What's there to be angry about?
This team is pacifying even the harshest critics. Hell, I might as well shut down this site.
Beavs will try for their third straight sweep today, and now hold a 3 game advantage in the loss column. Last night's attendance of 2,843, the highest of the year, supports what media outlets have been printing–that interest in this team is growing rapidly.
I think there are two interesting aspects of today's game:
1. When will the Beavers get national respect? The Beav's strength of schedule is 38. Virginia and Vanderbilt have an SOS of 68 and 54, respectively. Neither can claim sweeping 3 straight conference series, and two of those against ranked opponents. The National Collegiate Baseball Writers poll might be the biggest joke. They have the Beavs at #15, and Oklahoma (yes, Oklahoma!!) at #11. The Sooners are 8-7 in the Big12, and have a 64 SOS. That is horrible. Top 25 is questionable, #11 is a flat out punchline. But, ACC, SEC, and Big12 schools are being inflated due to time zone bias and conference RPI (Pac-10 is 4th, despite having six teams ranked). Baseball America and USA today are the two most accurate polls right now. Boyd's World's ISR is very accurate as well.
2. Team chemistry has grown to the point where fans (and players) expect a victory every day. Last night I never felt as if that game was over. Would I have felt that way against a great pitching staff like UCLA? I don't know…I'm very curious to see how the Beav-os stack up against that trio of elite, shut down pitchers.
The polls are out of our control. Point #2 is more important. The Beavers have been slacking in the early innings this series. It's almost as if there is a mindset of, "if we have to, we'll figure a way to pull it out at the end." That kind of confidence is great and all, but a better attitude would be, "let's put teams away early, and if we have to pull it out at the end we can." Subtle difference, but an important one.
Osich is always a story. Last game he pitched well and threw over 100 pitches, so his arm is no longer an excuse. His fastball has a reputation for being elite (you hear the term "power pitcher" thrown around with Josh), but the reality is he's in the low 90s, sometimes topping 94 or so. In that range, control/location trump velocity. I want to see fewer walks from the guy. I want to see development as a pitcher rather than thrower. The guy needs to accept his talent level and work within that. These macho/power arms take a while to figure that out. Another thing with Osich is he should be mixing up pitches more. These numbers are not precise, but my estimates put him at about 80% fastballs, 15% curveball, and 5% changeup. His fastball looks like a four-seem variety (i.e. straight). I'm hoping the guy had an enlightening, educational experience at Stanford, and today we see some artful pitching.
I posted this in the below threads, but no one will ever look down there again, so:
Anyone with Root Sports and a TV tuner card in their PC willing to stream the game live? I can get directions if anyone cares to try. Just need the StreamTorrent applications and Windows Media Encoder.
but no one will ever look down there again
This is exactly why comment subscriptions via email are important!
Right, except when the notifications are functioning correctly, people will only be receiving emails for comment threads they either or started or were previously active in. My comments asking for someone to stream the game are “top level” comments on blog posts that are no longer at the top of the page. Since no one else was ever active in those comment threads, no will be receiving email alerts for them.
I agree with your assessment of Osich. I feel the staff overall has been more lucky than good to this point and there is still a lot of room for development. The pitching depth is going to have to improve in order to make a deep post-season run. But I really like the make-up of this team and hope that Casey continues to emphasize team chemistry when recruiting.
I agree 69, Casey deserves some credit for putting this group together. In addition to recruiting he is quick to let guys know that their current performance is what gets them playing time. Not reputation, high school history, how hard they try in practice, or who has been “expected” to get lots of playing time. His comment a few weeks back to the effect that the players, by their performance, make it easy to put together a lineup sums up one of the things which Riley would be wise to take to heart.
Casey has also openly stated that results in some previous seasons have been hurt by players who were primarily looking forward to the draft and didn’t have a “team first” attitude. Brings two questions to mind: 1) Has this been a factor in FB as well?, and 2) How does one keep the “stars” from thinking of themselves first? Seems even Casey has had some problems with that second one.
Thats what I really like about Casey is that he continues trying to evolve as a coach rather than becoming complacent or letting the game pass him by. His change in approach to recruiting team-first guys this past year has already paid off in big ways.
I think Poyer is a great example of putting team first over himself. Poyer wanted to play baseball, but realized that his priority and main focus is the football team(since that’s really who recruited him) and not baseball. He put the football team first and I think by his example that resonates to the football team. Also, have you noticed that the players don’t care whether they start or have limited playing time because they want to have success and what’s best for the team. The purpose of a team is to put the best players out on the field and win games. If one player isn’t cutting it, then put a backup in to see if they showed up to play. If a team is cohesive(like the baseball team) it won’t matter who you take out and put in because you play as a unit of 85+ guys, not just 11 starters.
Take the offensive line in football for example: they need to know what strengths/weaknesses their teammate has and know how to help compensate for their weaknesses. If a player is getting pushed back, then the guy next to him should give a bump to throw off the D-lineman or LB depending on the play.(at least that’s what we did on my high school team on the O-line.
OH NO!! My real Identity is revealed! lol I guess I’d make a horrible super hero who has a secret Identity.
Why did this happen? Is this a bug with the feature I just added? Did you log in to your regular account?
on the “name” I have my name and e-mail address saved into a drop down list and i didn’t realize it. so it was a user error. sorry to worry you angry.
Did you register for this site? If so, log in and click “remember me”….then you don’t have to worry about that, and you should be able to delete/modify your posts if you don’t like something. Why not just do that?
You can’t keep a selfish kid from being selfish. You can’t tell when a kid is selfish when playing high school ball. You recruit on talent and they had talent. They also can disguise it when Casey talks to them to get them to be a Beaver. No matter how good of a coach someone is, dealing with a selfish player and them being a problem is inevitable.
Players wanting to be drafted in football has been a non-issue.
To be fair on Josh, I’ve heard he’s hit 95 and 96 quite a bit this year. That’s probably his max velocity right now. He’s usually consistently 92-96 but stays mostly around 93. That is a power pitcher and he can overpower the opposition when he throw strikes. That’s why most of the time he doesn’t get hit hard, just walks too many guys. That’s the one thing he needs to fix. If he is more consistent about throwing strikes, he’ll be hard to hit. Just needs to be consistent.
BB, I agree that it is hard to completely avoid getting selfish players. That is part of the reason I didn’t go overboard praising Casey for recruiting “team” players. I think it is how he handles players once they join the team that is his more outstanding trait.
Got to disagree though on the “non-issue” of FB players being more interested in their own future than that of the team as a whole. It isn’t easy for a player receiving star treatment to keep that from becoming a demoralizing factor for their teammates. I’m not at all sure what caused the FB team to be so lacking in focus and effort last year but wonder if the focus on a very few stars wasn’t ,at least, a partial cause. A strong coach is required to keep stars focused on team goals. The more humble stars who spread the praise around are sometimes made not born; either way it works out better for the team and the star if the attitude is team first.
What’s incredible about this team is, if they beat WSU today and Portland on Tuesday, they would need to win 1 game vs UCLA to tie last year’s win mark for the entire season. That’s amazing stuff.
Why is the nike usa vs world highschool game on root nw?
Let me get this straight. Root bought this game but didn’t air it live, yet prevented OSU fans from watching it live via the net? Root (aka Fox) needs to go away.
Huh? I watched it live (I think) on Root starting at 3 p.m. MDT.
Osich’s lack of consistency popping up again. He needs to throw strikes and stop worrying about how hard to throw.
Stamps’ inability to get down a bunt pretty much took care of that inning. He has to get that down.
Willie Mays Hayes strikes again!
He leads off the 6th. This won’t go well
That right there is why the Beavers miss Carter Bell. He rarely has trouble getting the ball out of his glove. Keyes always has trouble with it. If that’s Bell it’s an out.
Let the rally begin. Michael Miller with a 1 out single. Need to get a run this inning to cut into the deficit and make the comeback a little less difficult.
Ryan Barnes has to take pitches. Pitcher wasn’t close to Miller with the pitches and Barnes goes up hacking. Bad decision. Need to work the count.
Big spot for Danny Hayes. Runners on first and second and 2 outs. Wanna see a ball hit in the gap and tie this game up.
Danny Hayes doesn’t come through. This is looking like a loss. They have given away at-bats at will. No focus at all today.
It just can’t be easy! Hope we can get Wise back on the mound quickly then show patience; Wise appears to be ready to loose much of his control.
I agree. They just need to focus at the plate
Ugh…Osich.
Why the ugh?
He went 6+ and allowed just 2 runs. That is a very good job by a starter, and if the offense does anything at all, that should get you a good shot at a win.
You’ve been hating on Osich a lot this season, but I don’t know why. And you’re totally not even right about the number of curve balls as he’s not been even throwing one because he doen’t want to put that stress on his arm. Casey has talked about all that and now it has made it harder for him to be just a two pitch guy with a fastball and change.
I would love to be able to find out who is a memeber of the “College Baseball Writers” and their lame poll. I mentioned before that I like D-1baseball.com to get scores and recaps, but their rankings piss me off and kind of pick at the sites credibility.
K’s for Schultz and Boyd to finish WSU in seventh, lets see some smart AB’s now.
Terrible at-bat by Dunn. Needed to be patient. That’s what I mean when I say they’re giving away at-bats
Dylan Jones with an atrocious at-bat.
He could hit last year, now he’s awful.
Had to step away, is Wise beginning to loose control? Still need to make him pitch even with the K to close out Beavs in seventh.
The awful at-bats won’t end.
Kavin Keyes is up with two outs and runners on first and second. They need him to be big.
Keyes goes up 3-0 in the count and swings at a pitch around his neck. Sigh
He has looked awful all weekend. Looks like he got too full of himself.
I think it’s just the law of averages, man. He wasn’t going to hit at that level all season. It’s a game of failure.
I had no issue with him making outs, he just didn’t have a good approach the whole series. Was trying to pull everything and not even trying to do the things that made him successful
Well, to sweep 3 conference series is pretty much impossible, so this isn’t a huge surprise. Just need to make sure they rebound vs PSU and have a solid (offensive) strategy/approach versus UCLA–that series will be a battle.
UP not PSU. Maybe this loss gets them refocused and ready for next weekend. Pat Casey will be all over them this week.
so we lost? I didn’t hear the final score…i was too busy getting the flu.