Yesterday. But not today. Today I hate Bianco. I hate his half-assed “small ball”. Should call it small balls, because you need some degree of aggressiveness to win with small ball. Otherwise you just have a dinky little pissant offense that can’t score more than one run an inning.
How many times have we seen Ole Miss lead off with a good sharp hit, everyone gets excited, then…bunt….out. Even when it works it’s a momentum killer. It gives the other pitcher a chance to regroup, gives up an out, and is generally un-American.

I’m gonna let you know what’s up in an upcoming post, lawya.

The man has been successful.
First of all, going to a super regional 4 of 5 years (hosting 3) is gold to any team. Sure we’d love to win them, but our circumstances were crap this year.
Secondly, we play small ball because we don’t have a great hitting team. At least not consistently. I realize that Logan Power is a good hitter. But he did not do well in this series. No one is better than a bunt on this team. Small ball hasn’t always been Bianco’s game. When we had Head and Petway he played differently. He knows his talent and uses it as best as possible.

1. Phillips is off the team or I don’t watch. I’m sure he’s a nice kid and teammate and all that, but he brings nothing to the team. I could do what he did this weekend. At least Travis can play defense and Hubbard can run well.

2. I love aggressive small-ball. I hate passive small-ball. MB refused to realize the faults in the lineup and did things like sacrifice in front of Phillips (because he’s sure to come out of that 1 for April/May/June slump, right?). We didn’t run like we normally do and we never played for an 2+ run inning.

3. He loves to leave pitchers in, and while someone should have been warming up in the 4th inning, just in case, I thought Baker looked strong right up until those back to back hits. He got no help from behind the plate or from the defense (though Mort’s looked like a goofy hop…at least he was playing the ball aggressively).

4. Reinstettle has to go.

5. MB can’t win a damn coin-toss in three tries. “Home” teams are 9-0 in Oxford Super Regionals. Time for someone who can win one.

Oh, and screw the NCAA for not letting UVA host. They may very well win it all and should have hosted. And screw ESPN for those wonderful time slots.

I’ve been trashing B-Dub for acting like an Arkansas fan, but there is nothing crazy or wrong about saying Mike needs to make a change. You don’t ditch the fella that brought you to the dance just because he does that embarrasing “weed-eater” move a couple of times, but you can sure ask him to try something different. No crazy in that.

It starts with bringing in a new, proven assistant and letting him do his job. What do you want most to improve? Our fielding, which has declined significantly this season? Our hitting? Our recruiting? All of these can use upgrades.

The man who turned us into a baseball school surely can someone who can come in and fix at least on of these areas where we have become very pedestrian.

It’s not only that the hitting has declined over the years, it seems to me that it declined just in this season. We had a few guys with 8 HRs, and nobody with double digits. It seems to me that most of our homers were early in the year. I’m not digging up numbers and I may be completely wrong but didn’t Snyder hit over half of his homeruns by the end of the LSU weekend?

Like I said, I’m not digging up stats, but it doesn’t take any stats to know that my belief that we could knock one out was greatly diminished over the course of the year. when Head, pettway, et al were playing, you just knew that a homer could happen anytime. by the end of this season, I was convinced that we had no shot at getting much more than a single no matter who was throwing at us.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not sure if we’re failing to recruit sluggers, or if the damn hitting coach is taking good hitters and killing them with bad coaching. I do know that aside from a brief stretch where Guerrero hit a bunch last season, I can;t think of a time in the last two years when I had any confidence at all in our plate power.

Mike Bianco certainly screwed the pooch by bunting power in the first, and our fielders killed us with stupid errors, but it’s not like we’re the only team that has put itself in a hole. Southern Miss came back from 5 down. LSU gave up 3 unearned runs friday and had a huge inning to win, Arkansas made a huge comeback over FSU. Basically what I’m getting at is that virtually every team who won a super had a big inning at some point over the weekend and we failed to do so. Even UVA had a big inning. granted, it was just 3 runs but when the scores were 3-4 and 4-3 so far, that’s counts as huge. We have got to get a coach that can teach us to hit and give Bianco the confidence to let them swing.

shit I’m starting to ramble. 90-ish days til football

While I can’t say I agree with everyone, I really enjoy the frank and open discussion of Ole Miss sports. Our commenting base just keeps growing and growing which really excites us about football season.

Thanks, everybody.

Being entirely at the will of Virginia’s stealing.