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Message: [QUOTE="Baseballguy, post: 2680921, member: 7100"] To preface this post I want to say I had very high expectations for the Huskies this year and I am grading based off of that. Offense: C The offense, to me, has underachieved a bit this season. While the homerun numbers are up significantly, the team batting average and slugging percentage are very similar to last year. What this means is the team is getting hits at the same rate and they are not finding as many gaps compared to last year. I think this stat reflects why the offense tends to stall in games. There are very good pieces in the lineup, as mentioned in previous posts. If they can find a few more gaps or square up a few more balls I’d imagine the runs will follow. Starting Pitching: B+ Coming into the season this was where my expectations were the highest. With Cate, Feole and Gardner it looked like UConn had the best weekend rotation in the AAC and probably a Top-15 in the country. All three have pitched much better recently which boosted my grade up. Cate hasn’t really been himself outside of his last 2 starts. Feole has struggled with control at times and isn’t going deep into games like he showed last year. Chase had issues going deep into games after getting hit around second time through the order. I’d say Kersten has been the most consistent starter to this point. He’s been the only guy of the four that gives you exactly what you expect from him since the start of the season to now. Some of these struggles are/were of their own doing but some of it can be attributed to the coaching staff, more on that later. Bullpen: D+ In my opinion the bullpen has not been as bad as the boneyard community thinks. The bullpen has had a fair amount of injuries thrusting inexperienced freshman into the limelight. Due to those injuries the coaching staff has been forced to pitch their 7th or lower pitching option in big spots. To expect these guys to come in with Cate/Feole/Wallace stuff is unreasonable. Trevor has been serviceable almost all season and Colby, Simeone and Ronnie have all shown flashes. I think some of the bullpen’s struggles stem from the coaching staff, which again I’ll mention later. Once CJ, Dan and Polonia come back to a staff armed with PJ and Wallace, the bullpen should be in great shape. Defense: B+ This has been the biggest surprise so far. After some of the debacles last years it was expected that there would be some improvements made in this category. The improvements have been very noticeable. Having Troy and Winkel playing full time this year are massive upgrades from last year. Woody is a major improvement to the infield as well. Feldstien and Fedko are shaky at times but are more than capable regardless of the offensive production they bring. Outside of 1 or 2 games they haven’t made any game changing blunders. If they can keep this up it will be huge come the conference championship and regionals, assuming they make them. Coaching: B+ The coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for the team they have fielded this year. The JUCO transfers and the freshman they brought in have made an immediate impact. On top of that Penders pretty much nailed the lineup from game one which has eliminated some early season struggles the team has had in the previous 2 years. The base running has improved too, although I believe some of that is luck (i.e. yesterday Penders sent Susi to score on a ball that he had no business sending him on and the catcher missed it). A couple things preventing a higher grade here, I alluded to earlier. One of the things I’ve noticed with the starters is the pitch calling. It seems they love the strikeout too much and stunted what could be with this rotation. It’s most noticeable with Mason. Mason’s strength last year was his ability to induce weak contact with his changeup allowing him to go deeper into games. This year the coaching staff has turned him into a carbon copy of Cate, fastball and curveball only. Mason’s strikeouts have skyrocketed but with that so have his pitch counts. On top of that I heard that Cate had developed a nice changeup during his time with the US team. I haven’t heard Chris mention it during games at all. The bullpen usage leaves much to be desired as well. I understand that there have been injuries to key cogs in the pen but this issue has followed Penders for the few years I’ve followed the team. He gets too stuck on his guys and has poor feel when to pull pitchers. More often than not this leads to mid-inning, high stress appearances from a reliever just entering a game. Hopefully as the bullpen arms become healthy this will sort it self out. Overall: B This team has phenomenal potential. If they can put it all together I’d imagine a deep post-season run is obtainable. [/QUOTE]

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