philosophy. Philosophy is establish inner half and that is important and sounds great. But it ain’t great when your wild. Philosophy going to have to change a little bit as we need to pound outer half and occasionally come inside. I’d rather throw a meat ball down broadway that was meant for the outer half and have it hit 415 than hit guys. As we all know free bases = Free runs.
Love what you say about fire in the belly. We lack it and in baseball you need it. Your teammates feed off of it. Beyond Halter, Barco, and maybe 2 others we lack Dogs that have that fire.
With ya on the whipped cream and bun. I think Vitello’s leadership is fine. He truly has that fire and the kids take on his persona. I know some traditionalists don’t like CVT but I grew up watching Sparky Anderson and Billy Martin and as we all know both of them were full of fire.
When did weitzel Quirky behavior is great when you are winning, it gets old quick when you are not winning. Ask Dan Mullen
Vit isn’t Quirky. What Mullen did was sometimes quirky. Vit is All In all the time and his actions clearly show it. Mullen was not All In and in fact was sometimes very disengaged, aloof, vacationing, and way too relaxed. Bit’s fire inspires his kids and nobody can ever say he’s not invested. Dude Is totally invested and everyone knows that. Dan and Vit are complete opposites.
Hey, not ragging on Billy D at all, but - who's smoking what? Comment unbecoming Gator loyalist. But..in his last year with Gator Nation- Billy had an overall losing record and losing record in SEC- winning just 8 games. Not ragging on Billy D in the least- and he has Kudos to spare with court named after him-- but to correct the record. His last year before he bolted to pros he was under .500 overall and won only 8 games in SEC.
That was the year that he left. One year prior he went undefeated in conference and all the way to the final four. The three years prior to that were all elite 8 appearances. Thats hardly “a few years” of “losing your edge for the job or the college game”. That’s four pretty outstanding years followed by ONE poor season.
I would think those that were there and saw his interaction with some of our players would have a different opinion of him than those who were not.
I go to quite a few games but did not make it for UT. Were you there? If so, could you let me know specifically what you saw?
Wyatt led us defensively in a major way!!! Josh led us offensively w 4 RBI’s and a monster home run. Biggest home run of the season. Big time players play their best In big games. Sterlin w an excellent hitting night!! In terms of pitching, Neely grew up tonight. Huge couple of innings with some big strike outs. Abner was pretty solid in a big game tonight. Purnell, as always was awesome!!!
After watching our flailing attempts for the first two games @ Foley Field it appears that even though we are as deep into our season as we are I kinda feel like we’re sitting here putting a 5,000 piece puzzle together—and we don’t even have the edge border pieces figured out yet…
I don’t get all caught up in the lack of effort stuff. I can assure you the UF kids want to win as much as anyone else. To me, it all comes back to pitching. Radar gun velocity can be over-rated but it can also help overcome lack of command. The issue is UF is now rolling out 88-90 mph guys like Slater, Ficarrotta and others who lack both command and velocity. That is not a recipe for success. Back in the days when UF was a regular in Omaha, Sully had unreal pitching depth and was running out bullpen guys with power arms like Dane Dunning, Shaun Anderson, Eric Hanhold, Ryan Harris and Taylor Lewis. Not saying you can’t win with non-power arms in the ‘pen but you better have guys like Michael Byrne who can locate all their pitches. Right now UF has neither and that is the team’s biggest weakness IMO.
100% agree. Was just talking about this today. It seems our staff looks like FSU's from 3 or 4 years ago. No one is intimidating.
Pitching is inconsistent granted but Gators clutch hitting is worse. Yesterday- emblematic. Sproat pitched his heart out against a good hitting team- holding hem scoreless trough 5. In the 6th, we load the bases with no outs... KC turns one over and grounds to 3rd- Thompson forced out at plate... D Fabian pops to first, Rivera skies to left. 3 LOB. Bottom of the 6th, the bottom falls out and the rest was a loss foretold. That one inning encapsulates the season. Discouraging if not depressing.