Baseball @ Butler

[jetz]

The series is over, and we finished our 19 game road trip.  As I've been saying all day today, we have to figure out how to beat teams that we are better than.  But maybe I need to reevaluate our talent.  Maybe we're not what I have observed over the past couple of weeks.  I think we have the talent to be a consistently good team in the Horizon League, and keep expecting it to happen.  Maybe I'm seeing it all through rose colored glasses.  I can't help but believe this squad is talented enough from what I've seen on the field.  Short story is--we are what we are, and that's 5-14 with a series loss to a mediocre Butler team. 

Wormington had a nice ERA coming in to the game.  He had made three straight quality starts and had gotten no run support.  Today he just didn't have it.  The ump wasn't giving the low pitch on the outside black, which is Worm's spot.  When he threw it over the middle, Butler made it hurt by lashing the ball.  Today we hit enough to win, but didn't pitch well enough--the opposite of most of the first three weeks.  Grant Yoder, freshman DH, made an impressive debut yesterday and shows needed power at the plate.  He had an RBI single today as well.  Manning hit gappers all weekend, and was a home run shy of the cycle today.  Just didn't pitch it well enough to win, and i didn't see that coming.  Again, my take was that our staff was better than Butler's. 

Need to move on to UWM at home this weekend.  UWM beat Youngstown 2-1 in their series this past weekend, and Wright beat UIC 2-1.  I'll have an "open grill" policy in effect at Valpo--stop by and bring your own.  We need our own series win... 8)

[valporun]

I'm sure the guys will be happy to have a few days of something else going on, not just waking up and baseball all day. Sounds strange or stupid to say, but playing so many games over a two week period on the road with nothing to really distract them from playing/practicing/traveling probably wore on these guys. Some of them probably need a distraction like classes and other activity to get their minds off a hitting slump, fielding errors/concerns, why the plate umpire wasn't calling the outside black. valpotx, what kind of things did you do during the two-week spring break trips to keep your mind off baseball for a little bit, if you did that at all?

[valpotx]

You bring a gaming system to bide the time, and watch a good amount of TV in-between workouts.  Living out of a suitcase is not fun, and that is why a 5-14 start could be a lot worse...