brfrad

This. He's had enough time to work through it. The Mother Of All Slumps I am not a big fan of him in the lead-off spot anyway. I think Placzek should be the lead-off guy, and Boldt 2nd or 3rd. Here's a line-up with him slumping, we should try to see if it might get him going. Placzek Myers Miller Schriber Boldt Alvarado Fish/Wilkening Schleppenbach Reveles

Catcher- Fish and Wilkening split time 1st Baseman- Schriber is a sophomore 2nd Baseman- Schleppenbach is a junior that will not get drafted 3rd Baseman- Placzek is a senior Shortstop- Reveles is a senior Left Fielder- Alvarado is a sophomore and his natural position is 3rd base Center Fielder- Boldt will be gone after this year. Right Fielder- Myers is a sophomore Designated Hitter- Miller is a draft eligible junior. Debatable if he goes high enough to forego the senior year. A great hitter, a decent fielder. I don't know if teams will be willing to go very high with him. Back-up outfielders- Dilday is a sophomore. Klemke is a freshmen. Back-up infielders- Altavilla is a freshmen that got playing time this year. Henwood is a freshmen who got some playing time. Starting pitchers- Burkamper might get a look in the draft, especially if he can show command of the strike zone, and build up his velocity. King is a sophomore. Waldron is a freshmen. McSteen is a freshmen. Knutson is much like Burkamper. Relief Pitching- Eddins and Engleken are sophomores. Luensmann is a freshmen, who has set records as a closer, with a chance to be a dominant starter. A couple injuries, that if they can return will be huge in Fisher and Hohensee. We should be better than we are, but we do have some talented youngsters coming back next year.

Boldt is still pressing. Maybe a day off for him, or drop him out of the leadoff spot. Try something to get him going. If he doesn't get going, this team is going nowhere.

The pitchers need to find consistency. Max seems to be in line for a weekend start. He has pitched well, his last few outings. Derek pitches well, and then pitches poorly. King gets lit up by Michigan, and then pitches great against K-State. We need these guys to pitch decent each time out.

I thought Silva was a good hire. He had some success at his previous stops. Pitching wasn't the problem last year. He is not getting through to these guys this year. We tie the game 1-1, then our pitcher walks the hitter on 4 straight pitches. All of a sudden, we are behind again.

Really a piss poor effort again today. Pretty much a nail in the at large coffin. Better hope we bring it in Omaha or we will be sitting at home come tournament time once again. At this point, I am hoping we can win enough to make the Big 10 tournament.

Well no offense to King...he can be a quality starter some day...maybe, but when he's your Friday night guy you know the HC and pitching coach failed on the recruiting trail. Burkamper should be the Friday starter, but he can't throw strikes consistently.

This Michigan pitcher walks 8.35 BB/9 IP. So, what should you do? Take some pitches, and make the pitcher throw you strikes, right? Nope, we swing at 3-1 pitches, 2-1 pitches, 1st pitches.

I'm really thinking a new pitching coach might be in order. None of our pitchers are improving. All of them are regressing. King can't get ahead of hitters, and when he does, he can't put them away. Burkamper can't throw strikes. All of our pitchers have amazing potential, but they we are 11th of 13 teams in the Big 10.

I wonder if there is something more to the Howell situation? He was really struggling as a starter...IMO he should have never been made a starter but he would have been a key piece to the pen. Hopefully he can make it back before the season ends. Big game tonight, may need the bats to be really hot this weekend. I would not be surprised to see Eddins in the starting rotation this weekend. I have no inside info, but I have to think a lot of the decision was made by Howell to become a starter. I think he turned down the draft and came back thinking if he became a starter, maybe he would up his draft status a few rounds.

The key stat will be getting 3 pitchers to pitch 80 innings. Our regional team had 3 pitchers with 80 + innings. We have a huge chore to do that. As we have 4 pitchers between 32-37 innings.

If we can get King to pitch like last Friday, and Burkamper to pitch like last night, we have a chance. I think if it was a conference game last night, and Derek hadn't been relegated to the bullpen the last few weeks, he goes longer than 5 innings. If our starters can consistently get through the 7th inning, we have a much better chance.

This is the Burkamper I envisioned when he was placed in the Friday night spot.

I say 3 - 1 is a must. If we would have went 5 - 0 last week, we could have gotten by going .500 this week. Having said that, I am going to echo Erstad in saying we just have to start worrying about the way we are playing. If we play up to our abilities, wins will take care of themselves.

Most weekends I would say that. However, this is a weekend we HAVE to sweep. Northwestern has a crappy RPI. If we want to make a regional, we have to sweep.

Waldron needs to give us 6 + innings tomorrow. Probably no Eddins, and not many other options.

Plus, the batter before the error had a hit between short and third.

I should learn not to be so quick to judge. King has gotten thru 6 innings, only gave up those 2 1st inning runs.

You get a 3-2 lead, and you come out and throw 5 straight balls. How???

The Garret King experiment seems to be a failure. It seemed like every batter had a 2-0 count in the first inning. Hopefully, the bats came to the park tonight. Do we have any pitcher that can get ahead of hitters?

Engelken. Good stuff, struggles with command You could say that about all of our pitchers.

Here's what I would do with the pitching rotation. If Burkamper is healthy. Waldron, Derek, McSteen on the weekend. If 2 games, Max on Tuesday and King on Wednesday. If 1 game, King. If Burkamper is injured, I would go with Waldron, McSteen, and King. Max and Eddins if 2 games and Max if 1 game.

One thing this team really needs is strike throwers and inning eaters. Our starters are avg. 4 2/3 innings, 5 2/3 innings, and 5 innings. We need more out of them.

It's a lot better than listening to the team walking 17 or 12 batters. Nights like this are going to happen. We struggled to hit with runners in scoring position tonight. We had been doing really well the past few weeks in that category. K-State was swept by a ranked Okla State team by a combined 3 runs. We need to put this game behind us, and focus on sweeping the rest of the weekend. Well said brfrad. All they hit to night were at em balls. I've learned through my many years, following this game, you can't get too high or too low.

Yeah what was up with that? I'm following the game through their twitter page and it didn't specify how we went from bases loaded no outs to the end of the inning and no more runs scored.I assumed we would come out of the inning at least tied. Alvarado hit a soft comebacker to the mound. The announcers said it hit the pitcher's foot, and landed between him and home plate. Picked it up and threw home for the force out. We let Klemke bat (should have pinch hit Fish there, as he was coming in the game, anyway), he struck out. Did pinch hit Fish for Schleppenbach. Fish hit a grounder, and according to the announcers, the 2nd basemen made a really good play to save 2 runs.