Friday, March 18, 2011

Mizzou Baseball Quotes & Notes: Defense & Offense

Baseball coach Jaska looks for defensive consistency after win (cm-life.com)
The Chippewas had three early errors and four throughout the game. The pitching performance by Sabol kept those errors from being costly, but Jaska said he wasn’t pleased with the amount of opportunities Madonna had.

“We can’t allow teams to have opportunities,” he said. “Sometimes, we put a bow around the ball and gift wrap it a little bit.”

CMU is on its largest winning streak of the early season. It sits at three and, over the weekend, it’ll have a chance to improve it to as many as seven with a four-game road trip against Missouri.

“We are starting to play more as a team,” Sabol said. “Guys are learning the ropes and, hopefully, we can run with this streak a little bit.”

Offensive numbers plummet around SEC, changes to aluminum bats resulting in power outage (therepublic.com)
As a result, across the 12-team Southeastern Conference, almost every offensive category has dropped compared to a year ago.

Some of the numbers:

— Homers have almost dropped in half, with 220 homers (through 197 games) last season compared to just 120 (through 204 games) this spring. Scoring is down as well over the same period — from 8.06 runs per game to just 6.68.

— Batting average has dropped from .313 to .304.

— ERA has dropped from 4.04 to 3.17.

— Conference teams have already combined for 25 shutouts. In 2010, there were only 33 shutouts the entire season.

Hot bats suddenly an issue (presstelegram.com)
In previous years, it wasn't unusual to see most teams average in the .300 range. Well, just look at the numbers for the Southern California 12, from the bottom up, after a month of play:

Pepperdine: .229 average, two home runs.

San Diego: .233, five.

San Diego State: .235, five.

Long Beach State: .244, one.

UCLA: .245, three.

CS Fullerton: .249, one.

USC: .248, three.

UC Santa Barbara: .264, four.

LMU: .283, three.

CS Northridge: .291, nine.

UC Riverside: .309, five.

UC Irvine: .334, four.

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