Yes, it was just three games, but the Aggies looked like the better team this series - a series wherein their #2 starting pitcher didn’t pitch.
They pitched better. Hit better. Hit “clutch” better. And, good golly, fielded better.
'Glad TAMU is now top 15 in RPI.
Now three series in a row whereby we seemed to croak in game 3.
While the hogs failed miserably at the plate the umpire helped a lot with those piss poor strike 3 calls! Of course the hogs took poor swings at balls in the dirt and over their darn heads so I guess it really don’t matter! Unless your blind you should be able to see that Martin had another error on a double play ball where A&M took the lead! It sure wasn’t our pitchers fault! They sure had some lucky hits! Very little power and if you think they are a better team go buy an A&M T shirt and enjoy the Aggies.
at least the last two games…
They were clearly playing for a Regional Host. They hit about as well as they have all season.
After that first game, seemed to me as though we were playing like a team that had locked up a National Seed.
It’s baseball. It’s the SEC. They aren’t the better team. They had the better series.
It’s a grind and you’re going to lose some road series against Top 15 teams. We won 40 overall and 20 in the league and have the most wins against ranked teams.
Compare the 2 based on this week if you must. But one of the teams is going to be a National seed and 1 isn’t.
IMO, it’s as I posted in another thread; A&M is a bad match-up for us this year because of our preponderance of left-handed hitting and their depth of quality left-handed pitchers. They are a good team anyhow - probably somewhere between #15 and 20 in the country, largely on the strength of their overall pitching staff. But they are probably among the 5 hardest teams for us to beat because of the make-up of the two squads.
That doesn’t make them “better” than us is the larger scheme of things. Every team in America has one or two teams they don’t match up well with, even if they are objectively better than those teams. A&M just happens to be one of ours. Good thing is that it’s very unlikely we’ll have to contend with them on the road to Omaha.
LOL no they are not the better team,We beat ourselves a whole lot more than they beat us,We had opportunities to blow open the last 2 games but b/c we didn’t execute the most basic of plays in the field and b/c we had horrible pitch selection swinging at balls and taking strikes we squandered our chances to sweep the series but all we had to do what we have done most of the yr and we sweep.Tamu has a very good team and if they hit better would be a great team but we win that series 7/10 times given the same opportunities.This all will help come regionals time though b/c we arent going to face any better competition than we are now and we will be at home where we are a totally different team.
Baseball comes down to pitching and whichever team has the better pitching in a series will usually win the series.
The Razorbacks post season fate will be directly tied to how our pitchers perform, our fielding, hitting lefties, eliminating base running errors and finally not leaving the bases loaded with 1 or 0 outs.
I’m hoping for another post season that leads us to Omaha like most of you and if DVH makes the correct moves with players as well as in game tactics then this team may just get there.
Go Hogs!
In the first game, we looked like the much better team. They pitched well but we capitalized on their few pitching mistakes to generate five home runs. The next two games, we failed over and over to hit with runners in scoring position and had several fielding errors. Our pitching was OK. Theirs was much better than that. We lost a series away from home against the #15 team. Last year, we failed to win ALL of our away series. This year, we won several but not the last one. Its baseball. That happens. No big deal.
I told my buddies 3 weeks ago this was the series I worried most about that was left on schedule due to all their lefty pitchers. Lefty pitching seems to be our kryptonite at times this year and it got us in this series. After Noland was pulled things just unraveled and we really didn’t look into the game to me. Plus…it was a road series against a top 20 team so it is always tougher. Good news for us is we should be at home until Omaha if we play like we know we can!
I don’t think A&M looked like they were better than us. Oh, they were certainly better yesterday, but that wasn’t because they were particularly good, but it was because we were really bad. We had 4 errors that allowed at least 3 runs. That wasn’t because A&M was good. Their pitching was good, but we were able to get runners in scoring position with 1 or less outs. We just didn’t execute at the time we needed it. We swung at some bad pitches, although to be fair, the ump was calling some high, off the plate pitches strikes.
As Wiz & others have said, A&M has some good LHP’s. We struggle against those, so losing the second game was no surprise. Yesterday we just played badly.
Baseball is a sport where the home team has a great advantage. It’s one of those sports that in every case the ball parks are different. It’s not like other sports where the size of the field stays the same. And, the home team gets to hit last. It is a huge advantage.
I didn’t like the body language of our hitters against A&M. They seemed to be umpiring too much and over reacting to calls. When hitters do this, they are not focused. I thought our hitters were looking for the perfect pitch to drive rather than just focused on putting the ball in play in game 2, then overcompensated in game 3 and swung at too many pitches out of the strike zone.
I agree Delta we had very poor pitch recognition against TAMU they made enough mistakes Thurs for us to may them pay for it.
This sums it up pretty well…
We played poorly in that series. I believe that Texas A&M wanted it more. They needed it more and they were in their home ballpark. Having said that. Our approach at the plate was poor all weekend. They didn’t do a good job of putting the ball in play in critical situations like having the bases loaded and nobody out.
We could show up Wednesday and blister the ball all over the place. It’s baseball.