Hey everyone! Nate here to bring you your hopefully-weekly beesball all-in-one piece! Here, we'll review the midweek game and preview the weekend's upcoming series. This being baseball, there will be stats involved, and I want to give a big shout-out to my buddy Gregg Hines for putting these numbers together for me (Lord knows I'm too stupid to do it). Keep in mind these are no way official numbers, but they should be 99% accurate. Off we go!
First up, midweek game review. This is normally a pleasant task, but not so this week as we dropped yesterday's game to the Georgia State Panthers 4-5 to bring us to 10-3. Cole Pitts, the freshman starter, gave up 2 R through 4IP, but the death knell came from reliever Jonathan Robert's 3 R in the 5th. To be fair it wasn't all his fault, as the error bug bit us in the butt again as the Jackets committed 4 throughout the game. One of these put 2 of Jonathan's runs in position. I really thought we were going to hold it together defensively, and that's been mostly true so far. We just haven't been able to consistently beat back the E's. Wade Rogers (Roberts?) of WREK pointed out that we've had 2+ errors in all 3 of our losses, and that's really the telling stat. Another pain in the ass for the diamond Jackets: men left on. We stranded 13 guys out there last night! 13! We need to fix up these little problems, otherwise when we get into the ACC schedule this weekend we're in for a rough go of it.
Next up - the weekend series vs. NC State (its on ESPN3!). Here's our pitching lines through 3/6:
The guys in green have more than 10 IP, the guys in red have <10IP and are not statistically relevant.
According to the NCAA, NCSU is 1st in the NCAA in k/9 and we're 6th. That's probably the most interesting statistical matchup we're looking at this weekend. The wolfpack have better all around pitching stats than us, giving up less walks and having an opposing ERA a full 33 points lower than ours. We're pretty evenly matched offensively, with similar team averages. We out-slug the crap out of them (out of everyone, really, our .488 number leads the ACC) so hopefully the balls that do get off the bats will be good-old fashioned extra base hits. That's how the Jackets have to win this one, with big shots at the right time. Small ball isn't gonna cut it vs. a team that's pitching .187 to its inferior opponents when we're hurling .220 to ours. Here's hoping the Jackets take the first real series of the season!