I'm not holding my breath on a regional, but making Hoover would/should/could be a realistic goal at this point, IMO. Looking at our remaining schedule, most of the series look winnable now whereas 2 months ago, I was concerned with just avoiding being swept.
Two things I am concerned with though going forward with a little bit of hope. It's no secret that the main reason we have won the last two weekends is because of outstanding pitching (which was a BIG question mark coming into the, so that's been nice), but looking at Finnerty on Friday, he's got a very high BAA of .317. IMO it's impressive that he's been able to keep his ERA ~3.00 while having that, which means he does a good job of spreading out the hits. On the plus side, Jake has been outstanding since SEC-play started, and the combo of Rukes/Cameron on Sunday has been solid as well.
The second thing that concerns me is the offense. We have scored less than 5 runs in 11 of the last 12 games. As a team, we've hit plus-.300 in just 3 of the 15 games since SEC play started, and have hit sub-.200 in 7 of them.
CT and Holcombe are hitting .182 and .132 in all games since SEC play started and have seen their averages drop to .220 and .264, respectively. So I guess, looking big picture, it's great that we've been able to win 4 of the last 7 (most importantly the two SEC series wins) with those two hitting .115 and .095 during that stretch, but we need to get those two going. Those obviously aren't the only two guys who have been struggling offensively the last few weeks, but I'd argue they're two of the more important ones.
Our typical 2-6 hitters (Breaux (14 Ks in 42 ABs), Avant (5 Ks in 46 ABs), CT (14 Ks in 44 ABs), Alexander (18 Ks in 38 ABs), Holcombe (11 Ks in 45 ABs)) have a combined 62 strikeouts. If you take out Avant's numbers, they're striking out in 1/3 of their at-bats. That's WAY too many for the heart of our order.
Hopefully, this post doesn't sound too negative. That wasn't my intent, because while these issues exist, I am still encouraged by the fact that we've been able to win the last two series with all of those issues present, and that if we can get some of these fixed, there's real hope for some kind of postseason play this year.
Two things I am concerned with though going forward with a little bit of hope. It's no secret that the main reason we have won the last two weekends is because of outstanding pitching (which was a BIG question mark coming into the, so that's been nice), but looking at Finnerty on Friday, he's got a very high BAA of .317. IMO it's impressive that he's been able to keep his ERA ~3.00 while having that, which means he does a good job of spreading out the hits. On the plus side, Jake has been outstanding since SEC-play started, and the combo of Rukes/Cameron on Sunday has been solid as well.
The second thing that concerns me is the offense. We have scored less than 5 runs in 11 of the last 12 games. As a team, we've hit plus-.300 in just 3 of the 15 games since SEC play started, and have hit sub-.200 in 7 of them.
CT and Holcombe are hitting .182 and .132 in all games since SEC play started and have seen their averages drop to .220 and .264, respectively. So I guess, looking big picture, it's great that we've been able to win 4 of the last 7 (most importantly the two SEC series wins) with those two hitting .115 and .095 during that stretch, but we need to get those two going. Those obviously aren't the only two guys who have been struggling offensively the last few weeks, but I'd argue they're two of the more important ones.
Our typical 2-6 hitters (Breaux (14 Ks in 42 ABs), Avant (5 Ks in 46 ABs), CT (14 Ks in 44 ABs), Alexander (18 Ks in 38 ABs), Holcombe (11 Ks in 45 ABs)) have a combined 62 strikeouts. If you take out Avant's numbers, they're striking out in 1/3 of their at-bats. That's WAY too many for the heart of our order.
Hopefully, this post doesn't sound too negative. That wasn't my intent, because while these issues exist, I am still encouraged by the fact that we've been able to win the last two series with all of those issues present, and that if we can get some of these fixed, there's real hope for some kind of postseason play this year.