True Maroon

With all of the new starters and people who didn't get many at-bats last year, I expected a dropoff in average. I didn't know it would be 30 points lower though and thanks to Frazier or it would have been more than that. What bothers me is the lack of power. If you just glance at the stats, it doesnt look like lack of power has hurt us. We're 30-14 in games where we didnt hit a HR and only 9-9 in games where we did hit at least 1 HR. However when you look at our record when trailing after any specific inning, we have a losing record in every inning. The best record there is 4-8 when trailing after 1 inning. Late in a game when you are behind by only a couple of runs its almost impossible to string together 4 or 5 hits to get the tying runs scored when your team batting average is .251. We need the longball threat as an equalizer. Whether its HR's or not, the bottom line is we need increased run production. This year we're 8-20 when giving up 4 or more runs and 31-3 when giving up 3 or fewer.

Next year I look for our batting average to improve (it can't get much lower) due to experience. I'm hoping that Refroe, Porter, Rea and Norris find their power stroke too. If the pitching staff that returns can come close to duplicating what they have done this year, then next year is looking pretty good.

Oh, and we're not done this year yet! As someone on the Pack posted, if anyone has the pitching to come out of the loser's bracket, its us. We're going to have to pick up the bats to do it though.