SB post-game handshake by CTW

The passive hitting strategy used to work when you could wear down a pitcher over a weekend. Force a ton of pitches out of her and by mid day Saturday you had a big advantage. With staffs now, that doesn’t work.
I think we are passive now because we need the walks and HBPs, we are t good enough hitters to generate much without it in many spots in the lineup. But we should be better hitters.
On the pitching side, Delibray was the number 7 player in her class when she signed. Trlicek was on the US U-19 team and was the Texas Gatorade player of the year. If our pitching coach can’t get more out of them than they have, we need new a coach. Zero excuse for what we have seen.

 

Someone previously mentioned awhile back in a different thread about CTW figuring out the secret to championship success which was elite pitching, elite defense and timely hitting. I believe he made that shift in approach following the 2011 season. 2011 and before the Gators were a powerhouse offense. 100+ homers a season easily. Our only speedster really was Moultrie. Elite pitching tends to win against power hitting however which is why the philosophy changed. Sadly atm we’ve neither elite pitching or defense and timely hitting isn’t doing great either. Maybe time for another philosophy change. CTW did it before he can do it again. The game and opposition evolves, you have to evolve with it or get left behind.

 

I'm getting more and more convinced that lack of player development is the main problem.

 

Yeah the passive approach just doesn’t work anymore, especially when the opposing pitcher is filling the zone with strikes. Trying to fight out of an 0-2 whole isn’t a recipe for success for any team. More than one way to make the pitchers pitch counts go up however, early pitches often the best you’ll see in a count. Be aggressive, swing early find some green. Runners on base get the pitch count up and stress def/pitcher. That said when we have swung early that hasn’t really worked either.

 

Yeah the passive approach just doesn’t work anymore, especially when the opposing pitcher is filling the zone with strikes. Trying to fight out of an 0-2 hole isn’t a recipe for success for any team. More than one way to make the pitchers pitch counts go up however, early pitches often the best you’ll see in a count. Be aggressive, swing early find some green. Runners on base get the pitch count up and stress def/pitcher. That said when we have swung early that hasn’t really worked either.

 

Apologies for double post, not sure why that happened.

 

It’s a beautiful scoreboard!

 

From a Delbrey standpoint, question becomes what is her true health situation and how much time has Bosch actually had to work? And for the record, I have no idea the answers
Rylee IMO is what she is, good not great

 

Imo Delbrey basically missed the entire offseason and couldn’t possibly be 100% but lack of development with Riley is an issue.

 

Philosophy change: Start with replacing Aric & Mike with Amanda Lorenz and Georgina Corrick.

It's women's sport, have two women as coaches.

What have we got to lose?

 

They have limited coaching experience. I want a highly regarded young up and coming coach. I don’t think Amanda coaches again in the next 10 years. She’s going to be too busy playing softball, in my opinion.

 

APK, I think you nailed it. Softball has become very popular across the SEC and I think many teams have caught up to us over the past few years. We can all agree that we have a good pitching staff but don’t have an SEC caliber Ace. The thing that has had me scratching my head is the fact that we struggle hitting the ball the way we do against SEC pitching. Once again, several teams have an ace or at least as good a staff as we currently have. We have a talented team but so do most of the teams in our league. It used to be UF and Bama and then everyone else, now both teams are struggling. Will be interesting to see if the addition of the top pitching recruit and the number one class will be enough to get us back into the upper third of the conference next season.

 

Is it possible that we don't hit well against elite pitching because we don't have an elite pitcher for them to hit against in practice and scrimmages? I agree that the SEC has gotten significantly better and is very competitive top to bottom. But the Gator program has slipped some as well the last few years. Yes, we tied for the league title 2 years ago, but last year we were 13-11 in league play and this year we could have our first SEC losing record in the Tim Walton era. Player development doesn't seem to be at the level it once was either. With all that said, Tim Walton is one of the best D1 softball coaches ever and he's entitled to a couple of off seasons (by UF standards) and deserves the benefit of the doubt and time to get us back on top. Love Gator softball.

 

Didn’t know Kenny G was still touring and coaching softball, such talent

 

Bama has an elite pitcher in Fouts and they are not exactly tearing it up either. They have virtually the same record as UF.