Road Trip After-thoughts (or is that an after-taste?)

■ Baseball America's John Manuel has some thoughts on Arizona State's Josh Spence: Man At Work Keeps Winning Admirers:

But the Jamie Moyer of college baseball wants to lull hitters to sleep. He wants them to feel comfortable in the box. He wants them to be looking for a certain pitch, in a certain spot, at a certain speed. Because one thing that is for certain, is that the hitter rarely gets it. If the hitter is looking soft away, as he’s thrown the two prior pitches, zip . . . 86 on the hands.

■ And BA's Aaron Fitt had a few comments about Missouri's struggles in Arizona:

Very tough early-season road trip to Arizona, and their young arms struggled. I think they'll be fine now that the schedule eases up, putting less strain on the pitching. The Tepesch you saw yesterday needs to keep it going for them to have a real shot to make a deep postseason run. I still believe in the Tigers.

■ Kendall Rogers, in a live chat on CollegeBaseball.Rivals.com, was asked about Kansas State's early success, and he brought up the Tigers as well:

Kansas State is off to a great start, but the Big 12 is so loaded this year they may not make it into the tournament. KSU obviously has to make some noise in the conference race, but right now, the Wildcats are in place of Missouri in my eyes. What a disappointment the Tigers have been so far.

■ RockMNation points out the possibility is there for MU to be back up to .500 by the time the Big 12 schedule begins:

Next up: the home opener against Western Illinois on Wednesday and four home games against Ball State over the weekend (and then another bout with WIU next Tuesday). Sweep those, and you're back to .500...but then again, it's pretty hard to sweep anybody over a 4-game series.

■ And lastly, to repeat a definitive statement by Andre DeWitt in Good news for MU baseball:

It's no longer February.