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Oops… we’re live. I promise I will get some baseball previews up either tonight or tomorrow morning, but for your goofing-off-at-work pleasure, you’re gonna have to live with Pittman’s analysis for the day. This is just the standard introductions and get-to-know-you post, but I’ll throw in some free baseball for you.
I’m not that worried about the One Great Pitcher. One, while Barry Bowden is certainly a very good pitcher, there are two important facts to remember: ONE, USM didn’t exactly play the toughest of schedules so it’s tough to gauge how good that 1.62 ERA really is and TWO, he throws right-handed. The book on LSU is that the offense struggles against great left handed pitching. It’s not like a righty is suddenly robbed of all of his ability, but I’d be a lot more worried if he was a southpaw.
The One Great Pitcher strategy in general is doomed to failure in the four-team regional format. Back in the days of the six-team regional, you could toss him out there at least twice, but now the regional starts on Friday and wraps up on Sunday, so it’s just like a regular series as far as pitcher usage. Bowden gets to start one game, that’s it. Maybe he can start on Friday and still be available for relief on Sunday, but he’s not going to earn two starts. And you need at least three wins to make it to the Supers.
Also, saving him for Saturday is a pretty foolish strategy. First, for the reason discussed above. Waiting until Saturday guarantees Bowden only gets in one game. Second, you absolutely cannot lose the first game. The 2-3 game is the biggest game of any regional, and you need to play the postseason like every game is your last, not really worrying about the next game. If USM saves Bowden for LSU, think of how badly it can backfire: lose to UNO and then likely play Texas Southern the next day. Are you gonna pitch your ace against the four seed after saving him for LSU? Probably not. If you get upset then, you’ve been eliminated without your top pitcher ever seeing the mound, saving him for a matchup that never arose.
OK, back to the getting to know you stuff.
I also went to LSU and lived in the same dorm as Pittman. My family’s from Louisiana and both my parents went to LSU, but I grew up in Maryland, so I came by fanaticism the hard way. LSU only existed in newspaper reports, static-filled radio broadcasts we could barely pick up at night, and the occasional ESPN game. I remember sitting on our roof with a radio listening to the crackling broadcast with my dad. I still have the radio.
I did not graduate from LSU, I got my last thirty credit hours from Maryland, so excuse the occasional Terp love. In the time since leaving LSU, I’ve lived in England, gotten married and divorced (twice... yes, twice. Shut up), and returned south to go to law school. After my three years at Baylor, I’ve settled in Dallas also as an attorney. Yes, we’re both lawyers.
In school, I started a personal blog titled Poseur, and I’ve adopted the moniker over here. If you want to hear my talk about cake, click here . Pittman is too kind in his praise of me, but I am a bit of a stat dork. Pittman is more of the recruiting guy, which I know almost nothing about, but I’ll try and be the resident stat guru. Here’s the gigantic caveat: stats do not predict the future, they only tell us what happened in the past. They are a record. I’ll try and not misuse stats, but I’m only trying to use the facts of the past to draw conclusions about the present and the future. Neither one of us are real prognosticators and don’t pretend to be so. Then again, almost all prognosticators are gigantic phonies.
I promise we’ll try and make this fun. I mean, this is supposed to be fun, right? And while Pittman promises to be reasonable, I can promise that I’ll try, but I have to warn you up front that I hate Auburn to an almost unreasonable degree. I hate them so much I almost got in a fight with an old lady from Auburn. Who was on crutches. She started it.
Hope you enjoy the blog, I’ll try not to drag down the quality too much. GEAUX TIGERS!