News Flash

This blogger interrupts your week to bring you some shocking news: the University of Georgia baseball team is bad. Unfortunately Coach Perno has run out of excuses within the first month of the season. Going into this season the Dogs were relying on a lot of Freshmen and Sophomores to develop a an almost unimaginable rate, the projected infield is a perfect example. The plan was to have an infield of So Chase Davidson at first, So Levi Hyams at second, Fr Kyle Farmer at shortstop and So Colby May at third. The Diamond Dogs have played exactly ZERO games with those 4 in the team. Colby May is the only one to have played in all games and hasn’t exactly impressed hitting .221 with 3 home runs which is redeemed somewhat by his 17 RBI’s. The lack of consistency on the infield hasn’t helped the Dawg defence, currently fielding at .961 with 29 errors, not exactly how you win SEC games. While the offence is based on the production of the Sophomores and Freshmen the pitching was supposed to be able to rely on one Senior and one Junior in Jeff Walters and Justin Grimm, like most other areas of the team it hasn’t exactly worked out. Grimm is now 1-2 on the season with a 5.16 ERA this is positively outstanding in comparison to his Senior teammate Walters; 0-2 with a 9.58 ERA. Last week I wrote about how the Bulldogs played with guts in their game against Georgia Tech against Auburn at the weekend they showed none, especially on Friday and Sunday when they were completely shelled and didn’t look like they could do anything to stop it. They need to stop this scary slump before the weekend series with Mississippi State.

Despite another series win and now being ranked number 3 in the nation by USA Today the weekend series win over Maryland was still a little disappointing on account of Friday nights loss. As the guys on the Baseball America Top 25 podcast pointed out Tech should not be losing games to teams like Maryland, more to the point Deck McGuire should not lose to teams like Maryland. The sense of disappointment after a road series win highlights how far apart Tech and Georgia are at the moment. Another one of the reasons is that Tech is able to rely on the hitting of Juniors and Seniors like Cole Leonida, Derek Dieterich, Chase Burnette and Tony Plagman. That’s a strong middle order of guys all hitting over .300 and all with double figures in RBI’s which is championship calibre production. The Yellow Jackets have reached a level of play that could see them not being challenged until they visit Virginia on April 9th by which time they could believably be at 25 wins on the season. As well as team recognition two Jackets are now being recognised for their individual success, Junior pitcher Deck McGuire had been named on the initial watch list for the 2010 Pitcher of the Year award to be announced in July. Shortstop Derek Dietrich has also been nominated on the watch list for the Wallace Award for the nations best shortstop, Derek finished as a semi-finalist for the award last year. These two awards are just more evidence that this Tech team is built to succeed.

SEC Notes
The more I follow NCAA baseball the more I learn and the first weekend of SEC play taught me an awful lot. Here are just a few observations.
• Florida are quickly looking like an elite team, sweeping Mississippi State in Gainesville this week helped the Gators move to 16-3 on the season and behind an incredibly clutch line-up and solid pitching they seem to be the number one team in the nation.
• The Arkansas-LSU series this weekend provided some of the most gripping action of this young season and could easily be a dress rehearsal for the College World Series. LSU expects to have ace Anthony Ranaudo back at the weekend but even he may have been outdueled by Razorback senior Mike Bolsinger.
• The weekend series victories for Ole Miss and Alabama showed these two teams are for real and their series against Florida and Arkansas respectively will really give us an idea of where everyone stands in the SEC.