the bigger ball park probably cost us 3-4 HR’s be so glad to get home and TCB!!
Well, that’s fine and dandy. After all, we need to win at Baum before we’ll have the opportunity to play in the CWS.
But, when and if we do get to Omaha, we’ll have to contend with a ballpark that has similar dimensions to the one we just played in. Hoover Metropolitan measures as follows:
Left Line - 340
Left-Center - 385
Center Field - 405
Right-Center - 385
Right Field - 340
While TD Ameritrade in Omaha goes:
Left Line - 335 ft
Left Center - 375 ft
Center Field - 408 ft
Right Center - 375 ft
Right Line - 335 ft
That compares to Baum:
Left Line - 320 ft
Left Center - 375 ft
Center Field - 400 ft
Right-Center - 365 ft
Right Line - 320 ft
I’m not terribly worried about the bigger park in Omaha. (Yeah, let’s get there first before we start worrying about that, anyway.) We have the power to hit the ball out of the park as well as anyone even there. But I don’t think we’re a team that rises or falls on our ability to hit HR’s. We have solid pitching & the ability to hit for average, too. We get plenty of hits. Our defense has failed at times, but that has nothing to do with park size.
We might not get to Omaha & if we do, we might go 0-2, but I like this team’s chances better than any we’ve had in a while. We’re much better than the team that got to Omaha last time.
We’ll have lots of advantages playing at Baum. Players can sleep in their own beds, crowd support, and familiar surroundings. Of course, one advantage a home team always has that we won’t have in every game at Baum is the last at-bat. Still, I like all the other advantages playing there brings.
Seems like I noticed yesterday that 330 is painted on the fence down the right field line in Hoover. They may have adjusted the fence, possibly the year Bama played its home games there while renovating their park in Tuscaloosa.
I agree with much you say here, NEA. But there is something I was thinking about posting, and it ties into your post well - so I’ll just add it here instead of making a separate thread.
I agree that this squad is probably the most “well rounded” offensive team we’ve had - in recent memory/modern bat/ball era, for sure. They are able to hit for average, and they can hit for power. Moreover, except for days when injuries force us to start Kenley, and Gates plays (notwithstanding his long ball yesterday), there isn’t really a hole in the line-up; no “easy batters” or stretches of the line-up when a pitcher can regroup or hope to get some “easy outs”.
However - and I’m not sure how to quantify this - but our one Achilles heel is that we sometime seem to get infatuated with the long ball. And it’s not so much that we admire hitting home runs to the exclusion of trying to hit anything else as it is that we seem to - mentally - be waiting for a home run to bail us out. When it comes - great! But, sometimes (often), we’d be better served by just looking to put the ball in play where the other team isn’t.
For all of the hitting talent on this team, we are very average (compared to the rest of the SEC) when it comes to hitting with runners in scoring position, or getting runners in from 3rd with less than 2 out; we are second in the SEC for most men LOB (behind bottom-feeder Alabama), and also in worst batting average with the bases loaded. We are next to last in sacrifice bunts executed.
Yeah, “chicks dig the long ball” . . . and I do too. Who doesn’t? But part of me wishes we had a cavernous ballpark with little chance for home runs because I think if we took that mentality out of this group, they would hit for even better average and start looking to make contact instead of swinging for the fences all the time. There are games when we hit no - or, perhaps one - home run, but string together 16 hits and pound a team with 12 runs. Honestly, I like those type games much more than the 4 HR variety.
This team undoubtedly has the talent to get to Omaha and even win there. But their inconsistency on offense - see yesterday - worries me. There’s no reason for this group to get 3 hits in a game. And we’re going to see a steady stream of good to excellent pitching as we move forward. I’m not saying we should eschew the home run and play small ball. Just, take what is there. Funny how when you do that, the home runs come anyway.
my post was only to point out that LSU is always seems to be right place right time when they play us,whether we throw it over the 1B head on the last out of the game or our pitcher slips down and can’t filed a ball…this had nothing to do with CWS.I was just pointing out that we would have won the game on a regulation College field.Hoover and Ameritrade are minor league parks,like I say they are always the beneficiary of something.
At some point hiting line drives and finding the alley in the outfield has come to an end yesterday. There were some long fly ball outs. That’s all they were! If we get to Omaha they need to hold avoid the complete upper cut swing.
The bats will wake up!