Talkin’ Baseball
Yesterday, Jake asked a question to our writers. What happened next was a great conversation about the baseball team. It inspired us to make this a weekly feature on the site. We’ll pick a topic, discuss it, and share it with our readers.
Jake Wimberly: How many “starters” are returning in baseball and “weekend pitching starters”?
Justin Strawn: Infield, 4 of the 5 starters return. If you count Vickerson as a starter last year, he’s the only outfielder. Weekend pitchers, Mitchell is back and it really depends on if you count Preston Brown as a weekend starter. He was until he got injured.
Josh Barnhill: Fitts is back – he started every weekend last year.
Andrew Norwood: I think Fitts is moving to Closer.
Justin: True, but he is closing this year. Fitts and Tatum are both closing this year.
Josh: Ross is moving to the bullpen.
Justin: I thought he was too, but he has been starting in the scrimmages.
Josh: Everything is tentative. Every year we start out with ____ rotation and by April it’s completely different. Lucas Laster is also back.
Justin: Oh yeah. I am doing a lineup prediction on Friday for a coach that only played the same starting lineup twice all year. Laster is, but I wasn’t sure he was technically a weekend starter.
Josh: Cohen is going to give the guys with the best “stuff” starts the first 3-4 weeks. Then, when they don’t pan out, he’ll switch to old reliable. Fitts will be starting by May if I bet $100.
Justin: Probably. I hate how he puts no value on the regular season.
Josh: Well, you’ve got to put Hudson, Sexton, etc out there to see if they can get it done. Those are the guys who could carry you to a CWS. Using Fitts and Mitchell is just saying we are going to try to grind it out and hope to scrap past some teams.
Justin: Hudson is apparently working on a new delivery and has been struggling. He has the most potential of all the pitchers.
Josh: I think he should be the closer. Short spurts throwing gas. Or maybe a setup man.
Justin: I’m just afraid we are going to go back to letting the bullpen carry the innings load. We caught lightning in a bottle with that in 2013.
Josh: Whatever works. We just need to hit. If we score 4-5 a game I think we host a Regional.
Justin: Definitely. Stranding the bases loaded with no outs drove me crazy last year.
And that is how our baseball conversation went. If you want to listen in to some guys just talking off the top of their heads about baseball, come back next week, and we’ll let you in on the conversation.