With the end of the season approaching and MAC tourney coming up it'd be nice to hear some thoughts about the EMU baseball season.

Since the turn out at most games is abysmal I don't think many will post to this thread. It really is a shame that no one seems to care about baseball at this school.

The fan support is a disgrace.

It's great to see the renovations taking place at Oestrike. It's slow but I'm hoping by next year things will look even better. Having a new score board would do wonders and maybe even get people thinking more seriously about this team.

My thoughts about the team... I hope they can catch fire in the next week and do some damage the rest of the way. To make it to regionals would be a very nice achievement.

It's been a confusing and frustrating season. The promise they seemed to have at the beginning of the year was replaced by under achievement IMO. By the coaches AND players.

The hitting is down from last year, and errors are up. Getting timely hits were few and far between. The fight that was there last year hasn't really shown it's face much this year at all. Last season when this team was down going into the late innings they made great plays, had clutch hits, and had come from behind wins.

This year there have been maybe 1 or 2 come from behind wins with the aforementioned play. This year they were more likely get a head early, coast, then lose the game at the end. This didn't always result in a loss, but you never felt like - no matter what this team would find a way to win a game.

The pitching has been the most troubling. What looked like a very solid staff with some great talent, is ending up looking almost comical.

There are only 2 pitchers with ERA's under 4.0, 3 pitchers with ERA's above 5.0 and 5 pitchers with ERA's north of 6.0 (2 are over 7.0)!!!!!

That's pathetic!

How can you be competitive with pitching like this? What's worse is most of these guys pitched a lot of innings LAST YEAR and did much better

I think it's fair to say the Coach Alexanders "experiment" with flip-flopping the coaching staff this year is a disaster. He really needs to think long and hard about who he has under him and what on earth they are doing to these players.

Whatever they are doing, whatever the approach they are taking....it isn't working with these guys. If he can't figure out a way to get some production from his players and coaches, then he needs to make some changes.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed the rest of the way. I hope they catch fire, and get some breaks. Even a little luck would be fine by me. A MAC Championship would certainly erase some of the frustration.

Dear speedfreak,
I follow Eastern baseball from afar, and hoped to make a game or two this year, but have not. Everything you have said about this year's team sounds correct from what I have read, as the season progressed. I also thought this was going to be a breakout season for the team, but they really fell flat against bottom dwellers in the MAC.
I'm very interested in your comments about Coach Alexander's 'experiment' of flip-flopping coaches. What does that mean? What are their roles? What's going on? If you could please expand on my questions, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

(05-17-2012 08:53 AM)Ken Barna Wrote:  Dear speedfreak,
I follow Eastern baseball from afar, and hoped to make a game or two this year, but have not. Everything you have said about this year's team sounds correct from what I have read, as the season progressed. I also thought this was going to be a breakout season for the team, but they really fell flat against bottom dwellers in the MAC.
I'm very interested in your comments about Coach Alexander's 'experiment' of flip-flopping coaches. What does that mean? What are their roles? What's going on? If you could please expand on my questions, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

I thought it would be a breakout season also. That's what's so disappointing and frustrating (although fan support is high on the list too).

I refer to this as an "experiment" because I do not understand the need for the change from last season (last seasons hitting coach is this years pitching coach and last years hitting coach is now the pitching coach).

Not that our coaching staff is the greatest thing since sliced bread (would love to have Derek Johnson from Vanderbilt here), but they did a better job last season and with (IMO) less talent. At least on the pitching side of things.

Yes we had some seniors in the rotation last year, but the underclassmen pitchers from last season are much more projectable than those seniors were and should be dominating this season. And they haven't for the most part (a few are flat out struggling).

So whatever approach/philosophy they are using, either in training, pre-game preparation, mental focus - heck even keeping the off field antics toned down, has FAILED (by antics I'm referring to keeping these players READY and FOCUSED to compete when they're NOT on the ball field). Failed not quite miserably...but bad enough.

So my only hope is that Coach Jay is seeing all of this, and will try to make some (better) changes. Sooner rather than later.

Otherwise this team will continue to underachieve and be a source of frustration for the EMU faithful.

Dear speedfreak,
Thanks for the information. I was (like you) hoping that Eastern would have performed better, but we shall see.