Bear Down Wildcats

The calendar page flipped over to May, so we're rounding the back turn.

I looked at the standings and composite schedule. This could be a beneficial year for us to do some business in the Pac-12 Tournament. Without anticipating any amazing runs and assuming things are pretty schedule-driven with most teams having 9 conference games to play, it's hard for me to see Oregon St and UCLA losing their positions at the top of the standings. And Cal, WSU, USC, and Washington seem pretty certain to finish in the bottom four.

In the tournament, if OSU & UCLA feel pretty secure in their seeding and tend to save their pitching for the NCAAs, and if the bottom four have no real shot to run the table, that would leave us in a pack of three pretty motivated teams (with Oregon and Stanford in my projection) to polish resumes, fight for better seeding, and even win the tournament title and the benefits that go with it. As the home-town team, you obviously have to keep an eye on ASU, but I can't see either them or Utah really making a serious run for it all after finishing under .500 in league play. Always dangerous to look ahead, but fans are allowed.

It would behoove us to beat Nevada and GCU, and try for a sweep at USC, a series win against OSU, and a series win at Oregon. That would pull us up about even with the front-runners, but it's a tall order. That's the fun of playing the games, with only 12 left in the regular season. Take your shot and let the chips (see what I did there?) fall where they may.

We are now 34th in RPI according to D1 baseball and GCU is 32 so it’s an important game.

We were once in the top 10 in RPI but those series loses to Utah and WAZZU really took a toll on our RPI. Utah has been pretty solid but like always it seems the RPI system undervalues the PAC.

PAC-12 Baseball tournament will only be top 8 teams. ASu has a series with WAZZU late that could potentially decide who finishes 8th. It's likely UW and USC will finish 10th and 11th, but one could get hot and vie for the last spot.

We need to sweep USC and do no worse than spilt the 6 games with the Oregon schools. Beat GCU and this puts us at 39 wins before we head to Scottdale and b the PAC Tournament. Do well in the valley, and we could still potentially snag a Top 16 NCAA seed.

As long as we don't crash, we're looking at a 2-seed in the big tournament, which is a decent start for Hale. Arizona Baseball should make the tournament no less than 4 out of every 5 years, hosting at least once every 5 years. Considering what that traitor took from us in the way to Baton Rouge, not a bad year.

He took Cooper (LHP) and Berry and a few recruits but I am not sure if any of those have contributed at LSU this year? Anyone know if they have or where they might have plugged in for this year?

Cooper is 3-2 with a 3.16 ERA this year at LSU. Has appeared in 21 games. Berry is hitting .359 with 14 HRs for the Tigers. Add those two alone to our roster, and we are likely a top 10 team right now. Bryce Collins was a third transfer, and he is currently 2-1 with a sub 3.0 ERA, having appeared in 13 games.

Hard to say which players wouldn't be on the roster if these three had stayed. Or, if they would've stayed,or others might have left instead. Still, pretty good production from these three former Cats now in Baton Rouge.

azcat49 wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 4:55 pm He took Cooper (LHP) and Berry and a few recruits but I am not sure if any of those have contributed at LSU this year? Anyone know if they have or where they might have plugged in for this year?

The recruits he all took were from future classes. 2 of them in 2023 are likely to be drafted highly though, so hopefully they tell Jay to go fuck himself.

Entering this week we were at #34 RPI and Nevada was #61. We win three of four and we fall to #36 and they went to #57. I get that it’s also what your opponents did and even you opponents opponent but that just seems odd to me

Oregon St has a 2 game lead on us but has to play Oregon, @Arizona and UCLA. If they go 5-4 we have to go 7-2 so we need to sweep USC this weekend to have a good chance

Lost last night again to GCU. Can't lose these midweek games, and certainly can't lose the series to bottom feeders like Washington State. This is why we are not ranked. Take the series against WSU and Utah, and reverse the two losses against GCU, and not only are we ranked, but we're in the hunt for a #1 seed.

That loss last night was clearly on the schedule makers. Why we put a four game home stand in front of a mid week game is crazy.

Susac has been our guy for midweek games and we had to start him Sunday. We just were out of arms for the most part, although Long giving up 4 in the 9th was a surprise

But to your points, you are right

I would not want to be a team playing Grand Canyon in the postseason. Most brackets have them as a #2 seed. I wonder if asu is having second thoughts about not hiring Andy Stankiewicz last year?

Can’t remember the last time we had an early lead in a game. Down 3-0 in the 5th

6-1 in the 7th. Likely game over and lose this series and you have to wonder if we will make the tournament

Really screwed the pooch against the last place team. I kind of wonder if there are some personality/team dynamics issues on this team. I see some defensive laziness and not running out iffy grounders. Maybe we don't have the pitching, and that's a result, but it doesn't help. Like to be a fly on the wall in Chip's office.

We have 9 conference losses and 5 are against teams that won’t make the conference tournament

Susac just hit a two RBI double. Cats up 3-1, still batting in the top of the 8th.

Cats win 3-2

Must win tomorrow. Going with Susac tomorrow. He has been good of late but he hasn’t been in the weekend rotation

Tough break for Jacob Berry, no pun intended.

Who?

azcat49 wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 9:01 pm 6-1 in the 7th. Likely game over and lose this series and you have to wonder if we will make the tournament

Cats are in 2nd place in the PAC-12. How do they not make the tournament unless they completely fall apart in the last two series?

It would seem unlikely that we wouldn’t get in but lose this series and you now really have some bad losses and our RPI coming into to yesterday was 39.

If we can hold onto a top 3 or 4 spot in the conference and win a game in the tournament I like our chances. Lose three straight series and I think it becomes a bit more dicey. We did miss one year with a 15-15 conference record under JJ and a similar RPI, maybe higher

Cats jumped out early 2-0 but gave up 4 runs over the next three innings. The bases were loaded after the USC pitcher worked around Chase Davis who had already homered in the first inning. Bullard came up and doubled to score three runs and the cats lead 5-4 in the bottom of the 5th in a very important game

azcat49 wrote: ↑Sun May 08, 2022 3:41 pm Cats jumped out early 2-0 but gave up 4 runs over the next three innings. The bases were loaded after the USC pitcher worked around Chase Davis who had already homered in the first inning. Bullard came up and doubled to score three runs and the cats lead 5-4 in the bottom of the 5th in a very important game

Arizona loses 5-8 and has now lost series to the two bottom teams in the Pac-12. CWS here we come!

Our pitching really blows.

Their pitcher tonight is a first round pick. Going to have really play well to get a win

It would be such Arizona to lose to the worst team in the conference then turn around and beat the best team.

azgreg wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 2:26 pm It would be such Arizona to lose to the best team in the conference then turn around and beat the best.

I think I get what you meant.

EastCoastCat wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 4:20 pm

azgreg wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 2:26 pm It would be such Arizona to lose to the best team in the conference then turn around and beat the best.

I think I get what you meant.

Corrected. A lot on my mind today.

Walks, bad base running, but made a late run.
Came up short though.

Giving up a grand slam doesn’t help, either.

Cats win 5-2.

Huge win by the cats. We were down to #47 in RPI and if we can get the series win today that should be enough to get us back into the low 30’s in RPI.

Irvin has been our best pitcher by far IMO. He should get a nice draft spot being a lefty. Hoping he gets a chance to shine one more time in the playoffs

Cats up 10-5 in the top of the 8th.

Final. Taking 2 of 3 from the #1 team in the nation should just about lock things up for post season play

Lots of steaks served up by the Cats today.

Apparently there was a deal on RBI’s.

Best win of the season by far. Down 4-0 and 5-1, they could have mailed it in but they battled against an Omaha level team.

If we can keep the momentum this week, get on a roll, I would hate to be the team hosting the regional that we would be in (I see you LSU)

wyo-cat wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 4:05 pm Lots of steaks served up by the Cats today.

Apparently there was a deal on RBI’s.

LOL. This was huge, and at a desperately needed time. That was the biggest series of the year. So now we're officially in post-season go-time. We're not immune from umpires, but we still need to win a few games in Eugene and Scottsdale, then full-bore wherever they send us for the NCAAs. No more charity at-bats or innings. Go with the best, and no rest for the weary. No more bruises, soreness, fatigue, or hurt feelings. Just all-out baseball the rest of the way.

Crushed

Unless home field suddenly ceases to be significant, and the resumes built up all year go out the window, the current standings should pretty much hold up. Yeah, it's possible UCLA will go into Corvallis and sweep, but I sure doubt it. Not impossible for us to take two in Eugene and hold off Oregon in the standings, but I'll wait and see on that one. Would've been interesting if we could have taken the series from UCLA at Hi Corbett, and we'd have a better chance to jump up to third and the other side of the conference tournament bracket. But, no 20-20 hindsight, because then you'd have to look at how poorly we did against (likely) non-tournament qualifiers Utah, WSU, and USC. So it looks a lot like 7 Washington vs 2 Stanford and 6 ASU vs 3 UCLA on one side, and 8 Cal vs 1 Oregon St and 5 Arizona vs 4 Oregon on the other side.

Here's the bracket:
https://xs.pac-12.com/2022-05/16-9%20Ba ... 282%29.pdf

(...not me; I'll be in California), the afternoon temps each day are forecast for about 105. Scottsdale Stadium has an overhang for the 300 level seats between first and third. I would definitely recommend getting tickets through the Pac-12, rather than re-sellers, who are gouging. (On Vivid, they're trying to sell single game tickets early for as much or more as the Pac-12 wants for an all-session ticket.) Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is holding back the shaded seats for the all-session tickets. So, you can get one there for about $150. You might be able to get single game tickets at the top of the 200 level seats, which might provide shade, for around $15 each.

Funny thing that we are 6-1 vs three of the teams in the top 6 in college baseball and only 3-6 vs teams that won’t even make our conference tournament.

Once again, especially in baseball, I think that the PAC is woefully underrated. All these teams have quality players and this conference is as good and as deep as anyone in college baseball.

Will be interesting to see if we have begun a role with that series win. That has to be a huge confidence builder. Even the Friday night loss scoring 4 runs in the 8th and 9th had to give them a boost.

It bums me we blew a chance to host a regional but I wonder if we swept Oregon and got to the conference final if we could sneak in as a 16 seed

What if we win the conference Tourney?

Good question ECC. Our resume is fairly skitzoid. Great at the top and kind of ugly at the bottom. I really think we are one of the best 16 teams when we are healthy and there are not a lot of attractive choices to host in the west

Congrats to Bingham who was named Pac player of the week.