Vermont Game 1 Recap

I'll go ahead and apologize in advance for yet another TOTGA post.  So, Aaron Barrett is not that good.  It started out poorly for AB and he never could his act together as the Catamounts touched him for four runs on seven hits in only three innnings.  He can't expect to be successful when he can only throw fastballs over the plate.  He either needs to fix his offspeed problem, but a better solution is Bianco removing  him as the Friday starter.  

-Vermont or not, the bullpen did a great job the rest of the game.  They held the Catamounts scoreless and only allowed four or five more hits.  Speaking of the bullpen...Rory Mckean has to change his warm up song.  

-I'm officially on the Bittle for Friday bandwagon.  Previously, I was in favor of keeping him in the pen but we desperately need another weekend starter.  Pomeranz and Irwin look to be fine as the other two, but AB and Corrigan are not ready yet.  Bittle must have some more damage to his arm than originally thought, or Bianco is just being very stubborn.  

-Kevin Mort is good?  If he can get some momentum from his performance last night we may need to scrap that tag.  Not only did he have a great night at the plate, but he looked really good at short.  I also thought Zach Miller had a good game at third.

-Jordan Henry got it done at the plate tonight.  His average rose from .211 to around .280 after his game last night.  While the average may not be like in past years, he is still getting on base and making things happen.

-Ole Miss closed the game with 17 unanswered runs.

-Vermont's defense is pathetic.  I couldn't tell if I was watching Oxford Middle or collegiate baseball at times.  They had four errors when I stopped paying attention to the scoreboard.   The squeeze bunt attempt was comical as well. 

-I couldn't figure out their strategy of playing with their outfielders so shallow.  The Rebels had a couple of doubles that should have been outs, but because of the Catamounts defensive alignments some of our bench players slugging percentage rose a few points.  They may have been trying to keep that runner from second from scoring on a single, but when you are down twelve runs you should probably worry about preventing another extra base hit.

Final: Ole Miss 11 Arky State 5

Ole Miss scored a very efficient 11 runs on only nine hits on their way to beating Arkansas State Tuesday night.

Drew Pomeranz and Phillip Irwin combined for 6 innings only giving up 2 runs in the victory.

Jeremy Travis hit a three run home run that got the Rebels ahead 6-2, and the Indians didn't mount a rally until late in the game against Nathan Baker.

Jordan Henry didn't start tonight as Taylor Hashman took over in LF. Henry struggled early last year, but after being benched in the middle of the season, he got hot through the SEC tournament. Before Tuesday, Henry was batting an anemic .211 but was sporting a .464 on base percentage. Hashman was batting .333 with a .538 OBP. I don't know if we'll have some sort of platoon OF now, but Bianco could be trying out players in other positions as Travis is a big bat with a mediocre arm.

We should've won by this margin and we did, must like last week's wins against Central Arkansas with 10-2 and 11-3 decisions. The Rebels have now scored 10 or more runs in five of their seven games. Unfortunately, they're 3-2 when scoring 10 or more runs, which means obviously that our pitching can't stop the bleeding or Mike Bianco is too stubborn to change a pitching plan mid-game.

Next up, we've got the Vermont Catamounts for a weekend series then Austin Peay in a two game mid-week series.

In my opinion, we need to win all of these games to get back on track and meet the expectations of the fan base. Ripping off five wins here in preparation for conference play would put our team at 9-3 with 12 non-conference games and 30 conference games to play. There doesn't seem to be any plan to make up the two games canceled with TCU, so we've got 54 games for the year now.

We'll have a preview of the Vermont series on Friday once we know who the weekend starters will be, but seriously, Mike Bianco probably won't make any changes. This team needs to get on a roll and build up some confidence after a rocky start.