It’s Monday morning, so it’s time for me to let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week. I’ve been thinking a lot about the baseball and softball teams and the sale of Rivals.
Let’s get to it.
Baseball Thoughts
1. Tiger baseball in general.
The Mizzou baseball team has really been on my mind the past week and that started with athletic director Laird Veatch talking about the bids for new turfing at Taylor Stadium during his media scrum at the Zou to You tour stop in St. Charles early in the week.
While I was covering Mizzou football and basketball for my old job before starting on the site, I never had much time to pay attention to the baseball team past the mid-Missouri kids and trying to work in a feature or two on them here and there. But now I’ve had a whole season of getting out to games and really getting the full experience.
Obviously I’m not breaking any news when I tell you it’s bleak.
But as the Tigers approach a winless conference season, you don’t have to reach far for another Tiger program going through a stretch like this. But the 2023-24 basketball team never felt hopeless to me the way watching this year’s baseball team does.
That basketball team certainly had its major flaws, you don’t lose 22-of-23 games without major, major flaws, but they were competitive at times and you could see they were close at times to not being the worst team in the conference.
Covering those games, I at least went in with an idea that they might win and how that could happen.
I don’t get that feeling with the baseball team this year when I’m at the stadium.
They’ve played slightly better recently, only giving up 10 runs once in the past seven games after allowing double digits in the past five before that and in 12 of their first 18 SEC games.
And they’ve even looked like they had a chance at times, leading for 5.5 innings in a game against Alabama and for five innings against Georgia in the second game and another four innings in the third.
But every time, even now that the starting pitching has done better, it’s abundantly clear that as the Tigers rotate through three or four bullpen arms in each game, someone is going to have a blow-up inning, maybe two someones.
I do think there’s some pitching hope for the future if guys stick around, Wil Libbert has gotten better and better, Sam Horn has looked good in 2-of-3 outings and is ramping up quickly, Tony Neubeck is back and healthy again, Brock Lucas has been better in his past few outings, Brady Kehlenbrink has put together two fine appearances in a row. That could be a few rotation plus Lucas as one of the key guys out of the pen alongside PJ Green as he continues to get his arsenal figured out and Josh McDevitt who has looked good in three-of-four outings.
There is some light possible in the rotation next year and it’s clear the sheer volume of injuries has hampered any chance the Tigers have at single-game success this year, I mean, they just lost a second position player to Tommy John surgery. One position player is weird enough with TJ, two is insane, let alone all the pitching injuries.
But it’s also clear that the team is just so far behind its competition in the SEC and there’s a pretty obvious reason for that.
