2023 Baseball

[Bugeaters1]

1 hour ago, hskr4life said:

Looks like Anglem will be out for a while… that’s a blow.

Whats the injury?

 

[hskr4life]

4 minutes ago, Bugeaters1 said:

Whats the injury?

 

https://huskerextra.com/news/baseball/nebraska-baseballs-home-opener-will-feature-a-familiar-face-in-the-opposing-dugout/article_c3c46c5e-bc29-11ed-9462-dfe040e2a474.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

 

“Big Red will be without outfielder Garrett Anglim (.368) “for a while,” coach Will Bolt said, following a Sunday hamstring injury.”

[hskr4life]

Also may want to look at starting earlier tomorrow if possible and playing a double header.  Otherwise we’re only getting one game in

[AuroranHusker]

[royalfan]

It appears to me after now watching about 4 games, that our bat speed is noticeably better than last year and any time in the Erstad era. 

[Bugeaters1]

19 home runs in 11 games.

[throwback]

This team can swing it for sure - Anderson is now hitting .512 and that's facing quite a few southern teams so far that usually pitch it pretty well.

 

Can't imagine he'll make a run at Ken Harvey's .478, but there are some really bad teams on our schedule & he has a ton of protection in this lineup, so he has a good chance to hit over .400.

 

Also team is hitting .323, which would be the 5th best all time, and is slugging .566, which would easily be a school record, if they keep it up.

 

At 1.73 HR per game - if they play 55 games and keep up that pace, they could beat the school record of 93 in 1985. Having a chance to take a run at that record is incredibly impressive considering how many seasons college baseball was gorilla ball. 

[hskr4life]

If we can get good, consistent pitching, there’s no reason we can win a lot of games.  There are a few mid-week tests, but outside of Iowa and Maryland, our conference seems pretty sub par this year.

[throwback]

I think the B1G is a mixed bag - prob a little better than expected so far.

 

Maryland & Michigan & Indiana have poor records but played very tough schedules so far, so hard to know for sure where they're at - Maryland will bounce back I'm sure, but not sure on the other two

 

Penn St was competitive at Miami and Illinois has played solidly against southern schools, so those two may be better than expected.

 

Ohio St & Mich St have a couple of nice wins and a couple of awful losses, so kind of what was expected.

 

Purdue has played a trash schedule, but they've scored a lot of runs. They go to Ole Miss this weekend, so we'll know a lot more about them after that.

 

Rutgers has been a huge disappointment. Minny & NW are beyond terrible.

 

I may vomit typing this, but Iowa looks like the best team through 10-12 games. They can really pitch. We'll get a better idea on the Squawks after this weekend at Texas Tech.

 

I think NU slots anywhere from 2nd to 4th at this point, depending on how much weight you put on the USD series. If Olson and Kaminska can give us 7 innings consistently Fridays and Saturdays, we'll be really good. Keep the bullpen usage to a minimum until Sunday and hope we can outscore teams on that day.

 

 

 

USD has lost 6 in a row, by the way, and they're heading to TCU for 3 this weekend and at UCLA for 1 after that, so their skid could reach double digits very easily. That first weekend was a complete dumpster fire for us in so many ways. We need to rack up a lot of wins to make up for it ... and hope USD recovers big time when they get into WCC play.

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by throwback

[hskr4life]

It’s not just the Huskers with more pop.

[AuroranHusker]

Nebraska hitting 8 HRs in two days still seems like a gigantic improvement over last season's apparent lack of power.

 

 

[throwback]

20 hours ago, AuroranHusker said:

Nebraska hitting 8 HRs in two days still seems like a gigantic improvement over last season's apparent lack of power.

 

 

Ha, yeah, especially since Bolt said before the season he didn't expect this to be a big HR team.  Typically, most of NU's best power teams don't really get going till April because of weather. This is pretty crazy so far.

 

[hskr4life]

In 2021-2022, not a single men’s sports team made a post season while winning what was probably a record low number of games.

 

We’re 0/2 in 22-23… it’ll be up to the Bolt Boys to get us going.

[throwback]

Well, Iowa managed to win 1 game at Tex Tech, but the pitching staff got shredded - gave up 34 runs over 3 games. I thought they'd have a chance to win that series behind their arms. Not even close.

 

Illinois split 2 with Coastal Carolina - they're still a bit of a question mark, but they've beaten quite a few southern teams. Should be an interesting opening series with them in a couple weeks.

 

Maryland swept Maine. 

 

PSU lost a game to Brown over the weekend and were tight in the other two. Not great.

Purdue got swept at Ole Miss, got smoked in 2 games, but did take one game to extra innings. Probably shows they're middle of the pack or lower.

 

Michigan won 2 in a southern tournament - not bad, but they don't seem to have the offense to truly contend in the B1G.

 

Minnesota finally won a couple midweek games, then got whipped for 3 losses at West Va.

 

NW is still 0-fer. Unreal. This might be the worse B1G team since we joined the league, but 2023 Minny isn't all that far ahead of them. Two absolutely brutal teams.

 

Ohio St swept 3 at CSU Bakersfield and is coming off wins over Miss St & Oklahoma, but we don't play them head to head.

 

At this point, I think NU has to be on the short list of contenders for the league title with Maryland, and Iowa. Ohio St & Illinois look to be dark horses, maybe Rutgers and Indiana as long shots.

 

 

 

Boyd's World has started publishing his ISR rankings - which is his improvement on RPI. It's still too early to have a great feel for it, but here they are (with his  "pseudo RPI" ranking in parentheses)

• #28 Iowa* (13)
• #35 NU (88)
• #44 Illinois* (11)
• #57 Rutgers (28)
• #61 Ohio St (56)
• #86 Maryland* (89)
• #94 Mich St (84)
• #105 Indiana (95)
• #137 Purdue* (196)
• #139 Michigan* (110)
• #150 Penn St* (220)
• #251 Minnesota* (227)
• #285 Northwestern* (288)

 

Kind of surprising to see 7 B1G teams in the Top 100 in ISR and an 8th just outside Top 100. 8 inside the Top 100 of RPI as well. Looks like there will be quite a few RPI killers in the B1G, however ... and we play all of them.

 

Need to dominate the teams we play at the bottom of the standings, or our RPI is going to suffer big time. Unfortunately, our overall schedule is looking extremely weak. (Thanks for nothing U of San Diego & South Alabama.)

 

[hskr4life]

1 hour ago, throwback said:

Well, Iowa managed to win 1 game at Tex Tech, but the pitching staff got shredded - gave up 34 runs over 3 games. I thought they'd have a chance to win that series behind their arms. Not even close.

 

Illinois split 2 with Coastal Carolina - they're still a bit of a question mark, but they've beaten quite a few southern teams. Should be an interesting opening series with them in a couple weeks.

 

Maryland swept Maine. 

 

PSU lost a game to Brown over the weekend and were tight in the other two. Not great.

Purdue got swept at Ole Miss, got smoked in 2 games, but did take one game to extra innings. Probably shows they're middle of the pack or lower.

 

Michigan won 2 in a southern tournament - not bad, but they don't seem to have the offense to truly contend in the B1G.

 

Minnesota finally won a couple midweek games, then got whipped for 3 losses at West Va.

 

NW is still 0-fer. Unreal. This might be the worse B1G team since we joined the league, but 2023 Minny isn't all that far ahead of them. Two absolutely brutal teams.

 

Ohio St swept 3 at CSU Bakersfield and is coming off wins over Miss St & Oklahoma, but we don't play them head to head.

 

At this point, I think NU has to be on the short list of contenders for the league title with Maryland, and Iowa. Ohio St & Illinois look to be dark horses, maybe Rutgers and Indiana as long shots.

 

 

 

Boyd's World has started publishing his ISR rankings - which is his improvement on RPI. It's still too early to have a great feel for it, but here they are (with his  "pseudo RPI" ranking in parentheses)

• #28 Iowa* (13)
• #35 NU (88)
• #44 Illinois* (11)
• #57 Rutgers (28)
• #61 Ohio St (56)
• #86 Maryland* (89)
• #94 Mich St (84)
• #105 Indiana (95)
• #137 Purdue* (196)
• #139 Michigan* (110)
• #150 Penn St* (220)
• #251 Minnesota* (227)
• #285 Northwestern* (288)

 

Kind of surprising to see 7 B1G teams in the Top 100 in ISR and an 8th just outside Top 100. 8 inside the Top 100 of RPI as well. Looks like there will be quite a few RPI killers in the B1G, however ... and we play all of them.

 

Need to dominate the teams we play at the bottom of the standings, or our RPI is going to suffer big time. Unfortunately, our overall schedule is looking extremely weak. (Thanks for nothing U of San Diego & South Alabama.)

 

I could still see USD rattling off some good wins along with doing really well in their conference.  Beat us, have beaten TCU, and Zaga doesn’t appear to be top notch this year.

[hskr4life]

So we decide we’re going to play somewhere that’s MAYBE going to be 2-3 degrees warmer… MAYBE

[Bugeaters1]

 

[hskr4life]

Also we dropped from 4 games to 3?

 

 

[Bugeaters1]

3 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

So we decide we’re going to play somewhere that’s MAYBE going to be 2-3 degrees warmer… MAYBE

Hitch up the horse's to the wagon, we are going on a road trip.

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Bugeaters1

[Bugeaters1]

1 minute ago, hskr4life said:

Also we dropped from 4 games to 3?

 

 

Maybe they can pickup some mid week games along the way.

[AuroranHusker]

12 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

So we decide we’re going to play somewhere that’s MAYBE going to be 2-3 degrees warmer… MAYBE

 

And Nicholls will still have to travel much, much further than NU. Weird deal.

 

 

[AuroranHusker]

Apparently there is about a 50% chance of poor weather conditions in Lincoln compared to it being roughly 10% in Manhattan, KS. That's all I got for the 'why'....

 

 

[hskr4life]

My weather app says 70% chance of rain in Manhattan on Thursday.  Friday temp of 41.

 

80% rain Thursday and 34 temp on Friday.  So maybe a few degrees warmer but relatively the same weather.

[throwback]

Huh. Well, that was a weird decision, definitely different from what I was hearing. Not sure they went far enough south to get all the games in, but I guess we'll see. 

 

Likely some travel snafus on one or both sides left us with this outcome. Maybe Nicholls is flying into KC, and if they weren't coming to Lincoln, K-State was as far as they were willing to bus.

 

They do have turf at K-State - I'm not sure there's any dirt on that field - which will help with Thursday's precip. Hope they can play all 3.

 

[AuroranHusker]

4 minutes ago, throwback said:

Huh. Well, that was a weird decision, definitely different from what I was hearing. Not sure they went far enough south to get all the games in, but I guess we'll see. 

 

Likely some travel snafus on one or both sides left us with this outcome. Maybe Nicholls is flying into KC, and if they weren't coming to Lincoln, K-State was as far as they were willing to bus.

 

They do have turf at K-State - I'm not sure there's any dirt on that field - which will help with Thursday's precip. Hope they can play all 3.

 

 

True, they do have an all-"field turf" stadium at KSU. That just might be a difference maker in getting in all 3 ballgames.