I like overreacting as much as the next guy, but one can worry way too much about stats 6 games into a baseball season. Means and standard deviations are what they are — it just looks worse when slumps are early in the season. We know Brownie and Fedko can play at this level. I’m far more interested in early results from those like Huber and Smith who haven’t shown what they can do at our level.
The ability of the pitching staff as a whole to throw strikes, however, has been very encouraging,and only one pitcher on the staff (Chudoba) has struggled in more than one appearance.
I agree that their starts have not been the best but Kyler Fedko had a dreadful start to the season and won Big East Player of the year and was an all American. Now, will Brown get to that level, likely not but it’s a long season and I’m confident that he, Huber and Fedko will turn it around, they’re too good not to.
In addition to what I wrote, while Chris Brown is off to a bad start, six games into a baseball season is a pretty small sample size, no question about it. Players go in and out of slumps (or hot streaks) quite frequently. I should also mention that as far as judging the qualities of the players on the team and how much playing time each player gets, I am pretty confident of the UConn baseball coaching staff in doing that job. They are certainly more qualified for doing that than me. And they certainly see more of the players than the fans do. Last year the coaches ended up benching Kyler Fedko and Chris Winkel for a time due to their slumps, but they eventually found their way back into the lineup and with great production to boot. We'll see how things go with Chris Brown. The coaching staff did make the decision to pinch hit for Brown late in the Sunday North Florida game.
As far as Chris Brown goes, I have to admit the defensive slump bothers me more then the lack of offensive production to start the season, as he pretty much won the job last year on the strength of his defensive play at 3B while his offense caught up as last season went along.
As far as other players go, while Ben Huber is new to the team, David Smith is not. This is his second year with UConn baseball, having to redshirt last season due to the transfer rules at the time. I would think the UConn coaching staff is fairly familiar with what his abilities are at this point. While Christian Fedko has shown he can play at this level, he doesn't seem to have a great reputation for his defensive play in the field, or for that matter, have great foot speed. Over the last couple of years Fedko has often been taken out for a pinch runner late in games (not always a strategy that I agree with, but that's the way it goes). I said before It looks like at this point he is the odd man out of the lineup, but you just never know how things are going to progress during the course of the season. Fedko has certainly shown over the years that he can hit. At the very least, I would expect Fedko to get starts at D.H. against lefty starting pitchers, plus pick up some other starts through the season as the coaches see the need arising, either with players being sat for a day or two for rest, or due to injury. And perhaps Fedko might get red hot with the bat at some point, helping in any decision to play him more.
