I watched Clay’s interview with DVH on Hogs+ today about the SEC season. I guess it was probably done sometime last week between the Army game and the Louisiana Tech series.
I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but Clay asked about how the pitching would be handled and who might be the closer since Tygart is out for awhile. He mentioned that Hagen had taken on that role last year, but DVH emphatically said that Hagen was our Friday night starter, and that would not change.
Somewhere between then and earlier this week, it did change (since this weekend’s rotation was announced a day or two ago). I wonder if Clay’s question prompted DVH to consider it or what caused him to change his mind. Hollan said after the game today that Hobbs told him on Sunday that he would be starting today.
Hagen’s pitch count was 42. In post game DVH said he will see how Hagen feels and he would pitch Sunday if he felt good.
Before this Auburn series DVH said that he made the change and Hagen would do what the team needs to win games. MCEntire will start tomorrow and TBA for Sunday.
It’s not perfect but we lost our top 2 out of the bullpen and Morris has looked good just once on Wednesday. DVH knows we head to LSU next week and that will be a rough series.
Listening to the post-game show, Phil and Bubba discussed that this move (Smith to closer) had been in the plans (or at least a possibility) for a while. How long a while is, I have no idea.
Let’s see if he has Kopps like ability in bouncing back. Kopps could have been a great starter. But in the reliever roll with his stamina he could pitch 3 or 4 innings on Friday and come back for 2 or 3 on Sunday just as effective - having a major impact on 2 games instead of one.
I’m not so sure this is a permanent move Marty. I believe Dave is just trying to get us a solid closer until Tygart can come back and then he may very well move Smith back into a starter but that still three or four weeks away… I really feel that’s what Dave is trying to do get us to that point and that would be the best thing for this team if Tygart can be dominant at closing that would take a lot of stress off of Smith’s arm and give us another elite Starter
That’s exactly what he’s planning to do we may very well have won the series after Saturday if Hollan and Mac can pitch great enough to win the first two games with Smith closing both of them out that we can roll the dice on Sunday with Carter or maybe Ledbetter.
That’s going to be incredibly hard to do based on what I’ve seen and the offenses we are going to be facing starting next week in Baton Rouge for sure, but worst case scenario is we split the first two and then Smith if he has anything left can hopefully give us 4-5 on Sunday
We gathered at my father’s house for a couple of days with no internet, so I guess I missed that you got Covid. Hope yours is a mild case and you bounce back quickly.
I finally got it on a birthday weekend with the family in New Orleans in late January. Ran a low fever for two days then just felt tired and lousy for a few days. Then my wife finally started hers with the same low fever for a couple of days and then a slow recovery after that. I assume getting all of the vaccines and boosters helped keep it mild. Friends who got it early or refused to vaccinate had a much worse experience. Even though it was a milder than many case, it took me two weeks to feel normal again. Watch out for brain fog. A week after I started symptoms, I was trying to operate my computer with the TV remote as the mouse wondering why that arrow would not move or click.