Good Old Fashioned Hate starts here

College Baseball comes in a double dose this week for one extra special reason; the number 3 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets hook up with the Georgia Bulldogs for the first time in 2010. Because of this Georgia State will unfortunately not get any major words, but note they took a thrilling series at New Mexico State 2-1 to move to 8-7 on the year. Now let’s move onto Tuesday night.

Friday night saw the Bulldogs win for the first time in ten days beating Siena 9-3 and went on to win the series, however losing the finale on Sunday left a bad taste in the mouth. Tech continued rolling with a series sweep of ACC foe Wake Forest, with two comeback wins on Saturday and Sunday. The Jackets were lifted Friday when outstanding Jr Deck McGuire threw Tech’s first nine-inning complete game since 2007, striking out eight, giving up three hits and only one run. Luckily for the Diamond Dogs they will not face the Tech ace. They will most likely oppose either sophomore Mark Pope or freshman Buck Farmer, neither would be an easy task but one much easier than facing McGuire. Pope only has one appearance on the year, a six inning shutout effort against Georgia Southern way back on February 23rd, Farmers only start was the very next day against the same opposition. Following this logic Tech will send Pope to the mound hoping for a similar effort to the one he produced in Statesboro. Georgia doesn’t however have the riches to pick from that the Jackets do; the last two midweek games the Dawgs played their starters gave up 11 runs in 5.2 innings. These two starters were sophomore Chase Hawkins and junior Eric Swegman. Of the two Hawkins has the clear advantage with a 3.29 ERA compared to Swegmans 8.44, while both have two starts. The worrying thing for the Dogs is how overmatched they are on the mound, even when Tech goes to its 4 or 5 starter you feel they could match up against any Georgia pitcher.

The overmatched feeling continues at the plate where Georgia Tech is red hot and the Georgia line-up could not be much colder. After the past week Georgia now only have three everyday players with plus .300 batting averages, these are Christian Glisson (.400), Zach Cone (.381) and Johnathan Taylor (.333). This weekend saw Fr Robert Shipman picking up some of the offensive slack and raising his average to an impressive .458 while only seeing 6 starts. Finding a spot in their line-up against Tech could help alter the game and if he carries on this way their season. While UGA has struggled for any consistency on offense Tech has had no such problems. The middle of the Jackets line-up has been so impressive this season with juniors Chase Burnette and Cole Leonida being the most impressive, they are 1 and 2 for average and RBI’s on the season so far. However there is no let up for opposing pitchers with Matt Skole, Jacob Esch, Tony Plagman and Derek Dietrich all contributing, all 4 are hitting over .300 with over ten RBI’s each. When this is combined with the bench talent, especially Brandon Thomas and Thomas Nichols, the biggest challenge for anyone will be limiting the number of runs they score. This was proven by the two comeback victories at the weekend when the Yellow Jackets rallied behind big innings behind this outstanding line-up.

With everything pointing towards a Tech rout tomorrow night it could be very difficult to be a Diamond Dog fan at this point of the year. This does not mean something special can happen. This is what makes this rivalry so special in any sport and baseball is certainly no different. If Tech wins it could prove that they have something special this year, if Georgia win it could completely rejuvenate their season. On Wednesday I will take a look at which way this one goes, and what it means to both teams.