn really exposed that weakness. at ole miss the wind was really blowing out and helped both teams with batting. a game with ranaudo and pomeranz should have been a low scoring game. but with ranaudo having a very off game and the wind blowing out, both pitchers got lit up. not much you can do about that.
pitching has been a huge problem, but now offense is starting to struggle. we score a lot of runs, that's not the problem, it's scoring them in situations where the game's on the line that this team has trouble with. CPM said he's going to start thinking "outside the box," so either he's a fan of taco bell or we're going to see some different looks from guys, and perhaps a different approach. maybe guys like lasuzzo or bradshaw or cotton (or ott?) are going to start getting the start on the mound. maybe we'll see juggled lineups every game instead of consistent starters -- whoever works hardest in practice, production be damned, will get the start. i'm not saying that he's throwing in the towel, but i think he knows that this team will have to grow up really fast to reach a super regional and it's with that mindset that he is trying to get a response from this team. stay tuned.
good points. zack von rosenberg would have been one hell of an asset this season... and what's he doing right now? probably sitting on a beach with his 1.2 million. seriously though, he's pitched one inning this season for the gulf coast pirates. i think we do have the talent on this team right now to compete, though. i think the main thing this team has been lacking is fire. you see other teams get fired up all the time while most of the time LSU just sits there dazed and confused waiting for someone to step up. any word on watkins yet? i think we're missing him in the lineup badly.
I think he means "outside the box" as in outside "Alex Box." AKA...more outside the park home runs. Or else he might be referring to stevescookin's thread: http://www.tigerforums.com/good-eats/82925-thinking-outside-box-cracklins.html We may never really know!
