Although the reasons mentioned in the article are valid, overlooked was the presence of prime time players Langford and Rivera. What caused Florida baseball’s decrease in offensive production? | GatorCountry.com
Swinging for the fence when it works the celebration is great. Perhaps it's an ego thing thinking hey I've done it before I can do it again and so it's pretty much all or nothing. Instead of making adjustments and shortening swings or hitting where the ball is pitched our guys seem to want to play gorilla ball. Then again I could be wrong which happens a lot.
Some good info in the article,. I would add that the injuries to our starting catcher and right fielder certainly didn't help. . Never heard that mentioned once in the cws.. Still, I thought the pitching struggles were more frustrating. There were some pitchers with high expectations that didn't come thru/regressed.
Home runs are mathematically the most efficient way to score runs. We've chosen this approach as a program. The players are not doing it out of ego. This is how they are being coached.
We had one player over .400 with few strikeouts and a record year. No one else over .300 (other than Ty Evans who is injured) in the lineup over .300, and a team BA of .270 Contrast that to the denture wearers who had 5 over .300 and a team BA of .310 Our O production was basically HR's and a lot of strikeouts mixed in. It's hard to consistently produce without constant contact on the ball. Too many games where the HR's don't happen and then we are behind the eight ball. In retrospect, we've had consistently good results through the years but twice (last year and this year) where we had monstrous next to last offensive games, and our final loss our bats went quiet. I'm confident Sully will get us back again.
Garrison was starting to get things figured out at the plate before he got hurt. Last 10 games: .345 BA, .483 SLG, .441 OBP Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
For most of the season I was bemoaning the fact that our offense relied too much on the long ball. No news to me here. Earl Weaver famously said that winning baseball was based on pitching, defense and the three run homer. We played pretty good D and hit a lot of homers but not enough of the three run variety. Need to hit them dingers with men on base for that. As for pitching it was spotty. I might be the contrarian here but if we had better pitching with exactly the same offense and defense we would have been a far better team. I agree that the hitting could be better but the lack of consistency from our starters and bullpen really hurt. Thank God Neely showed up big in the post season.
Sitting right there with you Lurk—I know we’re talking about ideally but with that in mind our weekend SP’s should have the doable goal of working through the opposing lineup 3 times. You’re basically looking at the bullpen to be strong on the back side of the game. Knowing that is not always going to be the case, if we’re close enough to it we should have a couple of long relief guys ready to answer the call. A doable and productive goal for midweek SP should be working through the opposing lineup 2 times. If we can reach these goals the entire staff will be able to stay strong and healthy while everyone has the chance to get plenty of work in. Again, I’m ol’school but I think it’s a solid and proven approach that will keep us in the top tier of SEC baseball.
I think that's one of the reasons Sully is seeking portal help. Frankly, whatever starters we might have going forward is shaky based on prior performance. Hopefully they will get better but even that isn't guaranteed. I still think we need more portal help in pitching. We can't keep giving up several runs in the first couple of innings and expect to win championships.
The strikeouts and lack of hitting with RISP has been a problem for several years. Cags could have had an even better year if not for a lack of protection in the batting order. They walked him quite a bit and were careful in pitching to him.
One time at the Mac it was a midweek game and Faedo was the SP and NOBODY was in the left field seats. So I gave up my first row right behind home plate seat to watch the game from the left field seats and be the Captain K. Faedo struggled that game but he was in the process of learning how to pitch and did he ever learn how to do that. IIRC we lost the game and Faedo took the loss. Sometimes the midweek game is a learning experience and losing is not that big of a deal in the long run. @wingtee might disagree. Midweek games against FSU are different. They gave me a Captain K T-shirt for doing it but I don't wear it to games. I think that it is cursed. I use it for mowing the lawn.
