SBNation.com User Blog: mileskelly

How Sweep It Is

Baseball Wishes It Could Quit You, .500!!

Baseball Downs #8 Oklahoma!

Baseball is back to .500! Again!

Baseball takes K-State Series

Baseball Splits Rain-Shortened Series with Ok State

Baseball Opens Big 12 Play Against Oklahoma State

Baseball Plays Games... Wishes They Hadn't.

Matt Sayman has a book coming out!

Baseball Welcomes Illinois for Weekend Series

Baseball Defeats Louisiana Tech

More Baylor Baseball on TV!

Baseball Beats #12 Rice Behind Dominant Garner

Baseball Blanks Cal

Baseball Drops Rubber Game to UCLA

Baseball at UC Irvine: Swept Away

Opening Day for Baylor Baseball!

Baylor Baseball: The New Hotness

Baylor Baseball: To All Our Fallen Homies

That 2002 Feeling

2013 Baylor Baseball Schedule

Baylor Baseball 2013 Recruiting Class

Some Background on the "Worst Decision Ever"

Waco Super Regional Preview

Max Muncy Drafted in 5th Round

ODB's NCAA Tournament Primer: Waco Regional

MLB Draft Update: Ludy

Baylor Baseball MLB Draft Primer

Baseball Drops First Conference Game/Series

Baylor Baseball vs. Texas State Game Notes

Matt Sayman has a book coming out!

More Baylor Baseball on TV!

2013 Baylor Baseball Schedule

Max Muncy Drafted in 5th Round

mileskelly — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:22:29 -0000

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. Well played, Baylor Baseball.

Apparently, I should be negative and write Baylor athletic teams off more often, since most of them seem to be dead set on making me look silly. Baseball responded to my last post with a four-game winning streak including a weekend sweep of UT, thrusting themselves into second in the Big 12 only a single game behind league leading OU. At 11-6 Big 12 but only 24-20 overall, there's still plenty of work to be done, but suddenly, there's a very real change that BU can take its second Big 12 championship in a row.

Baylor only has eight games left in their regular season, including road series against relatively weak Kansas (9-9; 25-18) and Texas Tech (6-12; 20-24) teams. Baylor hasn't been good on the road this year, but those are winnable series. In contrast, Oklahoma has eleven games left with conference series against a surprisingly decent WVU team (9-6; 27-18), a talented OSU team (7-7; 32-11) that has been a disappointment in conference, and a very dangerous KSU team (9-6; 31-14). OU is on the road for both the WVU and KSU series. I have to call that advantage Baylor.

If the team can take its mid-week games against UTA and UTSA (no guarantee considering that they've lost to UTSA already this season) and if they can win both Big 12 series on the road, then there's a post-season berth in their future. If not, things get dicey. As Samuel L. Jackson would say, hold on to your butts.

So how did we get to this point? Well, this magical week started with a 9-5 victory over Dallas Baptist. Sterling Wynn got the start and struck out five in three innings. He also walked three and gave up a couple of runs, showcasing the ability and rawness that makes him so intriguing to me. Only a freshman, Wynn has plenty of time to develop the control he'll need to be an effective starter. Wynn was followed by Sean Spicer, who gave up another three runs in 2.2 innings of work. The Bears stayed in a hole until tying it up in the eighth. In the ninth, Baylor plated four runs on four hits and an error, putting the game firmly out of reach. Orf, Towey, Miller, and Wendel contributed two hits each.

Friday's game against Texas was never in much doubt. Max Garner threw one of his best games of the year, going 7.1 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 Ks. Crayton Bare finished the game off with 1.2 scorless innings. Lawton Langford and Jake Miller were the offensive stars, totalling 5 hits and 4 RBI between them. Miller has been en fuego for the last several weeks, pushing his average up to .288 after hovering around .200 for the first six weeks of the season.

If you like pitching duels, Saturday's game was for you. Baylor won 1-0 on a day when offense was virtually impossible to come by. The difference? A two-out RBI walk by Lawton Langford. That is sooooo Langford. I mean, if anybody is going to win a baseball game with a walk, it's him. He's an on-base machine.

On the bump, Austin Stone pitched his most impressive game of the season - 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 10 Ks. Only a sophomore, Stone should be the anchor of next year's staff. Josh Michaelec and Crayton Bare followed Stone with three innings of shutout ball. I feel that I need to give a lot of credit to Baylor's bullpen. They got bombed a couple times early in the season, but Bare, Michaelec, Kolt Browder, and Doug Ashby have all been excellent for most of the season. More on Crayton Bare in a moment.

Sunday's game saw a really nice start from Ryan Smith as he went 6.2 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 Ks. He left two men on base in the seventh, but Ashby came on and stranded them both. Once again, Crayton Bare finished the came off in the ninth with three Ks. If you're keeping track, Crayton Bare pitched out of the pen in all four games this week. He's now thrown 43.2 innings out of the pen, more than our back end starters Smith and Stone. While Bare may walk a few too many batters, he's been nothing short of exceptional, striking out 46 on his way to a 2.06 ERA. Steve Smith has been leaning on him heavily, and my only fear is that they run out of whatever type of duct tape is keeping Bare's left arm attached to his body... Actually, Michaelec is sitting at 37.2 innings currently, so their heavy use is mainly a function of the starters not going as deep in some games this year.

At the plate, Langford, Towey, and Miller once again carried the big sticks, accounting for 6 of the Bears' 10 hits. The coming week will be yet another interesting one for this year's roller coaster of a team. Job number one is taking care of UTA mid-week so that they can roll into Kansas with 25 wins. I still believe 30+ is the magic number to sneak into a regional, so every win is precious now. Over the weekend, the Beaver got a taste of what it enjoyed so much last year. Don't let it go hungry now.

mileskelly — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:42:34 -0000

Baylor Baseball isn't like you .500; it can't get by on a couple of high-altitude wins a year and make the CWS!

Hey Miles, I asked myself this past Tuesday night while looking over box scores, is there anything more disappointing in college baseball than taking a high-profile conference series against OU during the weekend and then dropping your Tuesday game to TEXAS FREAKING STATE? No, other Miles. No, there is not.

Just before the TCU weekend series, Kendall Rogers answered a tweet from @T_Ducoff, who asked what the Bears would need to do to make the post season. Rogers' response was as follows, "Stock rising, zero room for error." Two things struck me about this tweet: 1) @T_Ducoff is apparently related to Jonathan Ducoff, a very talented 2014 middle-infield commit for the Bears. 2) A series loss at TCU would definitely be considered an "error." Well, the error has now officially happened.

This series was tightly contested from top-to-toes (each game was decided by one run in the late innings), and Baylor can take some comfort from playing good baseball on the road. Unfortunately, moral victories don't get them any closer to a regional appearance.

In game one, Max Garner gave a workman-like pitching performance, going 7 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 2 Ks. Crayton Bare, who has been dominant out of the pen down the stretch, came for 2 IP, 0 R, 3 Ks. Nathan Orf had a nice game at the plate, but when doesn't he? The real hero of the game was Mitch Price, who had a pinch hit game winning solo homer in the 9th.

Price has struggled since his decent start, but I hope to see more of him to finish out the season. Whatever happens for the rest of this year, Price is going to be a big part of the next three. The more in-game pitching he can see, the better he'll be next year and beyond.

Game two was a 15 inning marathon that Baylor dropped 2-1. Based on the final score, you might think that TCU's pitching was dominant. You would be wrong. Baylor had 12 hits and 2 walks over the course of the game. In fact, in the eighth inning, they loaded the bases with only one out, but couldn't manage to get a run across. TCU made plays at the right time, and Baylor couldn't get the big hit when they had to have it.

A great deal of credit must be given to Austin Stone and Josh Michaelec who combined for 15 innings of 2-run ball. It's a real shame that their offense couldn't get the win for them. Michaelec, a Junior, has been nothing short of spectacular out of the bullpen, allowing only a .211 opponent average and striking out 7.82 batters per nine on his way to a 2.27 ERA over 35.1 innings.

Game three looked promising after Baylor put up four runs in the third by way of a Toth single, a Langford walk, an Orf double, and finally, a Towey bomb - his fourth of the season. However, that was the end of the scoring for the Bears, and Ryan Smith and Crayton Bare gave up the winning run in the seventh inning.

Sadly, Baylor only has two options to make a regional at this point in the year. They can either win 8 of their last 12 games plus a couple in the Big 12 Tournament and go over 30 wins on the season, or they can continue muddling along to the tune of .500 and win the conference tournament outright. I wish that I could say either option sounded likely, but that is not the case. Especially not when Dillon Newman was nowhere to be found this weekend. I've been looking for information on Newman's situation, but I haven't found anything. I have to assume that it's some kind of injury. He has been our best starter all year (he's only walked 2 (!) batters this season. That's crazy.), and he pitched well against OU, so it's certainly not an issue of performance.

Honestly, I didn't mean for this post to be such a bummer, but I'm just not seeing a way for this team to reach its potential anymore. The Bears are certainly not the only Big 12 team that will miss out. There's virtually no way that TCU makes it, and Kendall Rogers pronounced UT dead earlier today on twitter. That leaves OU, K State, and Oklahoma State as the most likely teams to find post-season berths. Kansas also has an outside shot, but that's just too weird to think about. I'm going to pretend that I don't even see their 9-6 conference record.

I would leave you with a "feed the beaver", but I'm pretty sure that the beaver has headed upstream to keep tabs on the new football stadium. He can only take so much, you know?

mileskelly — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:11:10 -0000

10
OKLAHOMA
(28-8, 8-4) Rank: 8

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
2	3	1	3	0	0	0	1	0	10	14	2
4	0	0	0	0	0	4	4	X	12	10	3

Final Stats | Quotes

Waco, Texas • Attendance: 2,787

12
BAYLOR
(19-17, 7-4) Rank: NR

I couldn't be more impressed with Baylor Baseball right now if I tried. That was a truly inspiring series from the Bears, who took the rubber game from the Oklahoma Sooners in dramatic fashion on Sunday afternoon. To tell the story of this series, however, we need to start with game one, where Baylor scraped out a win against one of the best starting pitchers in the nation.

Jonathan Gray is Oklahoma's ace and a future Top-10 MLB draft prospect (barring injury of course... TINSTAAPP, after all). The kid is a CC Sabathia-like 6'4" - 245, and he throws a 98 MPH fastball. He doesn't just "touch" 98 mind you, he was hitting 98 in the fifth inning of Friday's game according to Kendall Rogers, who was in attendance. He's pretty much awesome, and if your favorite Major League team takes him in this summer's draft, then your favorite Major League team sucked last year and had a terrible record... So... Both sorry and congrats.

Anyway, apparently Dillon Newman didn't get the memo that he was supposed to lose this game, because he decided to match Gray inning-for-inning until Gray's bullpen faltered and gave up a walk-off homerun to CAL. EFFING. TOWEY. Here's a fun fact about Mr. Towey's weekend: He had only two hits in this series. They were both game winning homeruns. As Mark would say, Cal has BAMF stamped all over his wallet from this point forward.

Saturday's game was tough sledding against Dillon Overton - another Sooner pitcher expected to go in the first couple rounds of the draft. Overton is a lefty who sits in the low 90s with a decent slider and change. The Bears could only manage one run against him, and although Max Garner threw a nice game, he suffered the loss. The only bright spot for the Baylor offense was Nathan Orf's 3-3 day.

On Sunday, both teams were sick of pitcher's duels and decided to break out the lumber. Through the first seven innings, Miller (2-5, 3 RBI) and Porter (1-4, 2 R, 2 RBI) accounted for most of the offense, but in the eighth, with Bears down two runs, Cal Towey belted a game-winning grand slam. It's not an exaggeration to say that I've been waiting for Towey to break out the entire year. He's been hot for a couple weeks now, but this is the first series where he has flashed his homerun potential. He now sits at a very nice .312/.409/.493, and if he can keep this pace up, may find himself drafted this summer in the early-mid rounds of the draft. Another nice stat for Towey is a clutchiness factor of 10! I could tell you how I came up with that, but it's very scientific... you wouldn't understand... Especially you , Pras.

Next weekend, the Bears travel to Fort Worth to take on TCU, which is, without a doubt, the most disappointing team in the entire country. They were universally picked to win the Big 12 this year, and they currently sit at 5-7, 16-20. I'm actually a little worried about this series. It's not as if TCU suddenly lost all their talent... they just haven't played up to it. Here's hoping they don't start next weekend. Feed the Beaver.

Check out Baylor's official recap for stats and video from today's 12-10 win.

mileskelly — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:25:12 -0000

To be completely forthcoming, I feel a little silly celebrating a .500 record after last season's success. However, it's a good start, and the Bears (5-3 Big 12) are in fact sitting 3rd in a wide open conference. With Texas and TCU struggling mightily, the door is wide open for our team to make a run to Regionals if they can maintain their current pace. They will be tested this coming weekend against the conference leading and nationally ranked Oklahoma Sooners.

This past weekend, the Bears took two-of-three games against a relatively weak WVU team, and they came close to a sweep after a valiant comeback in game one. Dillon Newman started for the Bears on Friday, and much like two weeks ago, he pitched well until giving up the ghost in the middle innings. The offense fought back in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, but ultimately fell a run short. Cal Towey, who had a very nice weekend, paced the bats with a 2-4, R, 2 RBI night including a triple.

Game two was all Baylor as Max Garner and Crayton Bare dominated the Mountaineers for nine shutout innings. Bare particularly dominant in his three innings, allowing one hit, one walk, and striking out six. The offensive standouts included Jake Miller (3-3, RBI, 2 BBs), Lawton Langford (3-5, 2 R, Double), and Grayson Porter (2-4, R, 3 RBI, HR). Miller has surged recently and pulled his average up to .266, while Porter has begun to flash homerun power. In fact, Porter has more homeruns (5) in only 62 at-bats than the entire rest of the team combined. That's both a good sign for Porter and bad sign for everyone else.

Game three was all Baylor. Austin Stone and Ryan Smith help WVU to one run over seven innings, and the bats cranked out eleven runs. Towey, Orf, Miller, and Doe all had multiple hits and Mitch Price, who has really struggled since his strong start to the season knocked his first homerun as a Baylor Bear.

It's hard to say how much of this weekend's offensive success was due to our hitters and how much can be attributed to WVU's relatively poor pitching. Certainly it's some combination of the two. After game one, I was worried that the Bears were going to let this series get away from them. This team is not in a position to give away games against the bottom tier of the conference. A .500 record isn't going to get them into the post season this year. Not coming out of a relatively weak conference. That's the one downside of Texas and TCU's struggles: they've put a cap on how strong the Big 12 will be considered against the other conferences. It's possible that we'll only have three teams make it in. Right now, based on overall records, that would probably be Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State. There's a lot of work to be done. Tonight and next weekend will be telling.

mileskelly — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:31:46 -0000

The way this series began on Thursday night, I was expecting the worst for the rest of the weekend. I mean, you just don't waste a gutsy pitching performance like that! Newman, who is undoubtedly Baylor's new ace, gave up a ton of hits in a 6 IP, 9 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 4 K effort in the opener, but he limited the damage and kept his team in the game. Crayton Bare chipped in three scoreless innings, but it all went for nothing. The offense couldn't string hits together, and the Bears lost in disappointing 3-2 fashion.

Imagine my surprise when the Bears' exploded for 16 hits and 10 runs in game two. Max Garner had a game to forget, giving up 6 runs and 9 hits in only three innings of work, but it didn't even matter. For one of the first times this season, against a quality opponent, the offense was humming.

Lawton Langford (4-5, 2 R, 3 RBI, 2 BB, SB) and Logan Brown (3-6, R, BB, SB) sparked the lineup, but it was Grayson Porter who threw gasoline on the flame. Porter's line (3-6, 2R, 5 RBI, 2 HR, SB) is great, but the way he got to that line was even more impressive. In the eighth inning, down two runs with Langford on first, Porter tied the game with a single swing and sent the game in extras. In the thirteenth inning, with Langford once again on base, Porter won it with a homer of the walk-off variety. A hell of a game for Mr. Porter.

I would be remiss not to mention the relievers in all this. Ryan Smith, Doug Ashby, and Josh Michaelec combined for ten innings of two-run baseball. Michaelec pitched the last 5.1 completely scoreless. They all deserve a great deal of credit for a gritty win.

Game three looked like an easy win as the Bears headed into the ninth with a 7-3 lead, but Austin Stone got into trouble in the ninth (his fifth inning of relief work) leading to three runs. Ryan Smith managed to shut the door before K-State could tie it up. Towey, Orf, and Jake Miller did most of the offensive damage in this one, although it was a balanced attack. Eight of the nine starting position players had at least one hit.

It was a surprising series for the Bears, and if I'm being honest, not one that I thought they would win. Hopefully, this is the start of an offensive renaissance for this team. One that involves scoring more than three runs on a consistent basis. The team faces Dallas Baptist midweek before welcoming West Virginia into town next weekend.

mileskelly — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:41:51 -0000

Game one was basically a microcosm of this season for the Bears. Dillon Newman looked great through the first five innings, but the offense could put anyone across. In the sixth inning, things came apart when Zach Fish, Ok State's cleanup hitter and major power threat, smashed a three run homer. The Cowboys tacked on two more runs in the seventh, but they didn't really need to. One would have been enough. The Bears offense had seven hits on the afternoon (6 singles and 1 double) but couldn't string them together to create runs.

Game two was an interesting and sloppy affair. The teams combined for 6 errors and 4 unearned runs in route to a 12 inning Bears' victory. Logan Brown was the hero in this one with his game-winning double. Brown has really blossomed in his sophomore season as his .318/.378/.412 line with 11 stolen bases attests. Add in his nice center field defense and he'll be a leader for this team for the next several years.

Sadly, and I know I'm beating this dead horse too much, Nathan Orf is the only other player producing at a high level for the Bears. Cal Towey's power has yet to really show up. Duncan Wendel has a decent batting average, but he only has one extra base hit - a double. Adam Toth, Mitch Price, and Lawton Langford have struggled over the last couple weeks.

At this point, the Bears are asking a little to much of their pitchers. They managed a win on Saturday because Max Garner gave yet another solid start and the bullpen of Smith, Michaelec, and Bare were absolutely lights out. For this team to make a run at the post-season, the pitching staff is going to have to dominate. The offense will simply not give them enough runs on a game-to-game basis.

This week, the Bears face UTSA before Kansas State comes down for the weekend. A 1-1 series on the road is actually not a bad way to kick off conference play, so let's hope the Bears can build on that at home this coming weekend. Sic 'em and Feed the Beaver.

mileskelly — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 06:50:37 -0000

Baylor finished it's pre-conference slate this week by splitting two games with Sam Houston. In the first game, Crayton Bare was phenomenal out of the pen, going 5 IP, 0 R, and 8 Ks. However, his effort went for naught as the offense sputtered, only squeezing out two runs. In the second game, Sterling Wynn and Josh Michaelec combined for 8.2 IP, 1 R, and 7 Ks. The offense picked up the pace for four runs, which was more than enough.

Now, the 10-12 Bears must open Big 12 play on the road against an Oklahoma State team with the best overall record in the conference at 18-3. At a glance, the Bears' situation looks pretty dire, but I still contend that Baylor is better than their record, and Oklahoma State may not be as formidable as they first appear.

As far as Oklahoma State's sterling record goes, they have not played a single ranked opponent. Nine of their 18 wins have come against Alcorn State, Iona, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Is their record great? Yes, but they have played LITERALLY NO ONE. As far as individual performers go, Zach Fish (.378/.422/.659) and Tanner Krietemeier (.400/.462/.600) are leading the way with the bats, while Jason Hursh (2-0, 1.50 ERA, 36 IP, 5 BB, 28 K) has been the staff ace by a long shot.

Unlike Ok State, Baylor's non-conference schedule has been brutal. Ten of the Bears' twenty-two games have been against teams currently ranked in the top thirty (UCLA, UCI, Houston, Rice). Four other games were played against teams receiving top-thirty votes (Illinois, Cal). I've said this once and I'll say it again: No other team in the Big 12 can match the Bears' Strength of Schedule. Not even close. Now, our schedule needs to start paying dividends in conference play. If it doesn't, we're in for a long said year with no post-season.

mileskelly — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:24:28 -0000

If someone had told me before the weekend that Dillon Newman (8 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 5 Ks) and Max Garner (9 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 4 Ks) would both throw excellent games, I would have assumed that the Bears would win the series easily. Sadly, that was not the case. An imploding bullpen and general lack of offense doomed the Bears to their second sweep of the young season and curbed the rampant joy I felt after our basketball team decided to reach their potential for at least one game this season. Take a look at the official recap of the weekend HERE, but don't blame me for the pain/anguish/depression that you feel afterward.

Two good pitching performances and zero wins out of the weekend? Why did this happen? The "finger of shame" points directly to our lineup, which simply doesn't have the production of last year's group. In 2012, the Baylor offense averaged 6.47 Runs/Game. This year's crew is putting up a rather pedestrian 4.27 Runs/Game. That 2+ runs every game is going to make a huge dent on our wins column no matter what the pitching staff does.

I always knew that this team was going to have trouble duplicating the power of last year, but I really thought that they'd get on base at a similar level. That has not been the case. The 2012 Bears went .309/.406/.442 on the year. First of all, DANG. Last year's team was awesome. Those numbers actually tick me off because they remind me that we should have made it to the CWS. This year's team is hitting .254/.346/.331. That is not going to get it done.

At this point, I should mention that Nathan Orf is off to a great start, and Duncan Wendel and Logan Brown have stepped up beyond expectations. Adam Toth is putting together a nice year as well. However, several positions have been offensive black holes thus far. It's still early, and guys have plenty of time to improve their offensive output and improve, but if they don't find more production, it's going to be a very long season when we hit conference play.

The schedule for the coming week is a bit different, as the Bears play two against Houston and two against New Orleans in Houston. Hopefully, the team can get back on track and support the staff with a few more runs.

mileskelly — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 06:17:42 -0000

If you were at Baylor anytime from 2000 to 2004 you should check out this link. Apparently, the book will chronicle his time at BU during that span. I'm intrigued, and yet, it may be too painful to read...

mileskelly — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 03:55:18 -0000

at
Illinois at Baylor March 8-9, 2013 \| Waco, Texas \| Baylor Ballpark SERIES NOTES
FRI. \| 6:35 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP Kevin Johnson 2-1, 3.44 ERA, 18.1 IP, 18 K BU - RHP Dillon Newman 2-0, 1.62 ERA, 16.2 IP, 12 K	SAT. \| 2:05 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP Nick Blackburn 2-0, 3.57 ERA, 17.2 IP, 11 K BU - RHP Max Garner 1-2, 2.79 ERA, 19.1 IP, 17 K	SAT. \| 6:35 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP John Kravetz 1-0, 5.91 ERA, 10.2 IP, 7 K BU - RHP Austin Stone 0-1, 6.43 ERA, 7.0 IP, 7 K

After winning five of their last six, it's safe to say that the Bears are rolling. Dillon Newman and Max Garner are throwing ace-quality starts. Ryan Smith, Kolt Browder, and Doug Ashby are locking games down from the bullpen. Sean Spicer, Sterling Wynn, and Austin Stone are all very young and finding ways to work through their starts. Things are good.

When you add in Nathan Orf's triple slash line (.479/.561/.583), Duncan Wendel's .394 batting average, Cal Towey's pretty nice .182 ISO slugging percentage, and ten stolen bases between our speedsters Toth and Brown, things are coming up roses. And Beavers. And yes, also cats. And possibly geese.

This weekend, Illinois makes the trek down from the frigid northern plains. Hopefully, Waco will be warm and offer them a glimpse of the beauty that is spring in Texas... Until the Bears absolutely pound them into submission and send them packing back to their frozen wasteland with with little ice-tears running down their frost-bitten cheeks. Honestly Northerners, why would you live in a place that has eight months of winter? What could you have done to deserve that? Forgive yourselves already!

The Illini have had a nice season so far, going 7-4. They aren't ranked, and they weren't all that great last year at 28-25 (9-12 on the road). This is a series that the Bears should use to create some distance between themselves and .500. With conference play looming in only two weeks, they need as much momentum as they can muster for their Big 12 title defense. Everyone in Waco should head out to the ballpark and support the Bears. Feed the Beaver. Catch the Cat. Oh, and according to his twitter, Kolt Browder made friends with a goose named Guunter at the Ballpark... So the menagerie continues to grow! Goose the Beaver! Wait... no, that's not good. Um...

Quick, somebody think up something for a goose!

mileskelly — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 03:53:37 -0000

The Bears just put the finishing touches on a 4-2 victory over Louisiana Tech. It was a good game for the Bears and a bit of a gift in all honesty. Louisiana Tech was absolutely desperate to give Baylor a big first inning. Nathan Orf gave the Tech defense two easy pop-fouls in a row, but they managed to drop both of them, leading to an Orf single to left. That would have been bad enough for the Bulldogs, but the left-fielder decided to muff the single, scoring Logan Brown and leaving Orf on third. Yet another error in the frame left Baylor up three runs with only one out. That was some sloppy baseball. Like, Ole Miss sorority girls on spring break sloppy. Woof.

On the Bears side, it was a clean game, with sharp defense all the way around. Jake Miller and Brett Doe, who played second to give Langford a break, turned a really nice double play to get starter Sean Spicer out of trouble in the first, and Logan Brown showed his speed and range in center on a hard line drive to the gap in left. Like so many other times, the team that made fewer mistakes took the victory. With the bats, Orf was impressive (as a player hitting over .500 usually is), and Duncan Wendel was really locked in, going 1-2 with 2 BBs. Not to be outdone by Orf, Wendel is closing in on a .400 average himself.

On the pitching side, Spicer, Josh Michaelec, and Ryan Smith did the heavy lifting. As one of the announcers mentioned during the game, the one true weakness that the staff has shown thus far is the base-on-balls. The team gave up six of them in this game alone. Luckily, it didn't come back to haunt the Bears, and Smith pitched 2.2 innings with no walks, no hits, and 2 strikeouts to close the game. Smith might not have faired well in his opening day start, but he seems to be emerging as the Bears' best reliever. During the game, the announcers gave brief scouting reports on a few of the pitchers, and guess what? Every right-hander on the Baylor staff is pretty much the exact same! Spicer sits 86-90, and he is described as a "strike thrower". He didn't exactly show the strike-throwing tonight, but the umpire wasn't calling strikes at the knees, and I have to think that affected him. Ryan Smith was described as... 87-90! He also works with a sharp and rapidly improving slider.

As I said, it was a good quality win, which puts the Bears at 6-6 on the young season. It was even better, because it was on my television set. I also want to point out that FSSW did a really nice job with the coverage. Far too often with college or minor league baseball, the camera angles are horrific and the images poor. This was impeccable. Thank you Fox Sports. I wish more games were like that. Tomorrow, Sterling Wynn gets the start against the Bulldogs and I hope everyone near Waco will go out and support the team.

mileskelly — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:50:35 -0000

5 extra Baylor Baseball games will now appear on FSSW this season, beginning with tomorrow's 6:30pm showdown with Lousiana Tech. Watch it. I know I will.

mileskelly — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 03:56:56 -0000

It's funny how good starting pitching and wins go together. A day after the Bears were drubbed 15-4 by Houston, they roared back to life and returned the favor against a very talented Rice team. Max Garner went 8.1 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, and 8 Ks in a one of the best starts of his Baylor career. He wasn't always dominant, working out of several jams, but he didn't give up a run until the ninth, allowing the team to cruise to a 9-2 victory.

Kendall Rogers was once again tweeting scouting reports and other nuggets from the game. He had Garner sitting 87-90 on the FB (touching 91) and mixing in a change and curveball. Rogers described him as a "hard-nosed guy".

On the offensive side, Orf and Towey were as good as advertised. Orf went 2-4 with a walk from the leadoff spot, and Towey was 3-4 with a walk, a double, and 2 RBIs. The man Rogers seemed most impressed with, however, was Logan Brown who flashed both speed and power. In the sixth, he crushed a homerun down the left-field line, and he followed that with a leadoff triple in the ninth. It's obviously only one game, but if Brown could heat up, he would become a dynamic addition to a solid lineup.

I'm going to go out on a limb, but not a very big one, and say that this Baylor team is substantially better than their 5-6 record. For starters, seven of the eleven games they've played have been against teams that are firmly entrenched in the Top 25 (UCI, UCLA, Rice). Another game was a victory over a talented Pepperdine team that sits just outside the rankings.

I don't believe any other Big 12 team can match that kind of strength of schedule. Oklahoma may look good sitting at 11-1, but they got there by beating up on Hofstra and Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Color me unimpressed. With TCU performing well below expectations at 3-7, the Big 12 could be wide open this year. I'm not calling for a repeat of last year's glory, but it's not out of the question once conference play starts.

mileskelly — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 01:54:34 -0000

Would you like to meet the Bears' new ace Friday starter? Not if you're a team from California, you wouldn't. Apparently California angers him, and you wouldn't like him when he's angry. To describe Newman as "lights out" this afternoon is an injustice. He was better than that. Here's his line: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 Ks. Tasty.

Going back to his start against UCLA, he's gone 12 IP, 7 H, 0 R, 1 BB, and 10 Ks. Seriously, you don't want to face this man if you're a team from California... or anywhere else for that matter. After the great year he had out of the bullpen, I expected Newman to be a senior leader for the Bears, but he's started the year even better than I would have imagined, and along with Stone and Garner, he should be the cornerstone of an excellent rotation.

So how is Newman doing this? I'm glad I asked. Perfect Game's Kendall Rogers, the font of college baseball knowledge himself, was at the game and gave an excellent breakdown of the performance. Read the entire thing here. Basically, Newman doesn't overpower hitters, sitting 85-87 with the fastball, but he mixes in a nice slider and an excellent change-up (it may be a split-finger). Heard that before? If you read my last piece that highlighted Austin Stone you did. Stone, who is coincidentally starting tomorrow's 3:30 pm game against Houston, has essentially the same scouting report. What sets these guys apart, and guys like last year's co-aces Turley and Blank, is the ability to keep hitters off balance with location and pitch selection.

After Newman was done, Jr. Trae Davis and Sr. Miles Landry finished Cal off with a scoreless inning each. When Davis entered for the 8th, Kendall Rogers tweeted that "if Davis can get going it would be huge for the Bears". I don't exactly think Trae Davis is the key to a winning season, but he has always intrigued scouts with his raw arm strength. Coming out of high school, Davis could run his fastball up to 95 mph, but he's never been able to put it all together at Baylor. My fingers are firmly crossed that this is the magical year where he figures it all out.

With the bats, Langford, Orf, Towey, and Price did much of the damage in the 2-5 spots in the lineup. I really like this lineup that Steve Smith has gone to:

1)Toth/Brown/Tunnel - Speed at the top with any of the three. Brown and Toth are both off to solid starts.

2) Langford - High average, high OBP contact guy.

3) Orf - The best hitter on the team.

4) Towey - The only experienced power threat. His average isn't showing it yet, but he's coming around.

5) Price - Inexperienced but high ceiling player. Power is already starting to show.

6) Toth - If he's not batting leadoff, this offers another experienced, high-average bat in the back half.

7) Wendel/DalPorto - Both off to good starts. Hoping Wendel shows more power.

8) Miller/Doe - Whoever rounds into form first would get my nod here.

9) Goodwin/Landes/Menard - None of them is Josh Ludy, but Goodwin is off to a good start.

It's interesting that in the game today, Miller started at shortstop, but he was replaced early in the game by Doe, who had a nice game with a couple singles. The same thing happened to Wendel, who started at first but was replaced by DalPorto after a baserunning error. DalPorto also used the opportunity to knock a couple singles.

All in all, it looks to me like the team is rounding into form. If you're around the Houston area and want to watch some college ball at Minute Maid Park, the Bears go again at 3:30 tomorrow. Get out there and support the team. Feed the Beaver, and apparently, Catch the Cat... I don't know why that's a new thing, but the team apparently carries around a stuffed cat along with the stuffed beaver mascot... Weird... All I can say is that I hope it's not a reference to the Baylor ballplayer who got into trouble for literally skinning a cat behind the Taco Bell a few years ago... for serious guys, if you're slump is that bad, killing an animal in some kind of voodoo ritual won't help you.

mileskelly — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:11:46 -0000

This was not the way Baylor Baseball drew up the beginning of their season. After getting swept in Irvine, the Bears rebounded against Texas State before losing a hard fought series to the number-two UCLA Bruins. Their record now stands at an unsightly 2-5. However, if you're looking for silver linings (excelsior, am I right? Nobody?), they are plentiful. To start, the Bears have faced an extremely difficult schedule thus far, facing a top-thirty team on the road and the number-two team in the country at home. Their tough schedule continues for the next week, as they face a very good Pepperdine team Tuesday, followed by Cal and Rice in the Astros in Action College Classic. Needless to say, the Bears will be well prepared for conference play when it begins.

Another silver lining this weekend was the emergence of the Bears' pitching. Max Garner threw an excellent game on Friday (5 IP, 2 Runs (1 Earned), 5 Hits, 1 BB, 5 Ks), before the bullpen gave up two runs of their own. Dillon Newman followed with an even better start on Saturday (5 IP, 0 Runs, 4 Hits, 1 BB, 2 Ks), before Ryan Smith finished the game in style (3.1 IP, 0 Runs, 1 Hit, 3 Ks). On Sunday, Austin Stone got the start, causing me to pat myself on the back and say "CALLED IT!" Stone was great under a very limited pitch count (3 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Hits, 0 BB, 2 Ks).

Kendall Rogers of Perfect Game attended on Sunday and tweeted his observations from the contest. First was a scouting report on Stone: 86-87 mph fastball with sweeping curve in mid 70s and change-up at around 79. Rogers said that Stone mixes pitches very well. Another tweet that stuck out was the one where he called the Bears a "gritty" team. I'm pretty sure he was referring to the way they were grinding out at-bats against good UCLA pitching.

Unfortunately for the Bears, the offense was unable to grind out quite enough run support, and they lost games one and three by one run each. The lack of runs is certainly understandable in game one, when UCLA ace and future high-round draft pick Adam Plutko was dealing; however, if you want a snapshot of the difference between last year's offense and this year's, here you go:

Plutko's line against Baylor in 2012 - 3.1 IP, 5 Runs, 5 Hits, 4 BBs, 3 Ks.

Plutko's line against Baylor in 2013 - 6 IP, 1 Run, 5 Hits, 2 BBs, 2 Ks.

Last year, it really didn't matter how good the opposing pitcher was. The lineup was so productive that they scored against pretty much everyone. This year, scoring has been more of a struggle. Toth, Orf, and Langford have started the year well at the top of the order, but the middle of the lineup is sagging and will continue to do so until some combination of Price, Wendel, and Porter can flash power and protect Towey. I do believe one of those guys will step up, but it will be a tough row to hoe until that happens.

Everyone remember to get out and support the team this Tuesday as they play yet another quality California opponent (and almost my alma mater) Pepperdine. Fun fact, Pepperdine, a private university affiliated with the Church of Christ, has the most beautiful campus in the world. Or at least they will until our riverside stadium is complete. At that point, it's game on. Sic 'em, and for God's sake, feed that beaver! He's starving, people!

mileskelly — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 03:30:53 -0000

To call opening weekend an inauspicious start for Baylor Baseball is an understatement. I'm going to shy away from hyperbole and just say that this is not how the team wanted to begin its follow-up to the Year of the Bear. The offense sputtered to only seven runs over three games, and the pitching and defense could not stop the bleeding. By "could not stop the bleeding", what I mean is that the pitching and defense gave up 22 two-out runs during the series... How's that for a statistic that'll make you want to kill yourself? UCI's two-out RBIs dwarfed Baylor's total RBIs.

If you're a masochist, feel free to check out Baylor's official recaps: Friday's game, Saturday's game, Sunday's game.

I made it out to the Sunday game, and I can say with some confidence that UCI is a good team. I can also say that Baylor was not playing Baylor Baseball. They were playing some other brand of ball that doesn't lead to winning. The most damning stat from the weekend was Baylor's walk total: 3. Three walks in three games. That is not a Steve Smith team, people. Part of that, at least during the Sunday game, was the umpire. His strike zone was... Generous? Amorphous? Non-existent? Biased? There are plenty of non-complimentary ways to describe it. After it became apparent that the ump wasn't going to be issuing walks, several Baylor players found other ways to battle at the plate. Nathan Orf was particularly brilliant, going 4-5. He never let the UCI pitchers off the hook, getting involved in at least one ten pitch at-bat.

Here's something else I want to look at from the weekend. The lineup from each day:

	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1.	Orf	Orf	Orf
2.	Toth	Toth	Doe
3.	Langford	Doe	Langford
4.	Towey	Towey	Price
5.	Porter	Price	Towey
6.	Miller	Porter	Wendel
7.	Brown	Miller	Toth
8.	DalPorto	Brown	Goodwin
9.	Goodwin	Landes	Tunnel

Here's what I notice: Beyond Orf and Towey, it was pretty different for each game, especially slots 5-9. After losing his four lineup stalwarts, Coach Smith is trying to figure his new offense out. From the looks of it, it'll take more time to settle into something that works. Hopefully, someone (I'm looking at you, Price/Porter/Wendel/Miller) will grab hold of that 4th/5th spot and give Towey some protection. After all, Ludy doesn't have his magical year in 2012 without Muncy, Evatt, and Vick batting around him.

From a pitching standpoint, Dillon Newman faired slightly better Sunday than Smith or Garner on Friday or Saturday respectively. It's still extremely early, so all three deserve another shot or three to figure it out. However, I'm really surprised that Kolt Browder and Austin Stone aren't in the rotation. Browder struck out the side in relief on Sunday, and Stone threw a scoreless inning on Saturday, but based on last year's returns, they both seemed ticketed for starting. If Newman, Smith, and Garner don't make strides, we may see that happen anyway.

A silver lining to the ~~crap-storm~~ game on Sunday was that I got to see a few freshmen get playing time. I was very impressed with both 1b Mitch Price (that kid is enormous! He's going to start cranking homeruns in very short order) and lhp Sterling Wynn. I just like the way the ball comes out of Wynn's hand. He will be a great starter for us in the coming years. I would put money on it.

This coming Tuesday, the Bears play their home opener at Baylor Ballpark. Everyone needs to get out with there with Kate and watch the team win its first game of the year. Be careful, though! There's a beaver hanging out somewhere in the Brazos, and he is very, very hungry. He needs to be fed. I bet he'd eat just about anything at the moment...

mileskelly — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:51:37 -0000

Opening day is here at last! Baylor plays a three game set this weekend against UC Irvine in sunny Southern California. My previous post was written Wednesday night, before Baylor had released its preview for the series. Now that they've released it, I can say that calling Ryan Smith a "dark horse" for the rotation was a terrible understatement.

Smith is the Bears' opening day starter, followed by Max Garner on Saturday and Dillon Newman on Sunday. Seeing Garner and Newman in the rotation isn't surprising in the least, but I must say that I'm a bit shocked to see Smith on opening day as a sophomore. I don't doubt his talent, but I expected the Bears to go with more experience.

Here is the official preview from baylorbears.com.

Last year, Baylor played UCI twice in the QTI Baylor Classic. Those games ended well for the Bears as they defeated UCI by the scores of 4-2 and 6-1. Be sure to follow @BaylorBaseball for Twitter updates during all three games. Feed the Beaver!

mileskelly — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:26:30 -0000

In an earlier post this week, I highlighted the losses from our record setting 2012 team. Now, let's turn our attention to something more upbeat: the coming season. The Big XII Coaches' Poll picks Baylor to come in 4^th in the conference. PerfectGame (my favorite source for college baseball news) also picks Baylor to come in 4^thin the league with an appearance in the post season. The USA Today Coaches Poll went so far as to rank the Bears 23^rd in the country. Pretty impressive stuff for a team that lost as much talent as the Bears did.

As for my own expectations, I believe we'll have a winning season, make it to a CWS Regional, and come in anywhere from 4^th to 2^nd in the Big XII conference, which still only houses nine baseball teams after realignment. Let me reiterate: Screw you, math. When the conference lost A&M, it lost a perennial baseball powerhouse. When it nabbed TCU, it gained back a perennial baseball powerhouse. When it lost Missouri, it lost a team that played baseball. When it gained WVU, it gained a team that sort of plays baseball. Oh, and Iowa State is still filled with baseball hating Commies.

I, like most people, have TCU winning the conference in their first year. They are an excellent team that lost to UCLA in the Super Regional last year after beating up on Texas A&M and Mississippi in their Regional. Oklahoma should also be tough, but I'm not sold on UT the way PerfectGame is. They had a mediocre year at best in 2012, going 30-22 overall. The Bears have a good chance to knock them off. Let's have a look at why.

The Position Players

The 2013 Bears return three senior starters from last year: Nathan Orf (.303/.453/.389), Cal Towey (.295/.428/.469), and Jake Miller (.278/.315/.363). Along with them, Lawton Langford (Jr. - .301/.419/.354) and Adam Toth (So. - .286/.331/.370) should be back at second base and right field respectively. I'm hoping for a big season from Toth, who should continue to grow and refine his game after a very productive freshman year.

Orf transferred to Baylor last year as a catcher, but he didn't play a single game there. This year, he's listed as an outfielder, and I have to assume that he'll see time in LF and DH. Orf will hit toward the top of the lineup because of his excellent on-base skills and his success stealing bags (17 of 20). I have to imagine that Towey will bat third or fourth in the lineup, as he is the only returner with any power to speak of. He should get plenty of opportunity to drive in runs with Orf and Langford hitting in front of him.

If there's one player that I hope has a return to form at the plate, it's our shortstop, Jake Miller. In 2011, he hit .299/.350./.412, leading me to believe he was on his way to a breakout season in 2012. That didn't happen, and he ended up being the weakest link in the offensive chain. If that breakout finally happens, it could bolster a lineup that, on paper, doesn't compare to its predecessor.

Along with these returning starters, I expect Logan Brown (So. - .269/.321/..288) to see quite a few ABs. Brown didn't flash much power as a freshman, but he certainly has speed (7 of 9 stolen bases in only 55 plate appearances) and could be a leadoff hitter extraordinaire if he keeps developing. I believe Brown will see time in both left field and center field.

That leaves the team with three remaining holes: catcher, first base, and DH (or LF depending on where Orf plays on a given day). I don't have insider knowledge of how the competitions to fill these spots are playing out, but I do have a few educated guesses.

Time at catcher will probably be split between Jr. Nate Goodwin and RS-Fr Jimmy Landes, who started for the Gold and Green teams respectively during the fall scrimmage. I'm very high on the possibilities for freshmen Matt Menard and Joe Sabatini, but it may be a stretch to say that we'll see them this year.

In a handful of ABs last season, Goodwin didn't show much power, but he absolutely showed the ability to take a base-on-balls. I think we all know how much Steve Smith likes players who get on base at a high rate. Landes obviously didn't get any playing time last year, but it appears that he was the primary long snapper for our football team during the 2011 season... wait, what? Apparently, he walked on in 2011 and after our first string long snapper was injured, Landes played in the next 11 games. If that's true, he's obviously an athletic guy. Hopefully, we'll get to see what he can do.

I'm going to lump 1B and DH together for the sake of brevity. I think this competition will come down to Jr. Grayson Porter, So. Duncan Wendel, and Fr. Mitch Price. Both Porter and Wendel got some pinch-hit ABs last year, and could be in line for a lot more playing time. Porter also played CF in the Green and Gold scrimmage, so there's a good chance that he finds time in the outfield as well. Price is another freshman that I'm quite high on. I expect him to have a nice career at Baylor, but I'm not sure that it will happen just yet.

A few other players that will no doubt fight for playing time are Jr. IF Brett Doe, Sr. IF Steve DalPorto, and Fr. IF West Tunnel. Because the Bears have three returning starters in their infield, I'm not sure that these guys will get that many at-bats, but DalPorto will be a valuable and experienced player off the bench. This will be Doe's first year at Baylor after spending time at New Mexico and Navarro College. I'm probably the most excited about West Tunnel though. Besides his amazing name, Tunnel comes in as a highly touted shortstop who could man the position for years to come.

The Pitchers

After losing our entire weekend rotation from last year, the mound is wide open in 2013. I've known clearly who was going to start on opening day for the last two years with Logan Verret and Josh Turley playing the role of ace. This year, I'm really not sure who will fill out the Bears' rotation. There are plenty of worthy candidates though.

We'll start with the guys that have some starting experience. The first few names on that list are Jr. Brad Kuntz, So. Austin Stone, and Sr. Max Garner. Kuntz began last year in the rotation and had mixed results for before he found a home in the pen. I have to think he'll be given another chance to start, but I'm not opposed to him playing the part of lockdown late-inning reliever either. Garner started a few games last year, but ended the season as the Bears' closer - a role he excelled in. In fact, he now finds himself on the NCBWA Stopper of the Year watchlist.

Austin Stone is the pitcher out of these three that I definitely see in the rotation. His 4.60 ERA with 21 Ks against 16 BBs may not be the most impressive line, but he did that as a true freshman. I also have to take into account his 5.1 innings of no-hit ball against Dallas Baptist in the Waco Regional last year. That's a freshman pitching in a win-or-go-home playoff atmosphere. That is impressive stuff.

Three other names to watch for in the rotation are Sr. Kolt Browder, Sr. Crayton Bare, and Jr. Dillon Newman. All three were exceptional out of the pen in 2012. In fact, one could argue that they were the Bears' three best relievers. Each provided swing-and-miss stuff while limiting walks and homeruns. Don't be surprised to see all three get starting opportunities as the season moves along.

Three dark horse candidates for the rotation are juco lefty Bobby McCormack, So. Ryan Smith, and Fr. Sterling Wynn. McCormack was a starter for Angelina College and put up impressive numbers. Smith, the son of head coach Steve Smith, was dynamic out of the pen last year. Wynn is a freshman from China Spring who brings the heat from the left side. It's much more likely that we'll see all of these guys coming out of the pen, but it wouldn't be unheard of to see them start a weekday or tournament game.

To Sum up

It's interesting to me that I'm not worried about the rotation. Despite losing our three best starters, I really feel like we have a good mix of experience and talent on the mound, and I believe we'll see a couple of the aforementioned pitchers blossom into dominant starters this year. What does worry me is the Bears' complete lack of power. What the team really needs is for someone to pull a Ludy.

Coming into the 2012 season, Josh Ludy had shown a high average and good eye at the plate, but he had never shown much homerun power. In fact, through 321 career plate appearances, Ludy had hit 20 doubles and 5 homeruns before his senior season... What happened after that was the stuff of legend... until he was drafted by the evil Phillies and therefore became dead to me. So I ask you: Who will be this year's Josh Ludy? For the Bears to reach the heights of the 2012 team, they're going to need someone to fill that void.

So there we are, Baylor fans: A quick guide to the 2013 edition of Baylor Baseball. Friday, the Bears open their season against UC Irvine. I'll be in attendance for at least one game, so I'll be able to throw out some personal observations. Maybe I'll even take some pictures since SBNation refuses to give me any good ones for college baseball. Sic ‘em, and of course... FEED. THAT. BEAVER.

mileskelly — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 20:31:02 -0000

The Year of the Bear was not only great for Baylor Football. If you weren't paying attention last baseball season, you missed something really special. Let's review: An eighteen game conference winning streak, including a sweep of traditional powerhouse Texas A&M. A twenty-four game total winning streak - a Big XII record. A 49-17 overall record. Big XII Regular Season Champions. An appearance in the Super Regional against Arkansas.

That's a good season. The fact that our Super Regional appearance was actually considered a huge disappointment is a testament to how impressive the team was last year. After we surged back and took our home regional with two consecutive victories over Dallas Baptist, I was all in for College World Series Champions. It felt like our destiny... Baseball is a cruel mistress, however, and it was not to be. One bobbled exchange, too many men left in scoring position, and a questionable managing decision later, we were out of the post season.

But that was all last year. In the fall, our football team had a lot to prove after losing Robert Griffin III, Kendall Wright, and a host of other important players. Now, Baylor Baseball has to do the same... except I would argue that they lost even more.

Max Muncy, Josh Ludy, Dan Evatt, Logan Vick, Josh Turley, Tyler Bremer, and Trent Blank have all graduated or moved on to the greener pastures of Minor League Baseball. Actually, I'm not sure you can call playing you're A-ball games in Beloit, WI greener pastures, but you get what I mean. They're pursuing their professional careers.

So what did the Bears lose when those guys moved on? Oh, just their entire weekend rotation and four most productive hitters. No biggie.

As far as the pitchers, Turley and Blank carried the team on their backs for the entire season. They threw 110 and 105 innings respectively. Bremer started the season working out of the pen, but emerged as the team's third best starter down the stretch. That's a lot of quality innings to replace, but I'm even more worried about the Bears' offensive production. Let's take a look at the 2012 squad by OPS.

Ludy - 1.089

Vick - .945

Evatt - .939

Muncy - .912

Towey - .897

Orf - .842

Langford - .773

Toth - .701

Miller - .678

First, let's all take a moment to appreciate JOSH LUDY. I miss that guy. Second, our four most productive hitters from last year are gone. I'll phrase it another way for anyone harboring doubts. Ludy, Muncy, Vick, and Evatt combined for 62 doubles and 35 homeruns. The entire rest of the team, including the bench, combined for 56 doubles and 11 homeruns.

Yet another blow to this year's team is the loss of Michael Howard. Howard started 23 games and had 94 ABs last year - the most of any player out side of the guys listed above. He would have had many more at-bats if he hadn't been suspended midway through the season for breaking team rules (it was rumored that he was skipping class). I had extremely high hopes for Howard, who I believe will be a very good player, but according to a tweet from Baylor, Howard is no longer with the team and will continue his playing career at Yavapai JuCo. I was really looking forward to watching the young trio of Howard, Logan Brown, and Adam Toth grow into a powerful outfield, but I certainly trust Steve Smith to do what was best for the team and the young man.

I'm not writing any of this to assert that the cupboard is bare. The Bears still have some really excellent ballplayers, and I still expect a good season. I'll delve further into my expectations for this year's club later in the week, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight their losses and the season that was.

mileskelly — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 05:37:19 -0000

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to give a warning. This will not be pretty. It won't be well-formatted, and it probably won't make a ton of sense. Pot-shots and low-blows are welcome here. You shouldn't consider this a post. Consider it therapy for the incoherent rage I feel toward my alma mater. I leave Mark to write more reasoned posts on the main page. This is pure, unadulterated fanpost venom.

I've begun to think that Baylor fans on the whole are too polite. We have a tendency to say, "Well, they tried their best. We'll get them next time," and then head off to our fraternity parties to drink IBC root beer and flirt with Tri-Delts (Some of you will get that reference, some may not). Why do we give in to inadequacy so easily? Why?

During the ISU game, I had something of an epiphany: It's because I've been trained this way. Like several of the other posters on ODB, I attended Baylor in the early 2000s, which was not a pretty time athletically. I went to every home football game my freshman year, and I left every home game disappointed... at halftime... down by 30+.

During my sophomore year, I didn't go to a single football game, and I was happy. I forgot that football existed, I drank IBC root beer, and I flirted with Tri-Delts. For sporting enjoyment, I put my love into the basketball team. I went to every home game with a big group. We cheered. We harassed opposing players by researching the names of their family members online. It was grand... and then it wasn't.

Everyone knows what happened to our basketball program in 2003. It was a disaster. I won't go into all of the details, because we all know them by heart. What I will say is that for the next two years, I had to watch my favorite players - Lawrence Roberts, John Lucas III, and Kenny Taylor - light up scoreboards and win Conference Player of the Year awards for other teams.

What could any self-respecting sports fan do under these circumstances? I went to baseball games. Our baseball team had a few really great seasons during this time (2005 anyone?), and I put my sports fandom into that. I still do. However, if we're honest with ourselves, college baseball doesn't take a school's brand very far. College baseball is, as much as I love it, the Jon Snow of college sports. He's great, and you really root for him, but when it all comes down, he's the unwanted bastard stuck out in the frozen wasteland.

Now here we are in 2012. Baylor has just come off the most successful year in college sports history, including a bowl victory, an elite eight appearance, a national championship, and a super regional appearance. We're a little over half way through football season. How do I feel? Angry. Disgusted. I've been trying to find targets for my anger, but even that isn't fulfilling. CPB is a very good candidate, but articles like the one that Mark linked to about roster attrition make that less satisfying. I think, "Well, maybe we just don't have the horses, you know?", and then I get even more angry at how easily I choke that idea down.

We're in the Big 12 Conference basement. What's up, Kansas? We're a laughing stock. At the beginning of the season, people picked us to be pretty decent. Hell, Ubben over at ESPN is STILL picking us to win games for some inexplicable reason. And here's our team, proving every pundit right who said that our team was "only RGIII." They've proven it! We really were just RGIII. He was THAT transcendent of a player, apparently. He literally carried our entire team. I hate that thought, but they have proven it to be true this year. That recruiting bump we got from the Heisman? Gone. Top 25 recruiting classes? Evaporated. That fancy new stadium we're building? Wasted. I don't go to sporting events for the ambiance. I go for the product on the field.

Two targets of my anger are Nick Florence and his beard. I realize fully that this is unfair. I know that he is the least of our problems, and that he's basically being forced to carry the offense, because our running game is pathetic. Hey, maybe we just don't have the horses, right? NO! Stop that. We have Lache and Glasco, and that's a hell of a lot more than most teams. So why am I mad at Florence? Maybe it's the idiotic beard. Find a razor, Nick. Or maybe it's because RGIII would have found a way to win in Morgantown and Austin. I know it's unfair. I know. But it's true.

Yet another object of my venom is Ahmad Dixon. Yup. Weird. Here's why: Why are you even here, Ahmad?! You're awesome! You should have gone somewhere where your talents weren't drowned in a sea of crap. And do you know what, Baylor fans? All of the talented defensive recruits are thinking this same thing! Why should any talent on that side of the ball come to Baylor? Even a game changing player would look worse playing in these schemes with this level of talent around him. Why would he chance it?

Mark has already started the "Next D Coordinator" thread, and I love the thought of that. Attrition or not, Bennett has to go. He has simply failed miserably at his job. If a Subway sandwich artist failed at his or her job like Bennet has, they'd have to molest the bread, spit in the drink machine, poop on the cookies, and then stab a customer, all while someone filmed it and put it on national television. CPB has shit the bed at Baylor U.

And then, there's the untouchable Art Briles. Some will say I'm crazy for even mentioning this, but the responsibility for a failed season falls on CAB. If we're using the assumption that Baylor football was all RGIII for the past two years (as this team has now proven), it speaks poorly of Briles. The thought creeps in that maybe Briles rode RGIII's coat tails into our good graces without really being a great coach or recruiter. Sure, he has a history with QBs and receivers, but is that all he can do? Bennett can't build a passable defense with the players he has. Okay, then who recruited those players?

Scott Drew turned around an essentially dead basketball program in only a few years. He recruits the best players, and his teams are ranked constantly with no sign of slipping. If Drew can do that, starting from nothing, there's no excuse left for our football team to make. There is no "wait for next year."

If you've read all the way to this point... thank you and I'm sorry. Like I said, this is more therapy than a post of any sort. I guess what my incoherent rage really boils down to is this: it's the last gasp of me caring at all.

I can feel myself going into that comatose 2002 state, where I forget that college football even exists. I don't want that, but it's happening, like some sort of perennial underdog coping mechanism. The only difference between now and then is beer vs. rootbeer... Who am I kidding? Tequila vs. rootbeer. Beer doesn't even begin to ease this kind of feeling... Oh, and there are no Tri-Delts this time. My wife was a Kappa.

If I'm feeling this way, I know that other fans are as well, and Baylor football can't afford apathy at this point in time. Empty $250 million stadiums are very, very bad business. It's time for Baylor football to do whatever it takes to make this right. Fire everyone if needs be. Baylor owes me that for the four years I spent pretending I didn't care about sports.

mileskelly — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:57:15 -0000

Baseball just released their 2013 schedule, including 30 games at Baylor Ballpark for our viewing pleasure! Feed that Beaver!

mileskelly — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:09:16 -0000

That's right, ladies and gents, I'm pulling a college baseball sneak-attack right in the middle of possibly the most important season Baylor Football has ever played. "But Miles," I hear you say to your computer screen, "I have enough to think about. Between worrying over WVU this weekend, pondering how many more visits Andrew Billings is going to take before he realizes that he can be a starter his freshman year at Baylor, fretting about Hicks/Holl hijinks, and hoping beyond hope that Mark and Christian will be reunited one day, I just don't have the time for baseball right now!"

I know. I get it. I understand that all of those things are on your plate, but I just can't help myself. After CJ Spiller got injured today, thereby killing my fantasy hopes for the weekend, I delved into a long bout of "deep Googling." When I finally broke the surface, hours later, I had in my possession the largest amount of Baylor Baseball 2013 commitment news this site has ever seen! Sadly, it's still next to nothing. Why are you so secretive baseball recruits? Let us know a little bit more about you.

For all the very good news, everybody jump - jump - jump - jump -

A few weeks ago, Mark did a write up about Darryn Sheppard (OF). I cannot overstate how excited I am about Sheppard. He's quite possibly the best recruit our baseball team has had in the past several years, and he could see immediate playing time even though our outfield is already full of young, experienced talent. Since Mark wrote him up already, I'll just link to that HERE.

Right around the same time, Kendall Rogers of PerfectGame tweeted that Baylor was "putting together a really nice 2013 recruiting class right now." He's right. The Year of the Bear wasn't just a huge boon to football recruiting. Here's the rest of the info about our 2013 class (with an extra-special 2014 bonus!):

Kameron Esthay (LHP, 1B) - Lake Charles, LA - Esthay is another good "get" for the Bears. As a pitcher, he throws in the mid-to-high 80s at this point, while also playing at first base. After his junior season, he was honored as a Louisiana Class 5A All-Star along with several high-round 2012 draft picks including Gavin Cecchini and Styker Trahan. That's good company. As Mark likes to say, you can tell a lot about a recruit from the other schools that are recruiting him. That's another plus for Esthay, as LSU, Auburn, and Mississippi State all reportedly have interest.

Nick Lewis (RHP) - Flower Mound, TX - Yup. That's it. Apparently, he's 6'2" - 175. It's very important to me that recruits have odd names, so that I can actually find them on the internet.

Aaron Dodson (C, 1B) - Cypress, TX - 6'3" 195 - He's listed as a switch-hitter, and obviously, he's a pretty large fellow. Here's hoping he's got some power in his bat. A good sign for Dodson is that A&M was reportedly in on him. If A&M likes a player, I want that player at Baylor. A&M knows ‘em some baseballs.

Steven McLean (SS) - Los Altos, CA - 5'11" 180 - Do you really need to know anything about this kid besides his AWESOME NAME. Over/under: how many times will I write that "Baylor had a McCLEAN game in the field!"? So many times. So many. If you want a ton of info about Mr. McLean, click HERE for his recruiting profile. Lots of interesting info. Seems like a talented player from the Bay Area, showing how Baylor's reach has grown recently.

Kyle Ott (RHP) - Galveston, TX - 6'1" 180 - PerfectGame has Ott hitting 88 with his fastball as of this summer, and these players are so young that it's possible, even likely, that they'll see more velocity with increased strengthening and tweaks to pitching motions. I couldn't find much in the way of stats for Ott, but I did find a blurb from the Galveston Daily News in May naming him #2 in their Top Ten Performers and saying that he "blasted a homerun and pitched lights-out" in one game. That sounds pretty good.

Daniel Castano (LHP) - Austin, TX (Lake Travis High) - 6'3" 205 - That is a large person. Count me as a fan of big, tall pitchers. After his junior year, Castano was named 2^nd Team All-District 25-4A. MaxPreps has him ranked 39^th in the state. He was recruited by both TCU and Texas Tech.

Possibly the most interesting occurrence during this flurry of recruit news was the announcement of 2014 (!) commit Jonathan Ducoff (SS, 2B). Getting a '14 recruit this far out is quite nice, and Ducoff is already being sought after by A&M and TCU. Thank you, Year of the Bear!

I feel that I should note that these recruits are for the 2013 school year, therefore, they won't see the field for Baylor until spring of 2014 at the very earliest. If you'd like to know who the new blood is going to be for the upcoming year, I suggest you CLICK HERE for the baylorbears.com write-up of our 2012 class. I'm especially excited about Sterling Wynn, a LHP from China Spring. No, it's not a typo, he struck out 126 batters in 66.1 innings. There are some other nice players there, but I'll let you look for yourselves.

Of course, this list is dependant upon Baylor not only fighting off other suitors for these guys, but also hoping that Major League Baseball doesn't steal them. I would personally be shocked if Darryn Sheppard wasn't drafted next summer. The question will be, with the new MLB CBA, can some team cobble together enough money in the later rounds to lure him away. If not, then we'll get a great player. Wouldn't if be interesting if Baylor Football had to fend off NFL teams for Robbie Rhodes services? Now that would get pretty crazy.

mileskelly — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 06:26:59 -0000

Baylor fans are obviously - and understandably - upset by the 1-0 loss this evening to Arkansas. Please believe me when I say that no one is more disappointed than I am. However, I want to play a little game of devil's advocate right now. I've heard over and over (not just on this site) that Coach Smith really screwed the pooch by pinch-hitting Josh Turley for Jake Miller. Baseball is such a clear game in hindsight. Everyone seems to believe that Steve Smith's decision was not only wrong, but obviously wrong to the point of temporary insanity. This is simply not true.

I saw a that #5withabullett wondered where the genesis for this idea would even come from. Perhaps I can help with this answer: It partially came from the game on April 1st, 2012 against Oklahoma State University. In said game, Smith pinch-hit Turley for Dan Evatt in the bottom of the 13th inning. The result? Game tying single up the middle followed by a throwing error for the win. Smith is a genius.

It's easy to think of pitchers as unable to hit, especially if you're a fan of the American League, where pitchers can't be bothered to dirty up their hands by touching those nasty wooden things (that's for you, Mark). However, you have to remember that these college pitchers are not far removed from High School, where every one of them played the field and hit as well. Turley is not a terrible hitter. Is he great? No, but he has had a handful of at-bats every season he has pitched at Baylor. Is that because he's terrible and awkward with a bat in his hands? No. He can hit a little bit, and Smith had him pinch hit for the weakest link in the offensive chain. Jake Miller is a very good ballplayer, but he had the lowest average of any of the starting position players on the team. If you're going to take a shot, that's where you do it. Smith also pinch-hit for Miller (a righty) against a righty pitcher. Putting in a lefty bat (Turley) against a righty pitcher is pretty common and not at all out of the blue.

I've also been seeing a lot of talk about Jake Miller's defense, and how, if he had still been in the game, he could have stopped that hit that got by DalPorto and kept the game tied. Is that possible? Yes. Would it have definitely happened? Nope. The Bears, like most college teams, have a shortstop who really isn't a shortstop. Shortstop is the single most difficult defensive position because of the combination of traits (strong/accurate arm, quick first step, soft hands, ability to get down on balls) that it requires. Miller has some of the traits, such as a really great arm, but don't let a few brilliant plays fool you. Miller is too big at 6'3"-200 and too slow to be a shortstop. That's why he led the team with 22 errors this season, twice the number of anyone else on the team. I don't have the time or inclination to do college UZR type stats, but I can guarantee you they would not be friendly to Miller at short. This is not meant to berate Jake Miller. He would be an excellent 3rd baseman, but let's not wring our hands over how he would have saved the day on that play. He does not have range at the position.

At the end of the day, the Bears did not lose this game because Smith lost his mind. They lost because they had men on the corners in the fourth with no outs and failed to score. Their offense let them down, and Smith took a shot at the end of the game. I don't know why he did, but I take issue with people saying it was a ridiculous decision. No one seemed to question it when Turley brought in the winning run against OSU to keep the winning streak alive.

It has been a hell of a season for Baylor Baseball. It speaks to how great it was that a Super Regional is a disappointing finish. Next year should be very interesting with the pitching turnover that will occur. Until that time, we can tide ourselves over with news of football recruits. As always, Sic 'em Bears. Feed that Beaver.

mileskelly — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:17:39 -0000

Tomorrow at four o'clock, the Baylor Bears begin their Super Regional series against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Baylor Ballpark. Check out the official Baylor preview here. This season can be counted a success no matter what happens from here on out, but I have a feeling that the Bears aren't done yet... not after what happened last weekend. Losing the first game of a Regional and being forced to win four games in three days is about as difficult as it gets in college baseball. The number of less-heralded players who have to step up under those circumstances is crazy, and the fact that the Bears achieved this is a testament to the quality of the team from top to bottom and their ability to will themselves to victory.

How about senior Tyler Bremer throwing 6 strong innings while allowing 2 runs and striking out 5? How about Dillon Newman finishing off the final game with 5 innings of one-hit ball and 5 Ks? How about Dan Evatt hitting a homerun and stealing a homerun from beyond the fence in the same game? How about freshman Austin Stone throwing 5.2 innings of 2 hit, one run ball? I would be lying if I said that I saw any of that coming, and I would be lying if I said I thought the Bears could make it out of that Regional after a sloppy and error-filled first game against ORU. Yet here they are. It's been a heck of ride, guys. See how the Bears stack up against Arkansas after the jump.

Since the Super Regional is a best of three against a single team, it should play out in a more typical way. Blank is scheduled to pitch game one to give Turley a bit more rest after throwing Monday, Turley will throw in game two, and although it's not announced, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bremer start game three. Austin Stone would also be an option there.

The Razorbacks will throw out their one-two punch of DJ Baxendale and Ryne Stanek. These two are very good starters who have freakishly similar numbers. They both sit at 2.83 ERAs, 7-4 records, and 8.3 strikeouts/game. They may be doing some form of cloning over there in Arkansas... I'm going to try to keep this classy, but I want you to know that I'm now fighting a terrible urge to make an inappropriate joke about that last sentence. If you know what I was going to say, shame on you. Behind Baxendale and Stanek is a lock-down bullpen, where seven different relievers have ERAs under 2.58. This is a very talented crew of pitchers.

Luckily, the Bears' offense is superior to the Razorbacks' in every conceivable way. Baylor has more power, more on-base skills, and hits for higher average. The only real standout that Arkansas has on offense is 3B Matt Reynolds (.343/.448/.535), who was taken in the 2^nd Round of the Draft this week (although most thought that round was a reach for him). A big part of this series will be strength vs. strength: can the talented Arkansas pitching staff can keep the Bears' machine-like offense off the board.

Here are a few more numbers on the Razorbacks: Overall: 42-19; RPI Top 100: 21-17; Road Record: 9-8; Score 5.4 Runs/Game; Allow 3.5 Runs/Game; RPI Ranking(WarrenNolan): 12.

This should be great battle, with a trip to Omaha on the line. If you're near Waco this weekend (and you can scam tickets, because I bet they're sold out), you need to see some Baylor Baseball. Sic ‘em Bears!

mileskelly — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:49:10 -0000

Muncy was taken by the Oakland Athletics at #169 overall, and MLB.com has a very favorable scouting report on Mad Max. Look for one or two other Bears to be taken today, which covers rounds 2-15.

mileskelly — Tue, 29 May 2012 02:36:42 -0000

Before we get into Baylor's NCAA Regional match-ups, I'd like to take a moment to mention what a miserable season the Longhorn baseball team had. Please don't confuse this with gloating - I do that in private - but the end of their season was an unmitigated disaster. The Big XII only had four teams make the post-season this year, including Missouri who managed to win the Tournament despite a poor season overall. OU, which was dead in the water until they beat the Bears five times in the last three weeks, somehow managed to weasel their way in over UT for an at-large bid. And yes, that last sentence was incredibly hard to type. It would have been nice to have played at least one of those five games in Waco, but that's just sour grapes on my part. Extremely sour grapes. Bitter, bitter grapes. But I'm over it... Not really.

Anyhoo, the Bears host Texas-Arlington, Oral Roberts, and Dallas Baptist in the Waco Regional, with the winner taking on the victor of Rice's Houston Regional. The action begins this Friday with Baylor taking on Oral Roberts and UTA facing Dallas Baptist. Read on for a break down of the three teams.

Oral Roberts is the number four seed in the Regional for a reason. They didn't have a terribly productive season. They come in with an impressive 37-23 overall record, but a poor Strength of Schedule that has led to an RPI of 104. If you dissect that pretty record a little bit more, you'll find that ORU has a 3-14 record against teams in the RPI Top 100. That record includes a three game sweep at the hands of the Bears, which kicked off Baylor's magical season in style. ORU scores 5.8 Runs/Game and only gives up 3.3 Runs/Game, and they have a couple impressive power hitters in Jared Schlehuber and Jose Trevino. They also have some pitching talent in starters Drew Bowen and Alex Gonzalez. However, these figures and players are largely meaningless when taken in the context of their weak competition. So why are they here? They won the Summit League for the 15^th consecutive season, beating North Dakota State. That's an impressive tradition of winning, but they are not a team to be feared now like they have been in the past.

UT-Arlington is the three-seed in the Regional, and yet another familiar foe for the Bears. UTA went 35-23 this season but only scored 5.6 Runs/Game against 4.5 Runs/Game given up. That is not a good run differential. They come in with an RPI of 61 and a 10-13 record against RPI Top 100 teams. Baylor played UTA in two mid-week contests during the season and each team came out with a victory. Working in the Bears' favor, however, is the fact that UTA never saw Blank or Turley. As far as individual performances go, Preston Beck is a talented offensive player, but their pitching is lacking from the bottom to the top. Lance Day has a decent ERA at 2.98, but his peripherals are highly suspect - too many walks and homers, not enough strikeouts. Much like ORU, UT-Arlington won their conference, the Southland, but wouldn't have even sniffed an at-large bid if they hadn't. This is not a team to be feared.

On the other hand, Dallas Baptist may just be a team to fear. Barring any huge upsets, they are Baylor's primary competition for a trip to play in the Super Regional. DBU got into the tournament with an at-large bid. They were 39-17 on the season with an RPI of 27 and a 13-13 record against Top 100 RPI teams. They score 6.9 Runs/Game and give up 4.3. If there is a weakness in their resume, it's that they were only 3-4 against Big XII teams, and they never came up against Baylor or A&M. Their strength is their offense, where their best four hitters all have 8+ homeruns and .338+ averages. That's a little intimidating. On the plus side, their run prevention is only solid, not spectacular. Their starters all have ERAs in the mid-to-high threes, but they do have a pretty strong ‘pen.

Overall, this is a pretty good Regional for the Bears, and one that they should win. Home field advantage will be huge, so if you are anywhere near Waco, you must go cheer on your Baylor Bears, and while you're at it, throw in a cheer for UTA to stun DBU and put them on their heels early!

mileskelly — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:34:51 -0000

The guys over at PerfectGame are doing a live chat today about the draft, so I figured I'd ask them about Ludy and where he might go. I also want to say that PerfectGame is very quickly becoming my favorite college baseball resource. The guys over there do an amazing job. Here are their thoughts on Ludy:

David Rawnsley: Ludy has had a great year, Miles, hitting .341-8-52 for the Bears and doing a solid job behind the plate. I think scouts see him as a solid senior sign type draft, somewhere in the 12-18 range when teams start addressing minor league needs and balancing rosters.

Kendall Rogers: I've had a chance to see Ludy a few times this season. He's got a thick trunk and isn't the most physically gifted guy in the world, but he's a fantastic leader and has really done a terrific job hitting the baseball this season. He's also pretty adequate behind the plate. Big fan of Ludy ... nice guy, too.

mileskelly — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:07:24 -0000

With the MLB Amateur Draft, or the Rule 4 Draft if you like, coming up in just under three weeks, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at some Baylor players and where they might be taken. Unlike the NFL Draft, the MLB Draft is a marathon that runs forty to fifty rounds (I'm still trying to get a bead on all the changes made in the last CBA), making it virtually impossible to say which team might take a player, or exactly where they might be drafted. Making it even more difficult, teams don't just take players from the college ranks. Puerto Rican, Canadian, and high school players are all eligible.

Even the first round this year is a bit of a crap-shoot, lacking any Strasburg-like standouts. Teams take players based on a number of different factors, such as performance, projectability, signability, and hype. Occasionally teams will draft based on "needs", but teams usually just try to take the best player available. After all, these draftees will not make an immediate impact, but rather, they will toil for several years in the obscurity of the minor leagues. For these reasons, I will give a range of rounds for each player based on what I've read and where players with similar skill sets have been taken in previous years.

The Big XII has several possible first-round or supplemental first-round draftees. Unfortunately, none of them are Baylor players. Andrew Heaney (OSU), Michael Wacha (A&M), Barrett Barnes (Tech), and Tyler Naquin (A&M) should all go high in the draft. If I were drafting for a team, I would go Heaney in the mid-first round. A lefty with an above average fastball and impressive stats to back it up is a good pick in my humble opinion. Conversely, I'm not very impressed with Wacha from an MLB point of view. His fastball is only average for a righty, and although he has a good changeup, his breaking ball (curve or slider) doesn't look to be a plus pitch. From what I've seen and read, his ceiling is perhaps a #3 starter and his floor is middle-reliever. I don't think I take that in the first round.

At any rate, let's move on to the meat of this post and talk Baylor players. One more thing: I want to say that I am not a scout. What I am is an obsessive baseball fan, and I love the draft more than just about anything else. I research it a great deal and keep track of "gurus" such as Keith Law, John Sickels, Jonathon Mayo and some smaller writers that most people don't know. I'm primarily going to focus on the "definite" draftees, or the guys that I fully expect to be taken and begin their professional careers. I'll also list the guys who, barring a big surprise, could be taken toward the end of the draft. As always, feel free to agree, disagree, or otherwise discuss in the comments section.

While Baylor doesn't have any first-rounders, the players who will definitely get drafted will likely be taken in the first fifteen rounds, which will give each of them ample opportunity to prove themselves and work their way up the ladder. Teams generally don't give up quickly on players they took in the top ten-to-fifteen rounds.

Max Muncy - Projected 3^rd to 6^th round - Muncy has been the most consistently ranked Baylor player. He's been on the radar for quite some time, and he's done nothing to fall off the radar. Everything I've seen and read says that his bat will absolutely play at the Major League level. So why won't he go earlier? I believe teams see him as something of a tweener as a college first baseman. Muncy has power, but he doesn't hit a ton of homers like a prototypical MLB first baseman (see: Fielder, Prince; Pujols, Albert). He plays good defense at first base, but as a first baseman, there's nowhere to go on the defensive spectrum. A player drafted as a shortstop/second baseman has far lower offensive expectations, but a first baseman has to produce a great deal with the bat. I doubt any team would try him in an outfield corner, as Muncy doesn't really have the speed to play out there. My hope is that a team will take a chance on Muncy as a third baseman. The offensive bar for MLB third basemen is fairly low at the moment, and Muncy could easily hit enough if he could stick at third defensively.

Logan Vick - Projected 5^th to 10^th round - From everything I've read, Vick is considered a fourth-outfielder type who could play all three outfield positions in a pinch. It seems as though teams don't consider Vick a true centerfielder, because if they did, he'd probably go higher. From what I've seen, Vick has good closing speed in the outfield, and he can steal some bases, but he's probably not a true "burner" like most centerfielders. At the same time, Vick doesn't have the homerun power that teams look for from a corner outfielder, although he obviously has gap power, hitting doubles like it's going out of style. I think a pretty good comparison is actually David Murphy, as Vick could likely carve out a good career as a backup who gets a ton of at-bats per year due to injuries.

Josh Turley - Projected 9^th to 15^th round - Lefties with the kind of numbers Turley puts up never last too long in the draft. Turley is a great control pitcher with deception in his delivery that makes his below average velocity play up. The only reason Turley won't be taken earlier is that same lack of velocity. For better or worse, MLB teams covet a good fastball over just about anything else in a pitching prospect and will consider Turley's ceiling to be that of a middle-reliever until he proves otherwise. However, as I said, being drafted in these rounds will give Turley plenty of opportunities to prove himself at the next level, hopefully as a starter.

Max Garner - Projected 10^th to 20^th round - Garner didn't get much hype, if any at all, before he burst onto the scene this year. Garner has average velocity from the right side and has been successful this season as both a starter and closer (although he has been much better since his move to the pen). Someone will snap him up with the chance to be a middle reliever.

Josh Ludy - Projected 5^th to 20^th round - I wish that I could be more exact with Ludy, but I'm having a hard time figuring out an appropriate range for him. He has several things working in his favor: 1) All teams always need catchers. ALWAYS. 2) He is known for a strong arm, and I've read that his footwork is pretty good. 3) His bat has really progressed this year, especially in the power department. If there is a knock that I've heard on Ludy, it's that some scouts aren't sure he can stay at catcher in the long term because he's a "big-bodied guy." I'm not sure if those same scouts have ever seen the Molina brothers play baseball, but they seem to do pretty well without being "trim." Personally, I don't see this being a problem. I think one of the main things holding Ludy's stock down a bit is simple hype. If he keeps hitting the way he has, I think we'll see him keep rising in the draft, and in a fairly weak college catcher class, he could go surprisingly high.

There are several other Baylor players who could be taken toward the back end of the draft. I think Dan Evatt has a legitimate chance to be taken as an outfielder with some surprising pop this year. Trent Blank could be taken as a sidearm righty reliever. Nathan Orf is draft eligible, but I hope he takes over the full time catching reigns next year to raise his stock. Both Jake Miller and Cal Towey are draft eligible and could definitely be taken in later rounds, but I'm hoping that both of them come back for their senior years. If they think that they'll raise their stock by doing so, I would bet that they'll return. No one is talking about it, but Lawton Langford should be draft eligible sophomore this year, and I've read very positive reviews of his second base defense. Langford can obviously hit like a champ, so I wouldn't be surprised to see him taken at some point. With two years of eligibility left though, I hope that he comes back for his redshirt junior year. Tyler Bremer, Kolt Browder, and Joey Hainsfurther could also be drafted in the later rounds as relievers.

These situations are always fluid, especially when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. I feel like every year, at least one college player impresses everyone in the CWS and their stock shoots up (See: Jackie Bradley Jr. from South Carolina). I'll do updates if anyone's stock rises or falls dramatically.

mileskelly — Sun, 13 May 2012 02:03:16 -0000

Oh, awkward, momentum-killing, ten-day break in the homestretch of the schedule, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. The rust that I discussed after the Texas State victory was in full effect in Saturday's double-header, as the offense managed only one run on eleven hits in nineteen innings. The team struck out seventeen times and walked only four times.

After playing at least four games a week for several months, it's not hard to see why a ten day stretch without facing game-speed competition is a very bad thing for hitters who rely on pitch recognition and timing. After averaging 5.6 runs/game for much of the season, the Bears have now scored four runs in their past three games. I fully believe that the offense will find their groove again in their last week of the regular season, but this is an awful time to go into a slump. In a double-elimination post-season, a sterling regular season record doesn't count for much if the bats are cold.

If you're looking for the silver lining, it's right here: the pitching staff. Over the three games since the ten-day break, they've given up only three runs (two earned). Led by Turley and Blank, who received his first loss of the year on a day where he absolutely did not deserve it, the staff has put up a 0.68 ERA since the season resumed. No rust here.

The Bears try to salvage the last game of the series tomorrow, and my assumption is that they'll do it with a chip on their collective shoulder. Being swept by an underachieving Oklahoma team was not on this their to do list.

Baylor at Oklahoma State
March 22-24, 2013 | Stillwater, Okla. | Allie P. Reynolds Stadium (4,000)
GAME NOTES

FRI. | 3:00 P.M.

Probable Starters:
BU - RHP Dillon Newman
3-0, 1.42 ERA, 31.2 IP, 23 K
OSU - RHP Jason Hursh
2-0, 1.50 ERA, 36.0 IP, 28 K

SAT. | 3:00 P.M.

Probable Starters:
BU - RHP Max Garner
1-3, 3.18 ERA, 34.0 IP, 27 K
OSU - RHP Mark Robinette
1-0, 4.05 ERA, 13.1 IP, 12 K

SUN. | 1:00 P.M.

Probable Starters:
BU - TBA
TBA
OSU - TBA
TBA

mileskelly — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:24:44 -0000

The Bears boosted their current winning streak to four games on Wednesday with their victory over Texas State. It was a nice victory after a ten day break during the homestretch of the season, and the team should certainly thank their excellent pitching corps for it. Tyler Bremer (3 IP), Dillon Newman (3.2 IP), Crayton Bare (1 IP), Kolt Browder (.1 IP), and Max Garner (1 IP, 10th save) combined for the impressive five-hit shutout.

It was a good thing the pitchers were on their game, because the bats - except for Muncy who went 2-4, 2B, 2 RBI - showed quite a bit of rust. Nathan Orf, Josh Ludy, Logan Vick, Dan Evatt, Cal Towey, and Jake Miller all took 0-fers, and the team struck out ten times in the game while walking only once. That is not the kind of performance Bears' fans have grown accustomed to. The good news is that the offense has seven more games to find their groove again before the post-season begins, and they have, of course, two of the best starting pitchers in the conference rolling into the weekend series at Oklahoma. This past weekend, OU was all but eliminated from the NCAA Tournament picture when they lost their series with Oklahoma State, but don't expect them to roll over. A series win over the #2 team in the nation is just the kind of boost they need.

A final note about the Texas State game: Michael Howard, who was suspended earlier in the season, pinch hit in the game and appears ready to contribute again. I don't know how reliable the sources were, but I read earlier that it was a fairly simple matter of a freshman not attending class like he should. Coach Smith decided to send Howard a message with the suspension, and now, it should be resolved. This is not only good for the rest of this season, but also great for next season, as Howard will be a big contributor to any 2013 success the team has.

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Illinois at Baylor March 8-9, 2013 \| Waco, Texas \| Baylor Ballpark SERIES NOTES
FRI. \| 6:35 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP Kevin Johnson 2-1, 3.44 ERA, 18.1 IP, 18 K BU - RHP Dillon Newman 2-0, 1.62 ERA, 16.2 IP, 12 K	SAT. \| 2:05 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP Nick Blackburn 2-0, 3.57 ERA, 17.2 IP, 11 K BU - RHP Max Garner 1-2, 2.79 ERA, 19.1 IP, 17 K	SAT. \| 6:35 P.M. Probable Starters: UI - RHP John Kravetz 1-0, 5.91 ERA, 10.2 IP, 7 K BU - RHP Austin Stone 0-1, 6.43 ERA, 7.0 IP, 7 K