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Outscored by Texas St. in our three losses this weekend.

Ugly......Bobcats are pretty good but they pounded our pitching....

The same can be said about several weekends this year.
Last weekend we gave up 31.

Is it fair to say we are having ptiching woes? Do we have some tired arm issues?

The season is just over half complete. If we're tired now, we're in some deep trouble.

I think at some point the powers that be have to take a long hard look at the addition of our pitching coach this year. We have some of the same talent as last year and they seem to be going backwards. Something is not working!!. Our pitching stats can attest to that!! It has to be as frustrating for our pitching staff as it is for everyone watching. We have alot of talent on this team and I hope they can hang in there!

Cardinals went thru a stretch some years back when it seemed like every pitcher had what was called "tired arms"...best I ever heard explained was that it was throwing too hard in spring and off days....arm never refreshes....obviously something is not working well with Bears....

After having a discussion with someone about this team yesterday, I went back and looked at the numbers.

The pitchers have been bad, but the offense has been just as bad. It's just been overshadowed because of how many runs the pitching has allowed.

SLC Rankings (1st place is in parenthesis)
AVG .283 - 10th (.330)
Runs 185 - 12th (270)
2B 67 - 5th (87)
HR 18 - t10th (41)
RBI 168 - 10th (244)
SLG% .410 - 10th (.522)
OB% .360 - t9th (.423)


ERA 7.70 - 11th (3.48)
CG 2 - t5th (4)
SV 5 - t6th (13)
H 377 - 11th (287)
R 268 - 11th (171)
ER 232 - 11th (117)
BB 130 - 12th (98)
SO 218 - 7th (279)
2B 86 - 12th (43)
3B 4 - t2nd (3)
HR 34 - t12th (13)
B/AVG .330 - 11th (.269)
WP 34 - 8th (9)
HBP 44 - 12th (19)

Wow. Dead last in hbp, walks, and home runs. Definitely no one to blame for that dismal of a showing than the pitcher himself.

A pitcher has to have confidence in himself and his stuff when he steps on the mound. He cannot be afraid to fail and be very successful. Ours seem to have been stripped of their confidence. Think about those that we saw pitch last year in comparison to how we are seeing them now. Something is most definitely wrong!

Trey,
Not to be argumentative, but if someone is trying to persuade you that the hitting is the problem with this ballclub, they are just not watching the games. Three times this season, the SLC Hitter of the Week has been awarded to a hitter based on his performance against UCA. Ignoring the starting pitching, if the Bears just had a shut down closer, the ballclub would have at least 3 more conference wins and as many as six additional wins overall, putting the ballclub at 16-16 overall and 6-9 in conference. That would be good for a tie for eighth with the easier portion of the conference schedule coming up. If Coach Clark is correct and 14 wins gets you in the conference tourney, the Bears would be in good shape.

In games decided by 2 runs or less, UCA is 6-7. Of UCA's 22 losses, only 7 have a run differential of 2 runs or less. Of the 10 wins, 6 have a run differential of 2 runs or less. In most of the losses, the team has been blown out.

The biggest difference maker in every game is the guy standing in the middle of the diamond. Against SFA, Wild shoved on Friday night and the score was 2-0. The Bears got steamrolled the rest of the weekend. Last Saturday in San Marcos during the 5th inning as Ward was shoving, a Texas State fan said, "UCA looks like a different team today than last night. What happened?" The pitcher, thats what.

Does anyone know what kind of scholarships players at UCA receive? Do pitchers get the less portion of scholarship money? maybe that is the problem. Not saying it is. I was just wondering if pitchers get more or less of the scholarships that are awarded.

It's funny you should start with that - the person I talked with doesn't watch many games, but I won't get in to that.

No one was trying to persuade me toward anything. And I'm certainly not saying that hitting is THE problem. I'm saying we have more than one problem (pitching). We have many problems. Those conference statistics standings aren't made up. We're in the bottom 3rd in every offensive category but doubles.

We've given up the most steals in the league, allowing people to easily move into scoring position and making it even harder on the pitchers --- I'm sure many of the 70 SBs against are off the pitching, but you can't let teams steal two bases on you a game. Teams are attempting more steals against us than any other team. It's just another of the problems.

Sure, the guys on the mound should shoulder a large share of the blame, but the guys stepping into the box are just as much to blame. If people want to say that the players are not being coached properly, they can. I have no idea. I'm just telling you what the numbers say on offense and on the mound. And neither location is looking very good.

The pitching hasn't been great by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes, it's been atrocious, sure. But you can't put the troubles squarely on the mound. That's absurd. In 32 games, 17 times the Bears have plated five or fewer runs. It's hard to win college baseball games consistently scoring that little.

You can't bat 28 points below the league average and think you're going to have great success. Even average pitching needs something more than substandard hitting to support it. You can't have 20 hits fewer than the league average (in 15 games - going league-only here) and say that's good enough. Not the leader ... the average. The Bears have the next-to-worst OPS in the league at .749. Texas State leads the league at .959 – a whole .210 better. That's a considerable gap. The league average is .821 – still 72 points higher than the Bears. That's 9 percent. The pitching would have to be at least 9 percent above average to offset the lack of offensive production. (Approximately. Part of those figures are the way they are because of the UCA pitching. But I don't care to extract that and analyze it that deep. You're getting ballpark figures here.)

So even if you think the pitching is horrendous, it doesn't change the fact that even average pitching wouldn't get it done without more support from the offense within the league. That tells me you can't pin it all on what's happening on the mound.