Articles by Category
Some early thoughts. First, the regular players.
JaVon Shelby has decided to become all he has promised to be. He has begun in an amazing fashion, with 6 extra base hits (two homre runs), and is batting a blistering .667 at the plate, and a slugging percentage of an incredible 1.500. But that's only 2nd on the team. More on that later. Cats moved him to 3rd base this year, and the experiment has, so far, proven effective--at least for his offense
. He has committed 1 error on the season, and the fielding percentage is only .875 (with one early error, that's to be expected, of course). Jury still out on the change. He's not really your barrell-chested protypical 3rd baseman, but after playing OF in high school, and moved to 2nd base early in college, it's like they know he belongs, but just not sure where. Something to watch the first 10-15 games of the season.Welcome back, Austin Cousino. No, he went on to professional baseball, but freshman switch-hitting CF Tristan Pompey from Canada has been electrifying so far as his replacement. Pompey was drafted in Round 31 by the Minnesota Twins, and elected to come to college in Lexington instead. Thank you, Mr. Pompey. All he has done so far this year is clobber 3 home runs, a double, and a triple, in route to a team-leading 6 RBIs, a team-leading 1.700 slugging percentage, and batting .500 on the season. Interestingly, has not had an official putout yet, and no errors in center field. Pompey has only started two of the three games so far this season; bet he'll be considered for more.
With those two bright spots, the next biggest story so far has to be a little disappointment in the early going for preseason All-SEC pick 1st baseman Evan White. As usual, he has been stellar in the field, with 31 putouts and no errors, but his hitting has been a subpar .200, with 7 strikeouts in 15 at bats. He has also grounded into one double play, so he's off to a sluggish start at the plate. He'll come around.
Back to some more positive notes. Gunnar McNeill has made a big impact--McNeill, who played 1B (sorry, Evan White has that spot occupied) and was a RHP for Chipola College, has provided some additional pop at DH. Starting all 3 games, he has a home run and 4 RBIs on the early season.
Continuing with the new faces, the Cats have had a nice beginning to the year from junior Zach Reks--a walk-on who transferred from Air Force. Reks has one start under his belt, and is batting .444 on 4 of 9 on the weekend.
Another newcomer with an impact this weekend is switch-hitting 2nd baseman Luke Becker. With nice size at 6'0, 190, the 2nd baseman (who can also play 3rd, if the Shelby experiment doesn't pan out) is a sophomore with three years of eligibility remaining after transferring from Northern Iowa Community College. He led the team to regional and super regional championships last season, batting .364 with 17 doubles, 12 home runs, and 63 RBIs. Starting all three games, Becker batting .417 on the weekend on 5-12 hitting, with a double and two RBIs. Also showed good patience at the plate, drawing two walks. Becker did have a bobble in the field, and early fielding percentage of .900 isn't what we want to see all year, to be sure, but the youngster has shown promise so far in the early going.
Other than JaVon Shelby, Riley Mahan is the only other graybeard with Kentucky that had a good weekend on this side of the equation. Mahan won the starting duties over Connor Heady. Mahan earned 5 starts last year at SS, nine as DH, and eight at 3rd base, so he has proven to have a lot of utility for UK. You may remember Mahan's inside-the-park home run in the rubber game at # 1 LSU with two outs in the 9th inning, that tied the game at 10-10, allowing UK to win in 11 innings and win the series in Baton Rouge. Mahan has come to play this year, and has a good start to the season, with a .417 batting average, including one double and one triple. He has also been patient and drawn two walks as well. But continuing the theme of, "will UK's defense be good enough this year," Mahan has two faux pas, and an abysmal .867 fielding average currently. That will improve--and will need to if he expect to continue to take the starting nod away from the two-year starter Connor Heady. Unless there's something I missed, Coach Henderson just felt like the time was ripe to move Mahan into that slot over Heady, who has fielded well (after a very poor early season last year, he got much better during the season), but subpar hitting.
Troy Squires has manned the crucial catcher spot, and so far, so good, with 3 assists, 11 putouts, no errors, and a .333 batting average. I'll have to check why, but he only has 3 at bats, despite starting two games, with his hit being a double. Also drew a base on balls. Cats haven't settled on the catcher yet, as it has been shared with Zach Arnold (0-4, .000) and Kole Cottam (2-3, .667).
Other vets are struggling a bit: Dorian Hairston (1-5, .200), Storm Wilson (1-7, .143), Marcus Carson (1-9, .111).
After putting up 4 runs in the opener, Kentucky exploded for 23 runs combined in the final two games, and the bats look alive. Hope that continues.
To the mound we go....
Kyle Cody (7.0 ip, 3 hits, 0 runs) and Dustin Beggs (6.0 ip, 4 hits, 1 run) have earned the two starting wins for Kentucky. Zack Brown struggled in the opener, allowing 9 hits and 4 earned runs in 3.2 innings and drew the loss. Hopefully Coach Henderson will have the confidence in others this year to pull a starter when he is struggling a little earlier this year. It appears he has a lot of confidence in his starters--to say the very least, as he has often allowed stellar relievers to go unused at times. One season recently the UK relievers set an all-time Kentucky earned run average record, as I recall, but were also somewhat underused, according to many.
We know those three. Who else pitched this weekend we need to talk about?
Zach Strecker threw an admirable 3.1 innings in relief of Brown, allowing 3 hits, 2 walks, 5 strikesouts, and 1 earned run, for a 2.70 ERA.
Others:
Zach Logue, Logan Salow, Sean Hjelle, Zach Pop all threw 1.0 innings each without allowing an earned run. Hjelle struck out the side sandwiched around two hits. I don't think we saw any of them enough to make any snap judgments yet.
Justin Lewis and Brad Schaenzer also joined the others with 0.00 ERAs (UK with 7 pitchers with that ERA so far), throwing 0.2 innings each.
We had two pitchers struggle (in addition to Zack Brown--by the way, I will NEVER get the "k" Zacks and the "h" Zachs committed to memory this year--too many of them), Josh Smith, throwing 0.1 inning, allowing 1 hit and 1 earned run--a home run, for a 27.00 ERA, and Bo Wilson, throwing 0.1 inning, with 1 hit, 1 walk, and 3 earned runs for a (gulp) 81.00 ERA. That's not Bo. He'll do better.
On the whole, team pitching ERA is 3.46--a little higher than I like it, but really respectable in today's college age, while our opponents have a sporty 9.00 ERA, thanks to our bats. We have a team batting average of .360, while our opponents are hitting only .233 against us, and we have an incredible team slugging percentage of .728. Folks, that is some kind of major slugging. With 7 home runs in today's game alone, though, you can understand it.
Cats move from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to face UC Santa Barbara Friday, Feb 26 at 3:00 pm ET. I'm not 100% sure where they will be playing, or who they will play Saturday & Sunday, but it should be a three-game weekend as well.
Good promise to the early season, but let's not hold our breaths yet, and wait for some more data to be collected, and especially as our level of competition increases.
Until next Friday....
KSR Twitter Feed
vBulletin Message