The Niners went 2-2 on the week last week including dropping their opening A-10 series at Rhode Island. The rotation was substantially different looking than what we have seen this year, as Yermal and Chad Rothlin got their first weekend starts of the season. Yermal was expected, but Rothlin appears to have gotten the start due to an injury to Barnette.
It appears the injury bug has bitten the Niners as Ross Steedley, Brad Elwood, and Tyler Barnette have all missed time over the past few weeks.
This week the 7 game road trip conitnues as the Niners play at USC-Upstate today, and travel to Xavier this weekend. We shut out Upstate at the Hayes 2 weeks ago 11-0.
Corey Roberts will get his first mid-week start of the season this afternoon after serving as a weekend starter for most of this season.
After trailing 5-0 early the Niners come back to win 12-6. Clutch 2b with the bases loaded by Pat Raley to break up the 6-6 tie in the 9th inning.
Things sounded ugly early on as Roberts left in the 1st due to injury. He gave up 3 runs on 1 hit. Bullpen came up big once again until our bats could get going.
It is good to finally get a clutch hit with the bases loaded. On the radio broadcast, they said that we were batting .148 with the bases loaded on the season.
3 game set at Xavier starts today. I think this is a must win series for us if we want to contend for the top 2 spots in the conference. I am hoping the offense from the latter part of Tuesday’s game carries over into the weekend.
It looks like the rotation is the same as last week: Smith on Friday, Yermal on Saturday, and TBA on Sunday. I am not sure if Barnette made the trip or not, but I would suspect he or Rothlin start on Sunday.
I believe that Steedley made the trip so I expect to see him back from his injury this weekend.
Xavier was picked to finish 4th in the Conference this year by the coaches and 3rd by Baseball America. They are 9-15 and look to be inconsistent. They opened the season playing a weekend series at Chapel Hill and took 1 of the 3 games scoring 22 runs on the weekend. Common opponents include URI and Toledo. X lost to URI in a ‘non conference’ game at the Charleston Tourney. They also took 2 of 3 from Toledo at home , as did the Niners.
Despite losing Xavier's all-time homerun king, [b]Ben Thomas[/b], the Musketeers look to be a force in the conference with a strong returning corps. XU returns all three of its starting pitchers including 2011 All-Rookie selection sophomore [b]Vinny Nittoli[/b] and left-handed hurling junior [b]Jon Richard[/b]. 2011 First Team selection junior [b]Seth Willoughby[/b] will provide the Musketeers with a strong bat and solid pitching in relief. Sophomore outfielder [b]Brian Bruening[/b] will be back in action after being named a 2011 A-10 All-Rookie selection.
Today is a perfect example of the pitching problems we’ve been having all year. Our best pitcher has just given up 3 walks and 2 doubles among the first 6 batters he has faced today. We’re already down 3-0 and the first inning is not over yet…Our problems are not all related to hitting.
We failed in all facets of the game today. By far the worst outing of the season for Smith. Didn’t get the bats going until the 7th inning when we were down 10-0. Committed 4 errors.
I hope we got all that out of our system and come out strong the next 2 days. These are must win IMO.
[quote=“Mr. Bojangles, post:11, topic:26619”]We failed in all facets of the game today. By far the worst outing of the season for Smith. Didn’t get the bats going until the 7th inning when we were down 10-0. Committed 4 errors.
I hope we got all that out of our system and come out strong the next 2 days. These are must win IMO.[/quote]
Yes, but poor pitching started it. None of the 4 errors occurred until we were in a deep hole, 5-0 I think and they did not contribute to many of the Xavier runs when they did occur.
[quote=“919R, post:12, topic:26619”][quote=“Mr. Bojangles, post:11, topic:26619”]We failed in all facets of the game today. By far the worst outing of the season for Smith. Didn’t get the bats going until the 7th inning when we were down 10-0. Committed 4 errors.
I hope we got all that out of our system and come out strong the next 2 days. These are must win IMO.[/quote]
Yes, but poor pitching started it. None of the 4 errors occurred until we were in a deep hole, 5-0 I think and they did not contribute to many of the Xavier runs when they did occur.[/quote]
We’re sure don’t play like A10 defending champs. I hope we will get things going and return the favor to the host this afternoon.
Baseball loses 5-4 on Saturday. We are now 1-4 in the league. It’s starting to look like we need to sweep our home games just to qualify for the A-10 tournament. WTH is going on?
What’s wrong with our pitching this year? It sure hasn’t lived up to expectations. Something I haven’t seen mentioned is base running. I’ve only been to 2 games this year and stupid base running cost us 1 game and almost cost us the other. We still have time to get things worked out but that time is rapidly running out. Crunch time is upon us.
What’s wrong with our pitching this year? It sure hasn’t lived up to expectations. Something I haven’t seen mentioned is base running. I’ve only been to 2 games this year and stupid base running cost us 1 game and almost cost us the other. We still have time to get things worked out but that time is rapidly running out. Crunch time is upon us.[/quote]
Our pitching has underperformed at times this year. We are definitely not as sharp as last year. We had similar problems last year in giving up early runs, but for the most part we overcame that. I just think we underestimated Cory Tilton, Justin Wilson, and Corey Shaylor brought to our team last year. Those guys produced a huge chunk of our runs last season. We are starting to get the offense going now and I feel much better about it than I did earlier in the year. Guys are starting to step in and get comfortable with their roles. It also helps to have Steedley back from his knee injury. He missed the URI series and only played Sunday in the X series. Sounds like something he is going to have to play through the rest of the season.
We are still spotty with our fielding. Some days are great, some days we look like the Bad News Bears. Also, tough to replace what Tilton, Wilson, and Shaylor brought to the defensive side. Brown does a good job in CF, but we are replacing the others with Freshman.
With our pitching, I think Smith has been pretty consistent until this Friday. By far his worst outing. Roberts did not look great on his weekend outings, and Yermal has stepped in nicely over the past 2 weekends. He is our best pitcher right now IMO. Barnette has missed several starts this year due to injury. He finally made it back this Sunday and pitched well. Rothlin has done well in the outings he has had in Barnette’s place.
We are almost through the rough patch in our schedule. We have played 2 of the top teams on the road to open the season. We are facing another top team in Dayton, but at least this weekend will be at home. Mostly downhill after this weekend in A-10 play.
