Cajun Baseball Talk

[CajunRage]

_ Just for the record my question has a basis going back to our prior hitting coach. A lot of fingers were pointed at John Szefc for our hitting woes. I personally disagreed. Baseball is really a game of statistics compiled by a group of teenage boys and young men. Now that is a scary thought.

I thought Coach Szefc's teams put up some pretty good numbers. You can take a look at his bio on the Kansas website and see they pointed out a lot of those stats.

http://www.kuathletics.com/sports/m-...fc_john00.html

My point is that we have a new coach and the same woes and the bottomline is that at some point the guy in the batter's box has to take care of business. Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things in sports. It's often more mental than physical and an 18-21 year olds head is already screwed up enough. It doesn't take much to turn a batter's box into a sandbox for some of them.

I just believe when it comes to collegiate hitting instruction there isn't a tremedous amount of new ground any coach will bring to the plate (literally). By the way I don't think the same of pitching.

Hitting is contagious but someone needs to catch it first. Let's hope it gets going soon. Griffen could be that guy.

Also for those that didn't get the memo.....gorilla ball is dead. _

Szefc left this program in no better shape than when he got here. The bio fails to mention that during his tenure the team's fielding percentage, amount of strike outs, and runners left on base suffered. While he may be a good coach, he was not a good fit at all for this program.

[Frenchie35]

I keep score and check stats at the game and put it on a program when I get home. And something that struck me was the FAU line-up. All were men and average around 200 lbs. A couple were 215 and 230. All were seniors except the center fielder, Anthony Meso (Jr.) and short stop, Nick DelGuidice (So.) This is a team with talent on the field and bench. It showed at the plate.

[CajunProud]

It may not be the age of Gorilla ball, at least not the way the roided up Tigers of the late 90's and early 00's did it, but you still need have power guys in the line up. I looked at last years Fresno team that won the CWS and they had 4 guys in their lineup with 10 bombs or more. We will be lucky to have 1 this year. (Hawkins should get 15 or so). Griffin has the power, but lacks the discipline and eye. Keifer has the size, but his bat is way to slow. This ain't JUCO anymore. I don't think i've seen him pull a ball yet this year.

Bottom line is, to win in today's college baseball you need some power.

[CajunRage]

_ I keep score and check stats at the game and put it on a program when I get home. And something that struck me was the FAU line-up. All were men and average around 200 lbs. A couple were 215 and 230. All were seniors except the center fielder, Anthony Meso (Jr.) and short stop, Nick DelGuidice (So.) This is a team with talent on the field and bench. It showed at the plate. _

Not sure where you are getting the 200lb average. I only saw 3 or 4 position players listed at 200+.

[J-Town Cajun]

_ I keep score and check stats at the game and put it on a program when I get home. And something that struck me was the FAU line-up. All were men and average around 200 lbs. A couple were 215 and 230. All were seniors except the center fielder, Anthony Meso (Jr.) and short stop, Nick DelGuidice (So.) This is a team with talent on the field and bench. It showed at the plate. _

I have noticed the past couple of years that we are undersized when compared to most other teams. Other than Hawkins and Griffen we are pretty small in height, weight, and muscle definition. I really noticed this last year when teams like UNO an Lamar had some really nice looking players. Again this year Nebraska and SLU looked bigger than us and no surprise LSU look like men compared to us.

[cajunbaseball1]

_ Maybe ask how the coaching staff feels the team has come together. Obviously we are getting good production from the newcomers (Fuselier, Smith, etc), but do they feel like the upperclassmen are stepping up (leadership and production wise) or do they need to get better for this team to be consistent. It seems like there are a few guys that were here last year and before that aren't producing like before. _

Fuselier is batting .222 with 1 k every 3.75 ab's... and 4.6 ERA with batters batting 285 against him...how is that impressive????

Smith is batting 250 with a k every 6.4 ab's...

Just because our team hasn't pitched worth a damn or hit their weight in average doesn't mean someone having a below average year is impressive. No one on this team has shown me anything. I'll be impressed when someone bats 300 and has 10 homeruns and has a sub 3 ERA. And I like how people are still blaming a coach that isn't even here anymore...Ya'll sound like our President.

[raginsaints]

Keefer's "slow bat" has led him to a .328 batting average this year. He's by far our best hitter so far this year, I don't think the blame should be on placed on him. Guys like Matt Hicks, Chance Harst, and Dillon Guillory shouldn't be batting .000.

Oh sorry, Harst is batting .158


I'm glad that Greg Fontenot has put last season behind him and is off to a pretty decent start at the plate, one of our 3 hitters (pathetic) batting over .300.

[TuffGuy84]

_ Fuselier is batting .222 with 1 k every 3.75 ab's... and 4.6 ERA with batters batting 285 against him...how is that impressive????

fusilier has pitched very well this year and impressed me. against Nebraska, he held down a solid lineup and gave up 4 runs in just over 6 innings of work in a game 4 of a series. That is way more than I'd expect of a freshman in his first collegiate game. 7 innings of unearned runs against Houston was also nice.

Then came the game that shot up his ERA, against LSU he gave up 5 runs in 4.1 innings, what the stats don't show is that he had an hour long rain delay right in the middle of the game and had to come out and face one of if not the most dangerous hitting lineups in the country.

This is proof that in some cases, numbers can be deceiving. By the end of the season, the numbers can give a more accurate portrait of where he is as a player. As for me, I expect for his numbers to get progressively better.

[cajunbaseball1]

Houston 3-14... We could have pitched a fan and should have won. Nebraska has a better record at 11-5 but have had a creampuff schedule only playing 3 games against any competition (Texas Tech) and went 1-2. Go look at the tens they've played including us and you will see why they have won 11 and they will struggle in the big 12 this year. Once again he has done nothing but had a below average year and everyone thinks he's the savior to our season.

fusilier has pitched very well this year and impressed me. against Nebraska, he held down a solid lineup and gave up 4 runs in just over 6 innings of work in a game 4 of a series. That is way more than I'd expect of a freshman in his first collegiate game. 7 innings of unearned runs against Houston was also nice.

Then came the game that shot up his ERA, against LSU he gave up 5 runs in 4.1 innings, what the stats don't show is that he had an hour long rain delay right in the middle of the game and had to come out and face one of if not the most dangerous hitting lineups in the country.

This is proof that in some cases, numbers can be deceiving. By the end of the season, the numbers can give a more accurate portrait of where he is as a player. As for me, I expect for his numbers to get progressively better.

igeaux.mobi

[cajun2bag]

_ Houston 3-14... We could have pitched a fan and should have won. Nebraska has a better record at 11-5 but have had a creampuff schedule only playing 3 games against any competition (Texas Tech) and went 1-2. Go look at the tens they've played including us and you will see why they have won 11 and they will struggle in the big 12 this year. Once again he has done nothing but had a below average year and everyone thinks he's the savior to our season.
igeaux.mobi _

I agree! And Coach Szefc was a great coach and I enjoyed playing for him. We didn't have a problem hitting with his bad coaching. Everyone on our team hit over 300. Fact is you are only as good as the players on the field. We just don't have the talent that we used to have. I do believe we have good enough pitching to win, but you can't win with no runs. The Sunday game was my first game of the season and quite possible my last. It was boring the kids have no passion, they looked like they didn't want to be their, they looked like they were beat before they took the field.

Also Cook will be fine, he has had a couple of bad outings, but he will get fixed and be reliable as the season wears on. If I were pitching for this team I would be scared to give up a run because I would get tagged with the loss. We still don't have a SS Greg got off to a good start, but realistically he will hit 250-260 over the course of the season. Keefer can hit and his slow bat hit a lot harder pitching than he is seeing right. His power numbers will come as I expect him to hit around 6 bombs before the season is over. I think we have a good player in Alex but he needs time to improve as someone said earlier he is hitting 230 or so with a 4.6 era....those are not what I would call stellar numbers, but he will get better on the mound and be on of our go to guys. Whipple should never come out of the lineup he is one of our best hitters and we certainly would not want to pull him and hit someone like Harst against leftys!

until this teams believes that the belong they will not have good results!!