BB: SCAC: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[Ralph Turner]

Found the following interesting, funny and sad:

http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2007/03/15/baseball-player-fakes-getting-hit-by-pitch/

As the Arkansas catcher, he is finished!

[infielddad]

Gus,
My son speaks very highly of Neil and Neil could not have been nicer in the things he said about the way Jason played the game.  If Jason is who you were thinking of, thank you also. 
I had a chance to email with Neil on another site and thought it was great when he decided to take the coaching position.
If I remember correctly, Neil went to one of the Midwest League Games when Jason played near his home in Illinois. Hope that gets to happen again.

[Gus Sinski]

Found the following interesting, funny and sad:

http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2007/03/15/baseball-player-fakes-getting-hit-by-pitch/

As the Arkansas catcher, he is finished!

I believe only soccer players have the patent on the blatant faking of injuries.

I remember watching that last season and wondering how the post-ejection argument between Dave Van Horn and the plate umpire would have gone...

VAN HORN: Why'd you toss my player?!?
UMP: He pointed his bat at me!
VAN HORN: He should have been on first! He took one in the arm!
UMP: He was never hit!
VAN HORN: How can you be so sure?
UMP: He pointed at me WITH THE SAME ARM!
VAN HORN: Oh...

[frank_ezelle]

A quick Millsaps post:

Millsaps story on Illinois Wesleyan game:  http://www.millsaps.edu/athletic/baseball/032007story.shtml

Millsaps box on IW Game:  http://www.iwu.edu/%7Eiwunews/sports/bb2007/mcb-0320.htm

Millsaps will broadcast/webcast all 4 games with Southwestern this weekend.  The second game of the Saturday DH will be co-broadcast with a local high school baseball game with the Millsaps updates being given in between innings of the high school game.

Link to listen:  http://www.espnradio1240.com/listenlive.php

Game Schedule:  Friday at 3:00--Saturday DH starting at 1:00--Sunday at 1:00.

[Lynx Fan]

Rhodes played a nice game vs. Ill-Wesleyan coming out on top 7-5. They continue to get consistent production through out the lineup. A double-double this weekend vs Depauw will answer the questions regarding depth.

Lynx defeat Illinois Wesleyan 7-5
03/21/07--- The Rhodes Baseball team defeated Illinois Wesleyan this afternoon 7-5. Junior Robert Flanagan picked up the victory coming out of the bullpen, pitching 3 innings, giving up 1 hit, and striking out 5. Flanagan is now 8-0 on the year. Sophomore Charles Simmons picked up his 6th save of the year pitching one inning and striking out 1. Sophomore Drew Hubbard was 2-3 with a double and a walk. Junior Matt Beesley hit a 2 run homerun in the 3rd to put the Lynx up 5-2. Juniors Richard Hurd and Daniel Vanaman were both 2-4 on the day. Hurd had 1 RBI, while Vanaman had 2 RBI's and a run scored.

[frank_ezelle]

The guys up at Rhodes are piling up the wins--8 wins by Flanagan has to be somewhere near the top of the individual stats for D3.  Rhodes has played a lot of games already this year so that factors in on stats leaders, etc., but is there any concern that Flanagan and Holt are 1-2 in the league in innings pitched?  They are both right at 50 innings and when you start adding up the remaining league games, the cross over games, the SCAC Tournament, and the NCAA Tournament it seems like 100+ for both of them is likely.

Fox and Kindler were 1-2 in innings pitched last year at 91 and 87 in a 50 game season and I'm sure that they pitched more innings in the 2nd half of the season.  Flanagan and Holt are a good bit ahead of that pace after 24 games if they are going to throw 6-9 innings in their remaining starts which is what I would expect.

Also, for those of you who can't listen to the radio at work Friday at 3pm, there is the option of gametracker for the Southwestern-Millsaps game:  http://southwesternpirates.cstv.com/

[Spence]

I wouldn't be concerned at all about Flanagan and Holt's innings. Good teams with good aces end up having those guys throw quite a few innings.

I think Rhodes is pretty good. I'll be interested to see how they do against LaGrange/Washington/Emory at the end of the year. So far they've played some solid teams, but the overall weakness of their schedule has allowed them to throw Flanagan or Holt in all of them.

[frank_ezelle]

I'm going to assume that the Rhodes coaching staff has everything well under control and they monitor the innings closely.  It's just a lot of innings for any D3 college pitcher.

I looked back at the stats for last season (http://www.ncaasports.com/baseball/mens/stats) and I looked under the list of D3 pitchers with the most wins for 2006.  It lists all of the pitchers with 8 wins or more (most wins last year was 13, well within the reach of Holt and Flanagan) and only 4 pitchers threw more than 100 innings.  That would be the top 3 in wins along with Blake Rice.  John Fox would have been over 100 also but he missed about 3 starts with a bad ankle.

When you consider the number of teams in D3 and how they all need to get the most out of their ace pitcher, it appears that 100 innings must be about the upper limit for a season and Rhodes might easily have 2 over that mark in 2007.  Just an interesting thing to watch as the season progresses and we get into the key games in the warmer weather.

[Gus Sinski]

 Another conference weekend begins. Big series for Milsaps if the Majors want to recoup their losses from the Austin series. Be interesting to see if someone other than Hollenbeck can step up on the mound.

Meanwhile, going 0-4 but looking good in the process won't help Hendrix against Austin. The Warriors were impressively competitive at Trinity last week, but to stay alive, they need some W's this weekend.

[Lynx Fan]

One interesting thing to note about their # of innings... Holt and Flanagan are racking up innings but the coaches have a leash on them when it comes to the number of pitches thrown.

Both pitchers are always around the plate and remarkably efficient. Their games tend to go very quickly with out a lot of wasted pitches. Yes there are the occasional long innings but when Flanny or Holt pitch I always have plenty of time to catch my flight out of Memphis.

[Spence]

Well it really all comes down to three things: pitch count, mechanics and conditioning. Marietta's been running guys out there 100+ innings for a long time, but we have a conditioning and training program in place that has worked for that. We've had very few injuries to top end pitchers, and the one to DeSalvo was at the beginning of the season and to his knee, so not really attributable to use at all.

Flanagan's a BIG guy, I wouldn't think he'd have much problem throwing a lot of innings unless something's seriously wrong. Holt may, depending. I've never seen him so I don't know what his mechanics look like or what pitches he uses most.

[frank_ezelle]

Hendrix got their first SCAC win of the season yesterday before getting hammered by Austin in the 2nd game of the DH.  Scores were 8-6 and 19-0 but the bottom line is that they split the opening two games of the series. 

Centre took care of OU by a 12-1 margin in a 7-inning game to open up that series.

Millsaps outhit Southwestern 11 to 4 but only outscored them 4 to 3 to opening up that series.  Travis Bogue started for Millsaps and pitched well for 5 innings and then he got in trouble to open the 6th with a couple of walks, a wild pitch and 2 of the 3 hits he allowed for the game.  Freshman Bobby Osburn came in and got out of the 6th inning jam and finished up the game allowing only 1 hit in 3.2 innings.  Morrison went the entire game for Southwestern--of the 11 hits he gave up, 3 were to Hunter Owens and 3 were to Hunter Abrams.

Rhodes hosts DePauw in a big DH today followed by another DH tomorrow.  DePauw started the season 0-5 but then they won 8 straight before losing to Franklin College on Tuesday.  I don't see anything about DePauw broadcasting the games but Rhodes has livestats at this link:

http://www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball/livestats/xlive.htm

First game starts at noon.

[Bob_Lotts]

Centre took both games from OU today to go up 3-0 in the series...OU is a completely different team since the Rhodes series. They started 4-0 this year and have dropped 20 straight decisions!! 20!! I've seen this team play all year and really they are so much better than a 4-20 record. But you have to make plays and score runs and they have not done either the last two day.

Centre is a good team that smacks the ball around...Pitching depth is a concern and their defense is shaky but boy do they play hard....

[frank_ezelle]

DePauw opened up the season by derailing the Rhodes express, taking a DH and snapping the 16 game Rhodes winning streak.  Holt got the loss in the 4-2  first game and Catalanotto took the loss in the 8-5 second game, giving up 8 runs but only 3 were earned.

Box scores for the game: 
http://www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball/2007_results/3-24-07_DePauw1.htm
http://www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball/2007_results/3-24-07_DePauw2.htm

Live stat for today's games:  http://www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball/livestats/xlive.htm

[Gus Sinski]

 Hendrix took it off the shins against Austin Saturday, losing 18-8.

Dave Keine had the Warriors in the game until leaving after the second inning with an injury. That's when the pelota fiesta started for Austin. Matt Aurand, Jordon Robison and Bennett Herrick combined for nine hits for the 'Roos.

Austin, I have a feeling, is going to be a "pest" for the league's best teams this season. They proved themselves against Millsaps, and are obviously playing with a lot of confidence. It'll be interesting to see what they can do.

Hendrix, right now, is faced with a grim choice: Either hope for complete games from its starters or pitch Wheeler Gnat until his arm goes on strike. The bullpen depth just isn't there. It's a shame the team had to lose projected conference starter Jason Wendt to a season-ending injury, because it forced the at-times impressive David Hagan into a starter's role, diluting the relief pool even more.