[treetop11]

I actually thought that, in contrast to the season, that we pitched pretty well in the postseason. Were we lights out on the mound? With one notable exception, no. But I think that we were good enough, and probably over-achieved. Even today, many of the hits against were groundball singles.

I think that our postseason problems were more in other areas, including poor baserunning and lack of hitting, especially with RISP, and especially from the heart of our order. We won this season because of scoring a ton of runs, and it seemed that was challenging for us in the postseason. Of course, part of that is facing excellent pitchers, like today.

-m.

I had been saying for months that we were very vulnerable in the post season despite being a really, really good team. In short,  we has weakness in pitching and our defense was only so-so, not great enough to compensate for pitching weakness, especially our lack of depth in quality pitchers.
Your point about our pitchers doing pretty well in the CWS underscores my concerns. We gave up 9 runs - a 4.50 average. We scored 6, an average of 3. Top teams making the CWS mostly have top notch pitchers. We faced teams who had not only a few studs but also other quality pitchers on the roster. Despite having real good hitters on our team, the quality of pitchers we were to face and did face contained our hitting - didn't shut it down, but able to limit damage. Our top pitchers (Mathews and Dixon) are good but don't match the opposing studs and our guys would have needed to throw their best games ever. After them, it was a crapshoot. Bottom line is that we got enough performance from our pitchers to stay close, but they weren't great enough to hold the opposition to fewer runs in the close games. It's not common in these high level CWS games for them to be slugfests. Most notably, after our opponents were able to get Dixon and Mathews out of the game, we didn't have the pitchers to shut down Wake and Tenn in the key situations late, giving up winning runs. Wake and Tenn did have those pitchers beyond their starters.

And our D couldn't bail us out. Just as one example, Rios threw out a Tenn runner trying to score on a sac fly for a double play that got us out of the inning. But a second similar play occurred in a following inning, where Rios' throw was strong but off line and when Moore applied the tag, the runner beat it by about an inch. Had Rios made a more accurate throw, the it would have been another double play and got us out of that inning without Tenn scoring any runs. Had that happened, I would bet that we would go on to win. Our guys can make some really good plays as Rios did on the first one, but we aren't great enough to consistently do so in order to bail out our pitchers. 

The weakness in pitching and defense in combo is the reason we haven't gone further in the CWS. Facing top notch pitchers in a short series, our hitters aren't as effective in overcoming the weakness. We were geared more for the long term full season because things average out.

No argument with any of that. I'd love to have more shutdown pitchers! Though the one year that we had both Justin Wayne and Jason Young available for the final game did not work out well for us. There's always going to be randomness as part of baseball. You can just give yourself a good shot.

My only point is that we relied on heavy and productive bats all season, and that those same bats did not drive our team in the postseason when they needed to do so. As you note, part of that is that we faced great pitchers. Not sure that it would have mattered anyway since we are not deep in pitching. I guess it just means that, in this instance, bats that were great all season were not great in the postseason, and that was the only way we were going to get very far with this team.

-m.

The main point that I want to make and it's not intended at all to dispute you in any way, only to objectively try to describe what is needed, what our team needs, to win the NC. We hit a bunch of HRs and ranked high in the nation. We scored a bunch of runs. More importantly, if you look at the batting averages of our guys up and down the lineup, we are as good as anyone and definitely compared to the other teams that made the CWS. Virtually every guy in the lineup was hitting over .300 on up to Rios and Troy who hovered around .400. Bowser was the lowest but still at a fairly respectable level in the .270's. Sapien until hurt was over .300 IIRC. Cobb was over .300, his replacement Becerra was over .300. Only Campball was really low and some questioned him playing. We lost a little pop in the lineup without Sapien and having Campball in there.

The fact that we virtually had a lineup 1-9 that was averaging a hit every 3 or 4 times out of 10 ABs plus walks, on base by errors, and HBP is a tremendous number of baserunners and scoring opportunities over a long season. The hitting CAN win out - just by averages - even with modest pitching. The problem is that, in a short series or winner take all, you can have too many of our hitters have those 6 or 7 times as outs, particularly facing the best pitchers. The odds for winning are tougher than winning over the long haul. And that doesn't include the fact that our hitters can hit hard but right at someone or the opponent makes a spectacular fielding play or we make base running gaffes (like we did) which snuff out rallies. Although, I agree that our hitting could have been more timely and made a difference, I don't think hitting was the cause for knocking us out - the averages were not in our favor having to go against the top pitchers only. IMO, we would do better in a 7 or 10 game series against any one of those teams or against the 8 in the CWS over a season or mini-season where teams had to use more pitchers and our guys got to see not only more of the pitching staffs but also more of the aces. Our pitching staff was basically a constant as being decent overall staff but not great. Even our best pitcher Mathews is not as good as the aces on the other teams. So our staff in a longer period would likely do what it did all season, give up a number of runs consistent with our high team ERA and scramble patching together the rotation, but our averages in hitting would go up from what we scored in the two games and prevail enough to win a 7/10 game series or season or come close. But in the post season format, pitching and defense along with timely hits/lucky breaks prevail. 

Bottom line is that for us to win the NC going forward, we need 2 pitching studs and 4 more guys not that far behind and 4 guys who are decent. If the same level of hitting was sustained, we would be almost unbeatable, but even if we had 3 or 4 guys in the lineup hitting .250 to .300, we could still win the NC.

[treetop11]

I actually thought that, in contrast to the season, that we pitched pretty well in the postseason. Were we lights out on the mound? With one notable exception, no. But I think that we were good enough, and probably over-achieved. Even today, many of the hits against were groundball singles.

I think that our postseason problems were more in other areas, including poor baserunning and lack of hitting, especially with RISP, and especially from the heart of our order. We won this season because of scoring a ton of runs, and it seemed that was challenging for us in the postseason. Of course, part of that is facing excellent pitchers, like today.

-m.

I had been saying for months that we were very vulnerable in the post season despite being a really, really good team. In short,  we has weakness in pitching and our defense was only so-so, not great enough to compensate for pitching weakness, especially our lack of depth in quality pitchers.
Your point about our pitchers doing pretty well in the CWS underscores my concerns. We gave up 9 runs - a 4.50 average. We scored 6, an average of 3. Top teams making the CWS mostly have top notch pitchers. We faced teams who had not only a few studs but also other quality pitchers on the roster. Despite having real good hitters on our team, the quality of pitchers we were to face and did face contained our hitting - didn't shut it down, but able to limit damage. Our top pitchers (Mathews and Dixon) are good but don't match the opposing studs and our guys would have needed to throw their best games ever. After them, it was a crapshoot. Bottom line is that we got enough performance from our pitchers to stay close, but they weren't great enough to hold the opposition to fewer runs in the close games. It's not common in these high level CWS games for them to be slugfests. Most notably, after our opponents were able to get Dixon and Mathews out of the game, we didn't have the pitchers to shut down Wake and Tenn in the key situations late, giving up winning runs. Wake and Tenn did have those pitchers beyond their starters.

And our D couldn't bail us out. Just as one example, Rios threw out a Tenn runner trying to score on a sac fly for a double play that got us out of the inning. But a second similar play occurred in a following inning, where Rios' throw was strong but off line and when Moore applied the tag, the runner beat it by about an inch. Had Rios made a more accurate throw, the it would have been another double play and got us out of that inning without Tenn scoring any runs. Had that happened, I would bet that we would go on to win. Our guys can make some really good plays as Rios did on the first one, but we aren't great enough to consistently do so in order to bail out our pitchers. 

The weakness in pitching and defense in combo is the reason we haven't gone further in the CWS. Facing top notch pitchers in a short series, our hitters aren't as effective in overcoming the weakness. We were geared more for the long term full season because things average out.

No argument with any of that. I'd love to have more shutdown pitchers! Though the one year that we had both Justin Wayne and Jason Young available for the final game did not work out well for us. There's always going to be randomness as part of baseball. You can just give yourself a good shot.

My only point is that we relied on heavy and productive bats all season, and that those same bats did not drive our team in the postseason when they needed to do so. As you note, part of that is that we faced great pitchers. Not sure that it would have mattered anyway since we are not deep in pitching. I guess it just means that, in this instance, bats that were great all season were not great in the postseason, and that was the only way we were going to get very far with this team.

-m.

The main point that I want to make and it's not intended at all to dispute you in any way, only to objectively try to describe what is needed, what our team needs, to win the NC. We hit a bunch of HRs and ranked high in the nation. We scored a bunch of runs. More importantly, if you look at the batting averages of our guys up and down the lineup, we are as good as anyone and definitely compared to the other teams that made the CWS. Virtually every guy in the lineup was hitting over .300 on up to Rios and Troy who hovered around .400. Bowser was the lowest but still at a fairly respectable level in the .270's. Sapien until hurt was over .300 IIRC. Cobb was over .300, his replacement Becerra was over .300. Only Campball was really low and some questioned him playing. We lost a little pop in the lineup without Sapien and having Campball in there.

The fact that we virtually had a lineup 1-9 that was averaging a hit every 3 or 4 times out of 10 ABs plus walks, on base by errors, and HBP is a tremendous number of baserunners and scoring opportunities over a long season. The hitting CAN win out - just by averages - even with modest pitching. The problem is that, in a short series or winner take all, you can have too many of our hitters have those 6 or 7 times as outs, particularly facing the best pitchers. The odds for winning are tougher than winning over the long haul. And that doesn't include the fact that our hitters can hit hard but right at someone or the opponent makes a spectacular fielding play or we make base running gaffes (like we did) which snuff out rallies. Although, I agree that our hitting could have been more timely and made a difference, I don't think hitting was the cause for knocking us out - the averages were not in our favor having to go against the top pitchers only. IMO, we would do better in a 7 or 10 game series against any one of those teams or against the 8 in the CWS over a season or mini-season where teams had to use more pitchers and our guys got to see not only more of the pitching staffs but also more of the aces. Our pitching staff was basically a constant as being decent overall staff but not great. Even our best pitcher Mathews is not as good as the aces on the other teams. So our staff in a longer period would likely do what it did all season, give up a number of runs consistent with our high team ERA and scramble patching together the rotation, but our averages in hitting would go up from what we scored in the two games and prevail enough to win a 7/10 game series or season or come close. But in the post season format, pitching and defense along with timely hits/lucky breaks prevail. 

Bottom line is that for us to win the NC going forward, we need 2 pitching studs and 4 more guys not that far behind and 4 guys who are decent. If the same level of hitting was sustained, we would be almost unbeatable, but even if we had 3 or 4 guys in the lineup hitting .250 to .300, we could still win the NC.