RE: Rice Baseball @ MTSU
E Barnum and I made thr trip tp Murfreesboro for the weekend series. Barnum saw the Thursday game but I only saw the last three. Our emotions drifted between dismay, on one hand, and thinking we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, on the other.
Simple mistakes killed us in game 2. Game 3 the our guys played well. Game 4 was an emotional roller coaster, complete with both thrills and nausea. Our guys battled. A couple of circus catches that MT doesn’t normally make kept them in the game. There were I think three instances where we should’ve put the game away, but didn’t.
Braden Comeaux and Bradley Gneiting were both trying to shake off slumps and really pressed at the plate. If they’d played at one-half of their capability I think we’d have won three out of four.
When Garibay came in late to try and close the door, he did so coming in from right field. So the first three batters he faced, he wasn’t nearly warmed up enough. Not nearly. So the first three batters he faced (all three of them bottom-of-the-lineup, none of them hitting over .214), sat on the first pitch and stroked it hard to left field. After that, Guy settled down and threw good ball, certainly well enough to win. We were expecting Greenwood to come in instead of Garibay.
I realize MT is not a hard hitting team, but they are well-schooled in the West Coast style of play. Best bunting mechanics I’ve seen in quite a while
The first game Friday and game 4 on Saturday were ours for the taking. Little mistakes, a couple of head scratchers on pitching substitutions killed us. And Barnum says the game on Thursday was lost because of a pop fly into left center got blown leftward, and the c f called for the catch. But it clearly should have been the l f’s call. the ball dropped to the turf. Neither guy was close enough to get to it. With two outs, the routine pop fly easily cleared the loaded bases. That was the game.
Still, our guys played hard; they never quit. It hurt to see them drop the games the way they did.
Those of you who know Barnum are aware that he’s quite loquacious (back in the day, on road trips our group attended, he was always up at 6 am to go down to the breakfast room to join Wayne. Regularly they were the first two in the hotel down for breakfast)
We, meaning mostly Barnum while I stood around, had extensive conversations with a number of the guys over the weekend. This is the most hurtful part. Virtually to a man, these guys are the kind of young men you’d be thrilled have your your daughter bring home. Classy, classy, intelligent, emotionally invested, hard working kids.
Speaking of that,we sat in row 1 next to the Owl dugout, maybe five or six feet from the on deck circle. At one point, Barnum asked, “who do you think are the hardest working kids on this team.?” I said oh no doubt about it, Gneiting and Comeaux. When you see them in the team hotel, they’re always with their heads buried in a book, studying. They work hard. And they’ve gotten a little better every year, which has been a nemesis of ours, with kids who come in looking good freshman year and never really developing beyond that.
We looked up and there are a couple guys swinging a fungo bat in front of us before the game, and of course it was Guess who — Gneiting and Comeaux, who couldn’t have helped but hear our conversation.. Pretty much the most dependable hitters on our team, and they went virtually 0 for the entire weekend. Really pressing. Wish we’d kept our mouths shut.
We did get to speak to a number of the guys and also the assistant coaches, some extensively
We spoke to Garibay, Edwards, Comeaux,Long, Dukes, a couple others. Had long talks with Paul Janish and Cory Barton. Cory’s hardly older than the kids he coaches. Of course we didn’t ask about the change in calling the pitches. Cory is full of personality, devoted to the kids, and really seems to know his stuff. I’m hopeful hopeful hopeful that he will work out and improve our pitching staff in a way that can be done.
My feeling as we walked away from the team bus Saturday was, We’ve got to cut these kids some slack. There’s pretty decent talent out there, there are very high-quality young men playing for us and representing us, and it seems like we are close to turning the corner. As far as the record is concerned, I’m deferring until next year. I just want our guys to play as hard as they can and improve a little bit every weekend the rest of the season
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