...all year, the pitchers for the Trojans tonight were like the Keystone Cops.
They literally collectively stunk it up, making about every mistake pitchers can make. A real pitching team failure in getting blasted by ASU in the first game of the series at Jonesboro.
I didn’t see any problems with how you played personally. I hope you guys do that the rest of the series.
(04-02-2021 08:55 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: [ -> ]I didn’t see any problems with how you played personally. I hope you guys do that the rest of the series.
Now that’s a shocking statement!
I have a feeling we'll get it back together the next 2 games after getting the "bad baseball" out of our system. But, you never know with baseball. It was just a couple of years back that our mediocre Sun Belt team "destroyed" the hogs in a season that they were a dropped pop fly from winning the National Championship. The term "upset" is rarely used in reference to a single game, at least, in MLB.. It probably is used when a bad team goes into a city and sweeps or wins 3 out of 4 against a good team.
(04-01-2021 08:52 PM)PTJR Wrote: [ -> ]...all year, the pitchers for the Trojans tonight were like the Keystone Cops.
They literally collectively stunk it up, making about every mistake pitchers can make. A real pitching team failure in getting blasted by ASU in the first game of the series at Jonesboro.
Were you at the games?
The ump behind plate was squeezing the **** out of the Trojans. Worst I’ve seen ever in a college baseball games. Well until the last two innings of game 2. They were constantly berating the freshmen when he came in the game. The umps were berating him. Made him throw 8 balls back in the dugout (1 was a scuff). Apparently Raffo turned him in to watch for something. So every time he wiped the ball off on his pants, they made him throw it in. And they stalled him 9 times for quick pitching. If the batter’s both feet are inside the box, it a go time. They said the batter has to be “set” before the pitch. This is not a rule in baseball. I drove from Texas to watch this sh1t show by the umps.
Now let’s talk about the starting pitcher for ASU calling Tyler Williams the N word. Huge altercation broke out. No proof that it happened or what happened. But that is what he said was said.
But you back and watch the game. Funk had 12 pitches that were clearly strikes. And weatherley had 9. Over the plate in the zone pitches. That’s not why we lost the game.
A big thing was the overall flatness of the fielding. Funk had three balls that should been caught or dove for but let drop. One scored two runs. Weatherley’s first 2 hits were not the greatest effort by the defense. Both should have been outs. The lazy fly ball was a very easy catchable ball. We made errors. Russ’s grandmother passed on Wednesday I believe. Catcher is the soul, and he was struggling to block and hit. He argued with the ump on a strike call. It was not a strike. But he never calls.
So far in the other first two games, umps have given our players 10 warnings on the field. For stuff that happens evey games. I guess if you are going to get canned, cheat at all cost.
I will take your word for it that the umps sucked. But, I never like blaming the officials when we lose a game in any sport. They may be bad, but I don't believe they are biased (unlike hog fans) in most cases. That may be different in Sun Belt baseball, where the umps may be locals (don't know if that is the case). Still it's hard to win a game when you don't score a run or blame an 8 run loss on officials. I hope the umps are better today, but we obviously need to play better as well.
(04-03-2021 11:56 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]I will take your word for it that the umps sucked. But, I never like blaming the officials when we lose a game in any sport. They may be bad, but I don't believe they are biased (unlike hog fans) in most cases. That may be different in Sun Belt baseball, where the umps may be locals (don't know if that is the case). Still it's hard to win a game when you don't score a run or blame an 8 run loss on officials. I hope the umps are better today, but we obviously need to play better as well.
The umps will be the same three. They just rotate to different positions. The guy whose name I think is Ruffo, is not necessarily a cheater, just incompetent to umpire- at Division 1, Little League, or anywhere else!
(04-03-2021 10:39 AM)Dumdumditty Wrote: [ -> ] (04-01-2021 08:52 PM)PTJR Wrote: [ -> ]...all year, the pitchers for the Trojans tonight were like the Keystone Cops.
They literally collectively stunk it up, making about every mistake pitchers can make. A real pitching team failure in getting blasted by ASU in the first game of the series at Jonesboro.
Were you at the games?
The ump behind plate was squeezing the **** out of the Trojans. Worst I’ve seen ever in a college baseball games. Well until the last two innings of game 2. They were constantly berating the freshmen when he came in the game. The umps were berating him. Made him throw 8 balls back in the dugout (1 was a scuff). Apparently Raffo turned him in to watch for something. So every time he wiped the ball off on his pants, they made him throw it in. And they stalled him 9 times for quick pitching. If the batter’s both feet are inside the box, it a go time. They said the batter has to be “set” before the pitch. This is not a rule in baseball. I drove from Texas to watch this sh1t show by the umps.
Now let’s talk about the starting pitcher for ASU calling Tyler Williams the N word. Huge altercation broke out. No proof that it happened or what happened. But that is what he said was said.
But you back and watch the game. Funk had 12 pitches that were clearly strikes. And weatherley had 9. Over the plate in the zone pitches. That’s not why we lost the game.
A big thing was the overall flatness of the fielding. Funk had three balls that should been caught or dove for but let drop. One scored two runs. Weatherley’s first 2 hits were not the greatest effort by the defense. Both should have been outs. The lazy fly ball was a very easy catchable ball. We made errors. Russ’s grandmother passed on Wednesday I believe. Catcher is the soul, and he was struggling to block and hit. He argued with the ump on a strike call. It was not a strike. But he never calls.
So far in the other first two games, umps have given our players 10 warnings on the field. For stuff that happens evey games. I guess if you are going to get canned, cheat at all cost.
I'm going to say this on the Williams thing because I was there, and I've talked to people on both sides about it.
1. Our pitcher denies he said anything racially motivated. Our coaching staff for that part believes him.
2. If you listen to the broadcast closely our pitcher certainly said said something, however the audio is not clear. While one could get the N word out of that, there's also a ton of other similar words/
3 As of pregame Saturday, Williams had not told anyone involved with LR what was said. Though he's a quiet guy, which is understandable.
4. If one of our players said something racially motivated during a game, there is no way in hell Raffo would ever tolerate it. Especially considering we have multiple African American players ourselves.
5. Whatever happened, it fired us up. We outscored you guys 19-0 over the next 21 innings following the incident.
(04-03-2021 11:56 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]I will take your word for it that the umps sucked. But, I never like blaming the officials when we lose a game in any sport. They may be bad, but I don't believe they are biased (unlike hog fans) in most cases. That may be different in Sun Belt baseball, where the umps may be locals (don't know if that is the case). Still it's hard to win a game when you don't score a run or blame an 8 run loss on officials. I hope the umps are better today, but we obviously need to play better as well.
I tend not to complain as a fan about things like the strike zone. Some umpires have tight zones. Complaining that a pitcher had several pitches called out of the zone that looked like strikes is something that happens to every pitcher at every level of the game. Its a human judgement thing. Now, I may tease an umpire for having a strange strike zone, but that's because as a fan that's what I'm going to do.
What annoys me far more is when an umpire messes up a rule, or misses a call that he should not miss because of an obvious thing he didn't do (like positioning etc) I've umpired Little League many times before, I'm certified to umpire at the High School level. I will always criticize an umpire for messing up something that I know how to do.
For instance, the home plate umpire overruling his own base umpire on a check swing situation: That's a mistake in one of two areas: either 1: The umpire appealed a call that he fully intended to call himself anyway, or 2: the base umpire made a call on a play without an appeal from the umpire in charge of the play. (Most likely the 2nd)
Missing a clear home run and signaling out because you don't go out into the outfield to chase the ball and have to try and make a call from 250 feet away, that's just lazy positioning.
Missing a call at 3rd on a late game triple because you were out of position likely because you didn't expect any sort of action over there.
All three of those situations involved the same umpire. That's a problem. And the league should address it.
The scuffed stuff is gamesmanship by Raffo on something we noticed on film. That's baseball.
(04-04-2021 02:53 PM)chiefsfan Wrote: [ -> ] (04-03-2021 11:56 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]I will take your word for it that the umps sucked. But, I never like blaming the officials when we lose a game in any sport. They may be bad, but I don't believe they are biased (unlike hog fans) in most cases. That may be different in Sun Belt baseball, where the umps may be locals (don't know if that is the case). Still it's hard to win a game when you don't score a run or blame an 8 run loss on officials. I hope the umps are better today, but we obviously need to play better as well.
I tend not to complain as a fan about things like the strike zone. Some umpires have tight zones. Complaining that a pitcher had several pitches called out of the zone that looked like strikes is something that happens to every pitcher at every level of the game. Its a human judgement thing. Now, I may tease an umpire for having a strange strike zone, but that's because as a fan that's what I'm going to do.
What annoys me far more is when an umpire messes up a rule, or misses a call that he should not miss because of an obvious thing he didn't do (like positioning etc) I've umpired Little League many times before, I'm certified to umpire at the High School level. I will always criticize an umpire for messing up something that I know how to do.
For instance, the home plate umpire overruling his own base umpire on a check swing situation: That's a mistake in one of two areas: either 1: The umpire appealed a call that he fully intended to call himself anyway, or 2: the base umpire made a call on a play without an appeal from the umpire in charge of the play. (Most likely the 2nd)
Missing a clear home run and signaling out because you don't go out into the outfield to chase the ball and have to try and make a call from 250 feet away, that's just lazy positioning.
Missing a call at 3rd on a late game triple because you were out of position likely because you didn't expect any sort of action over there.
All three of those situations involved the same umpire. That's a problem. And the league should address it.
The scuffed stuff is gamesmanship by Raffo on something we noticed on film. That's baseball.
Strike zone typically doesn’t come into play in college for me. What does is two different strike zones which was evident in my opinion especially first two games. Jeans was getting calls all the way into the white of the right hand box and high calls at the numbers. Trojans did not get a single similar call. Not sure why. That’s unacceptable. The first game, Ruffio, made his mind up right of the gate that ASU was going to get the benefit of the doubt.
But no doubt in my mind that is not why we lost. We pressed, swung at bad pitches (ASU walks people constantly. Why swing?) and we didn’t have great effort fielding short fly balls. Just let them drop short. We played too shallow the entire series. Thursday could have had several HRs with the wind. But last two games, we were way too deep. Seemed to have no sense of urgency in the games. While pitching was not great, I thought Funk was just average, Weatherley had a very good outing minus last two at bats, Arnold was exceptional but stayed in too long, Barkley didn’t do well, but he never does on umps em that don’t call the low stuff. He lives there. Rest of guys had some struggles for sure. We had base runners that couldn’t get in and like I said several missed opportunities as balls that could have been outs instead of hits. ASU played at a level they haven’t played at this year. Maybe even since the late 80’s early 90’s when I played them.
(04-04-2021 03:33 PM)Dumdumditty Wrote: [ -> ] (04-04-2021 02:53 PM)chiefsfan Wrote: [ -> ] (04-03-2021 11:56 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]I will take your word for it that the umps sucked. But, I never like blaming the officials when we lose a game in any sport. They may be bad, but I don't believe they are biased (unlike hog fans) in most cases. That may be different in Sun Belt baseball, where the umps may be locals (don't know if that is the case). Still it's hard to win a game when you don't score a run or blame an 8 run loss on officials. I hope the umps are better today, but we obviously need to play better as well.
I tend not to complain as a fan about things like the strike zone. Some umpires have tight zones. Complaining that a pitcher had several pitches called out of the zone that looked like strikes is something that happens to every pitcher at every level of the game. Its a human judgement thing. Now, I may tease an umpire for having a strange strike zone, but that's because as a fan that's what I'm going to do.
What annoys me far more is when an umpire messes up a rule, or misses a call that he should not miss because of an obvious thing he didn't do (like positioning etc) I've umpired Little League many times before, I'm certified to umpire at the High School level. I will always criticize an umpire for messing up something that I know how to do.
For instance, the home plate umpire overruling his own base umpire on a check swing situation: That's a mistake in one of two areas: either 1: The umpire appealed a call that he fully intended to call himself anyway, or 2: the base umpire made a call on a play without an appeal from the umpire in charge of the play. (Most likely the 2nd)
Missing a clear home run and signaling out because you don't go out into the outfield to chase the ball and have to try and make a call from 250 feet away, that's just lazy positioning.
Missing a call at 3rd on a late game triple because you were out of position likely because you didn't expect any sort of action over there.
All three of those situations involved the same umpire. That's a problem. And the league should address it.
The scuffed stuff is gamesmanship by Raffo on something we noticed on film. That's baseball.
Strike zone typically doesn’t come into play in college for me. What does is two different strike zones which was evident in my opinion especially first two games. Jeans was getting calls all the way into the white of the right hand box and high calls at the numbers. Trojans did not get a single similar call. Not sure why. That’s unacceptable. The first game, Ruffio, made his mind up right of the gate that ASU was going to get the benefit of the doubt.
But no doubt in my mind that is not why we lost. We pressed, swung at bad pitches (ASU walks people constantly. Why swing?) and we didn’t have great effort fielding short fly balls. Just let them drop short. We played too shallow the entire series. Thursday could have had several HRs with the wind. But last two games, we were way too deep. Seemed to have no sense of urgency in the games. While pitching was not great, I thought Funk was just average, Weatherley had a very good outing minus last two at bats, Arnold was exceptional but stayed in too long, Barkley didn’t do well, but he never does on umps em that don’t call the low stuff. He lives there. Rest of guys had some struggles for sure. We had base runners that couldn’t get in and like I said several missed opportunities as balls that could have been outs instead of hits. ASU played at a level they haven’t played at this year. Maybe even since the late 80’s early 90’s when I played them.
I said from the beginning of the series that it looked as if you guys had no idea how to play the uniqueness that is our park. Tomlinson Stadium is one of the hardest places in the league to hit a homer, you have to rely on pitching, timely hitting, and defense to win. Outfielders were playing way too deep at times, way to shallow at others, and outside of your 9-1-2 guys, every hitter looked like they were trying to hit the ball 400 feet with each swing. You can do that at Gary Hogan, but not here...