2024 Season Thread

[Irish27]

From AZ Band Cat Sports twitter account. It was taken down after it posted, so who knows if this is correct.

Former Wichita State pitcher Clark Candiotti is transferring to Arizona.
The son of 16-year pro Tom Candiotti began his college career at Saint Mary’s and also had stops at Vernon College and Grayson County CC.
He went 7-4 with a 4.87 ERA in 15 starts this past season for WSU.

[Irish27]

[TheCatInTheHat]

That's a good start. Chip no doubt got friendly with DBacks radio guy Tom Candiotti when he was the manager there. Wonder if Tom taught Clark anything about the knuckler? I'd love to see the reaction of college players to that.

[azcat49]

Makes sense given Chips extensive time in the league. He has to know a bunch of the players kids.

The Chipper also said they had already been active in the portal. Not sure if that was a slip up or intended. Hopefully we improve the ERA into the high 3’s

[Irish27]

[Irish27]

Cats open the season today against Northeastern, who is ranked #23 in the country. Was hoping for an easier team to open up with.

[azcat49]

With the outlook being what it is, let’s get the Hale experience either over or let’s see if these new assistant coaches can save his bacon

[azgreg]

With the outlook being what it is, let’s get the Hale experience either over or let’s see if these new assistant coaches can save his bacon

Is there an option on opening day?

[azgreg]

[wyo-cat]

The light blue unis looked fresh.

Cats beat Northeastern to start the season.

[84Cat]

The light blue unis looked fresh.

Cats beat Northeastern to start the season.

[Chicat]

[azgreg]

Home opener in anything other than pinstripes is criminal.

[wyo-cat]

They got the pinstripes on today.

Just hung 5 in the bottom of the fif to go up 6-3.

[azcat49]

Gave up I think 5 in the last three innings to lose 8-7. Need the rubber game tomorrow. Our middle guy, Zastrow, just couldn’t hold them off and then Trevor Long got roughed up

[84Cat]

[azcat49]

Congrats to Hale for single handedly destroying our program and ruining the best uniforms in college baseball.

[84Cat]

[84Cat]

[Irish27]

Summerhill has been crushing the ball so far this year.

[azcat49]

Who thought it was a good idea to take a team with very few veterans on the road for 11 straight? Could have a galvanizing effect or it could destroy a bunch of young kids confidence.

I think these first three against a good San Diego Torrero team is critical

[Chicat]

Jay Johnson just lost to unranked SUNY Stony Brook so the weekend is already starting off on a high note.

[ChooChooCat]

Arizona batters striked out 19 times in two games in a row now.

[EastCoastCat]

Is Dave Kingman their hitting coach?

[UAEebs86]

Is Dave Kingman their hitting coach?

Rob Deer

[azcat49]

San Diego chases Susac in their first inning. Currently 6-0 and still in the bottom of the first. The opponents only get better coming up over in Texas

[wyo-cat]

It’s 10-7 Cats.

[Chicat]

It’s 10-7 Cats.

Lotta fight in the youngsters.

[84Cat]

[AZCatGirl]

Glad they won, but losing two out of three doesn't bode well for the rest of the road trip. Going to be a lot of growing pains early on.

[Irish27]

The next four games this week are all against top-25 teams (TCU, Dallas Baptist, Alabama & Indiana).

[threenumberones]

So Cam Walty has 3 of our 5 wins. A 1.84 ERA. Basically came out of nowhere..as I recall last year he was pretty modest. Has anyone seen him throw what has changed?

[Irish27]

So Cam Walty has 3 of our 5 wins. A 1.84 ERA. Basically came out of nowhere..as I recall last year he was pretty modest. Has anyone seen him throw what has changed?

Maybe Kevin Vance, the new pitching coach, has something to do with his improvement.

[ChooChooCat]

So Cam Walty has 3 of our 5 wins. A 1.84 ERA. Basically came out of nowhere..as I recall last year he was pretty modest. Has anyone seen him throw what has changed?

He was literally our ace last year until injuries started getting in the way.

[TheCatInTheHat]

After a pretty miserable start to the season, Arizona finally strung together a few wins, beating #20 Indiana in a tournament near Dallas, and winning the first two games and the series at USC's temporary home field in Irvine before dropping the finale 4-1 today. Next up is at LMU tomorrow night before returning home for the ASU series next weekend. ASU just dropped their last two at home to Oregon to lose that series. They look about like us in the early going, with both teams wallowing around playing about .500 ball. ASU has a home game with New Mexico Tuesday night prior to the series at the Hi C.

[TheCatInTheHat]

Here's what they look like:

[AZCatGirl]

Just when you thought today couldn't get worse, it does.

[UAEebs86]

[AZCatGirl]

This shit is unacceptable, Chip.

[AZCatGirl]

Glad they avoided the sweep. Hopefully they'll come out like this next time we play them.

[TheCatInTheHat]

I'm less than thrilled with what seems to be Chip's laissez-faire approach. It's not the MLB 162-game season, and the importance of each college game at this level is multiplied. I've followed the team since some kid had to stand in sweltering heat flipping metal plates on a manual scoreboard above the wooden third base bleachers at Wildcat Field. (Well, since that just sparked some memories, guess I'll continue with an old guy story...)

I was up in the old pressbox, helping a friend covering the game. Big bin of free peanuts, so the floor was completely covered in shells and it crunched anywhere you went. Ray McNally, who was a sweet old guy, did double-duty as the field PA announcer and radio play-by-play guy. He also kept up a running commentary in the pressbox, so he was a triple threat. Don't know if it was typical or not, but that day next to him, he had one of those big steel tubs full of ice and cans of Bud. Nice work if you can get it. It was obviously a different era, and with the slow pace of baseball, some in the all-male pressbox had time to take some notice of the female students sunning themselves in the bleachers. As part of his running pressbox commentary, Ray was outspoken about that, too. Whether it was the Bud talking or not, he somehow forgot he was pressing down on the PA key when he made an overly appreciative comment (not vulgar, but inappropriate) about one of the sun bathers, and it went booming out through the stadium. Time stopped, and everybody's eyes got real big. But, Ray recovered quickly: "Now batting for the Wildcats..."

[azgreg]

Chip has put together a good team. However, he hasn't put together a team that is capable of competing at a level we're accustomed to, and I don't think he ever will.

[Irish27]

No matter the sport, it's always nice to beat UCLA

[Irish27]

Cats beat UCLA in game two with another walk-off win.

[84Cat]

Cats beat UCLA in game two with another walk-off win.

[Irish27]

Cats sweep UCLA with a third walk-off.

[azcat49]

Up 8-2 in the 8th and we give up 5. Then the bruins tie it up on the 9th while not hitting a ball out of the infield.

Hopefully this propels the team forward and we get hot. Have a OOC game vs New Mexico before heading to Cal for a three game set.

Right now we are 7-5 and tied for third in the conference but we need a road series win badly

[TheCatInTheHat]

After the unexpected sweep of UCLA, we're basically done with the LA schools in (regular season) Pac-12 play of consequence. (We'll play at UCLA softball at the tail end of the season, but that rarely bodes well, and we seem to be kind of in the wilderness in softball these days.) So, out of curiosity about the future for USC and UCLA baseball, I checked out the Big Ten baseball facilities. Yikes. The Michigan schools and Ohio State have pretty nice parks (as you'd expect), and surprisingly, so does Nebraska. Otherwise, it doesn't seem like a big emphasis. So the LA schools will be traveling mega miles to a lot of cold, grey weather to play at predominantly little fields in places where wrestling is a bigger sport. Meanwhile, most of the Big XII parks look pretty nice, with 7 closer to us than the LA schools' nearest 2 road games in the PNW.

[azcat49]

Don’t look now but the cats beat Cal today 5-0 to move to 9-5 in the conference. They have the lowest ERA in the conference at close to 3 after today. The two sites that track college baseball both have the cats in the tournament as one of the last 4 teams in.

All of a sudden this starting pitching has turned into the 90’s Atlanta Braves. Quality start after quality start. Vance has definitely done a great job

[Irish27]

Kevin Vance has done a really good job with the pitchers. I like that their starting three of Kent, Candiotti & Walty are keeping the team in most games.