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National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association

okay we're 51st on the list if you count from the top to us in the also receiving votes category.

Rice is 16th,
F_U both are also receiving votes

The program seems to have improved a lot under coach Shoop. This is just something to monitor during the year.

The team is off to a solid start. Most predictions I saw didn't even have the team in the conference tournament. They've won their first two conference series. The OOC has been relatively weak so far, but it may have given our guys some confidence. Hopefully they continue to play well throughout the season.

I prefer to think of it as a 20-place tie for 31st.

UAB appears to feature one excellent pitcher and some other good ones to fill out the list. "Good pitchers" look much better with consistent run support so that is what will determine the season's success. The best can win the 1-0 and 2-0 games while the others can win the 6-4 and 8-5 kinds of games.

Since MLB strips off the best hundred or more HS baseball players every year with lucrative contracts, college baseball with its many partial scholarships for the sport, must depend on being lucky to get the great player. (If college football or basketball was similarly dependent on partial scholarships, the end product would look very similar to baseball's end product)

I agree with the partial scholarship assessment.

What is interesting though is that baseball normally has a rotation of 3 or 4 pitchers whereas softball sometimes uses the same pitcher for a large number of their games.

UAB is a little different & rotates between 2 softball pitchers with the 3rd getting in where available.

(03-19-2014 01:21 PM)the_blazerman Wrote:  I agree with the partial scholarship assessment.

What is interesting though is that baseball normally has a rotation of 3 or 4 pitchers whereas softball sometimes uses the same pitcher for a large number of their games.

UAB is a little different & rotates between 2 softball pitchers with the 3rd getting in where available.

That's because the softball pitcher throws underhand which is much easier on the shoulder and elbow.

Yeah, the physics of the underhand motion is much more forgiving on the human body than the overhand motion.

A baseball pitcher can throw maybe 100 pitches, but he's done for several days. A softball pitcher can throw 150 today, and another 150 tomorrow.

Any guesses as to what happened in the offseason to cause such a huge turnaround? I think we had a losing record last year, and some people were getting a little impatient with the team's progress under Shoop, conference tournament aside.

edit: Through 21 games last year, we were 9-12. Currently we're 16-5.

(03-18-2014 02:40 PM)blazers9911 Wrote:  The team is off to a solid start. Most predictions I saw didn't even have the team in the conference tournament. They've won their first two conference series.

That matches last year's win total for conference series.