interesting what happened to chambless today. you would think that 3 innings on saturday would not affect him today, but it did.

we did the same with meyer and hit hurt him in the post season. hopefully the coaches dont overuse chambless, but it is tough not to use a guy who is so dominating.

anyone know where chambless is heading? he looks like the new closer, but he is coming into the games in the 6th and 7th inning. this is really looks like it is becoming a tough situation. i would really hate to see him get overused. but with his dominance on the mound, it is tough not to.

meyer, marlatt and corgan,....as fri,sat, sunday. and we could use turner and chambless in relief.

this really becoming a new issue for the coaches. hopefully it turns out for the best, which im sure it will.

Hopefully Ray gets another crack as the Tuesday starter. I just keep hoping someday he'll put it together. He, moreso than any other candidate, is capable of giving us more than 5 innings.

As of 3 years ago the Montreal Expos did not allow their minor league relievers to pitch the day after a 3 inning outing(this included pitchers that were in their mid 20's). I agree with this policy. Until you have matured physically (I'm not talking about muscle mass)and mentally, 3 innings and repeat is extremely tough at a high level. The biggest obsticle may be the mental part. 3 innings at 100% is hard to recover from. The arm does not bounce back very well most of the time and often feels dead. This is overuse in my opinion. Everyone in college does it though because of depth constraints.

Minor Leagues do not care if they win or lose, it does not matter. They are only grooming players for the Big Leagues. Big Difference.

Tech's baseball broadcaster kept talking about how nasty his breaking ball was. Did he throw 60 pitches yesterday? Thought I heard that.

That was part of the point that I did not make clear in the last sentence. Because colleges are trying to win every game they can not afford to pitch the less experienced pitchers. The statement about minor leagues not worried about winning isn't totally true though. Depending on the organization, making winning a habit is a high priority. The minors would pitch them like Chambless did this weekend if they weren't worried about injuries and late season arm burnout. I regress... the bottom line, the arms are not mature enough to do what Jordan did and have much consistency.

Rocks, I think we are both talking from similiar experiences.

Winning is not important in the minor leagues, they like to see their teams win and play hard, but managers do not get fired for losing. They are their to develop talent and get guys playing hard.

"They are their to develop talent and get guys playing hard."

To some organizations the latter is done through developing a winning culture. This does of course take a back seat to developing talent. When teams like the Expos of the late 90's are horrible, they love to see their AA team win 4 (maybe it was 3) consecutive championships with only a couple really good players and a bunch of marginal players. This is the developement of role players that get the job done. The job is winning. We may just have to agree to disagree.

Montreal is known for having the best talent, always had. They just don't have the money to keep them in the Pro's.

Mark Langston
Randy Johnson
Pedro Martinez
John Wettland
Larry Walker
Moises Alou
Vladimer Guererro
Just look back at their rosters during the 1990's completely loaded with talent. the 1994 team was one of the best teams of all-time, most likely would have won the World Series. They were smoking the Braves that year. What major league baseball did to the Expos was a shame.

Even Back in the day, it was a problem
Andre Dawson
Gary Carter

Sounds like you are a big Expos fan. But a big league owners care more about developing talent than winning minor league games. But great players have good attitudes and teams want to keep those types of players.

They will never over pitch a guy in the minors, or have him play through an injury that might cause more problems. In college and the bigs, you have to do that.

This is one of the problems with the roster limitations in college. I was certainly suprised when the radio guys announced that Jordan was up in the pen. I thought for sure he was fried after yesterday (and even yesterday I was suprised that he came in so early).

It may have simply been a fluke outing and obviously this is the first time he's thrown this much in a weekend so there is the possibility that we're overreacting. It was certainly his worst outing of the season.

I've actually been monitoring Jordan's appearances since his first one....
http://tamu-and-baseball.com/2005aggiepitching.html#individual
(if you scroll down you will see his batter-by-batter log also.

Hopefully he won't be throwing 81 pitches over two days every weekend for the rest of the year.

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[This message has been edited by AgRyan04 (edited 3/20/2005 8:34p).]

I really think that twice through the order with Corgan, then Turner for as long as he's effective and piece it from there is probably the approach we should be taking on Sunday.

Before the game started, I thought that perhaps we should start Turner, given that Marlatt had good success getting Tech to hit ground balls yesterday, but in retrospect, MJ and Lawler made the right move in starting Corgan as a change of pace from Saturday.

We also could have used the '03 version of Robert Ray to come in for middle relief in any one of these three games and give us a chance to win. However, my guess is that, since we didn't see Creps this weekend, he'll probably get the start on Tuesday, although his action will probably be limited so he would be available for some action in Norman.

"Minor Leagues do not care if they win or lose, it does not matter. They are only grooming players for the Big Leagues. Big Difference."

Exactly why anyone that CAN will shun college over the pros. So sad. I do not believe any major college AD, or knowing college baseball fan, believes careers should be endangered for the sake of a win. Part of a baseball coaches job at ANY level, from Little League to the pros, is to know how to get the most of a player without endangering him. Any coach that doesn't do that at any level needs to exit the game immediately.

I don't think we are talking about endangering anyone here.

txag72....I completely agree that there are MANY instances that college pitchers get abused. I also agree with RFB, and I'm not necessarily worried about injury in this case....just the ability to bounce back the day after a heavy load.

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1) What MJ did to Jordan today was no where near abuse.

2) I was watching the Tech video feed. Jordan still had his 'stuff,' but he made mistakes after he got ahead of each of the batters 0-2. It was almost like there was some doubt in his mind about what he was doing.

3) Are we really complaining about this?

Not saying anything was or wasn't done this week-end. Just noting that there SHOULD be NO DIFFERENCE in the minors and college in this regard. If there is, there's a problem.

quote:

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Not saying anything was or wasn't done this week-end. Just noting that there SHOULD be NO DIFFERENCE in the minors and college in this regard. If there is, there's a problem.

---

There is a difference. Should doesn't enter into the equation, we can only deal with the facts as they are. Minor league mangers are paid to develop talent; college coaches are paid to win. There's no arguing that point.

Chambless' outings will be trimmed again, with Spring football resuming this week, he'll have to divide his hours again. We probably won't see him used as much as we saw him this last week. Probably 1 to 2 outings a week, an inning or two on tuesday and a couple on the weekend, if that. I heard Belina say something of the sort, prior to Spring Break, when asked a similar question.

you're right about his limited time for this next week, especially with our weekend games being Thu, Fri, Sat as opposed to the normal Fri, Sat, Sun.

Does anyone know if just going to games counts against his 20 hours or if he actually has to play? This would certainly give the baseball team a little more flexibility.

Football should only be a problem for a little while longer shouldn't it? The M&W game is April 9th....but I guess that's three weeks from now.

I forsee more 3 inning appearances if we're only getting him for a game or two per week.

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Our starters should be Corgan on Friday, Chambliss on Sat and Meyer on Sun. After Meyer's performance against Tech, you can't afford to have him out there on Friday. We just cannot afford to take a beating like we did against Tech in the first game against the likes of Baylor, tu, Okie State and OU. And since Chambliss does not show any signs of being able to come back the next day and be effective you might as well let him start and get the most out of him you can in one outing. Three innings a weekend is not enough with that guy's ability. Ray, Marlatt and Turner will have to provide the long relief.

BTW, what is up with Rampy, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn much less the catcher's mitt against San Diego and hasn't had much success since. Is this guy done?





[This message has been edited by Artimus Gordon (edited 3/21/2005 6:56a).]

Before I get started, there is not an "i" in Jordan's last name.

While I'm impressed with your confidence in our freshmen, I disagree with your thought process about Meyer and of dropping Marlatt completely out of the rotation. Meyer certainly wasn't himself on Friday but I think it is something that will be worked through....I don't expect him to give up 7 runs every weekend. If he does then we will be in BIG trouble.....and I'll eat my hat.


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Sorry I was a big Yankees fan and whenever the name Chambliss comes up, I always think of Chris Chambliss.

Bottom line we have to get more work out of Jordan during a weekend series. Normally I would say start him on Friday like we did J. Granger while he played football but that doesn't look like a possibility right now. Meyer has just not been dominating enough of late to warrant risking him on Friday night, especially if you are on the road and want to win the series. You just cannot get trounced on friday night and expect to come back and win the series.

If one of the Freshmen falters, you bring in either Ray, Marlatt, Turner, etc to hopefully get you into the late innings without too much damage.

No doubt that Corgan and Jordan C. are our future. They should be handed the ball to see what they can do. It couldn't be any worse than the revolving door we have with our starting pitching right now. One day it is Turner as the starter, the next it is Ray and now Marlatt comes into the mix? I don't see how we can stay in this state of flux with our starting pitching and win a series much less sweep in the conference this year. Baylor is tough, and Texas will still have a lot to say how the final standings turn out. They may be down but they certainly aren't out.







[This message has been edited by Artimus Gordon (edited 3/21/2005 8:34a).]

It's a little bit early to be giving up on Jason Meyer. Meyer, Marlatt, Corgan/Turner is a pretty capable rotation. Between Whelan, Ray, Creps, and Rampy, I'm fairly optimistic that we will find a few more reliable arms out of the pen to go with Chambless.

As to Jordan's time constraints, I understand that each game he plays (or even dresses for, I believe) counts as three hours against his 20 hour limit. I also believe that Fran was willing to try to do something on the order of 10 for football and 10 for baseball. I could see Jordan missing our Tuesday game and being available for the entire OU series, or perhaps he will stay with football through Thursday, then go up for the final two games. As a relief pitcher, I'm fine with only seeing him once per weekend.

"As to Jordan's time constraints, I understand that each game he plays (or even dresses for, I believe) counts as three hours against his 20 hour limit. I also believe that Fran was willing to try to do something on the order of 10 for football and 10 for baseball."


All the more reason to hand him the ball on Saturday night and let him see how far he can go, especially if he is not effective on his second stint in relief after an outing the day before. Meyer is still my Sunday starter, I haven't given up on him, I just don't think he is dominating enough to be the Friday starter.

Turner did a good job in relief on Sunday.

Texas A&M IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
-----------------------------------------------
Corgan, Chance...... 5.0 - 5 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 20 - 22
Whelan, Kevin....... 0.2 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 0 - 3 -5
Chambless, Jordan... 1.0 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 0 - 5 - 8
Turner, Clayton..... 2.1 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 7


As opposed to Friday's pitching performances:

Texas A&M IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
-----------------------------------------------
Meyer, Jason........ 3.1 - 5 - 7 - 7 - 4 - 3 - 12 - 17
Nicholson, Kyle..... 1.2 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 6 -10
Rampy, Blake........ 3.0 - 6 - 3 - 3 - 0 - 2 - 13 -14

Vs. Saturday's wasted pitching performance because we couldn't buy a run.

Texas A&M IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
-----------------------------------------------
Marlatt, Kyle....... 5.0 - 5 - 1 - 1 - 3 - 0 - 16 - 19
Chambless, Jordan... 3.0 - 2 - 0 - 0 - 1 - 2 - 10 -12


Corgan / Turner - Friday

Chambless / Marlatt - Saturday

Meyer / Ray etc. - Sunday

A lot depends on whether Turner or Marlatt can come back in relief and be effective after a relief stint the day before.






[This message has been edited by Artimus Gordon (edited 3/21/2005 9:12a).]

<There really should be a flabergasted smiley.>

Are y'all really talking about taking Meyer out of the Friday role, and making the most drastic possible change to Chambless' role as a pitcher all based on one bad weekend where lots of flukie stuff happened? Wow, I sure hope MJ and Coach Lawler aren't having this same sort of discussion.

artimus,

here were casey fossum's #'s against tech.

Texas A&M University IP H R ER BB SO AB BF
Casey Fossum........ 4.0 6 7 2 3 3 16 23

looks pretty similar to meyer's #'s

so would have you moved fossum to a sunday starter based on one game in tech.

Putting aside you're loss of confidence in Meyer, you don't put a freshman like Corgan, who, at this point anyway, is extremely unlikely to pitch deep (say 8th or 9th inning) into a game, and throw him on Friday night. While Jordan has been good out of the pen, I doubt whether he has the stamina (from an arm standpoint) to be a starter at this stage of his career. I like him as a closer just fine.

artimus,

im glad you are not coaching this team because in baseball you dont just give up on a guy because of a bad outting. meyer had a sub 2.00 era 2 weeks ago. he has had a problem with walks the last 2 weeks but you let him work through that and you have to show him you have confidence in him by not moving him down. chambless will probably be a weekend starter after april 9, but not before then.

Speaking of drastic, Was either Chance or Jordan closers or relievers last year??? You go from knowing you will get the ball to not knowing when or what situation you will have to pitch in in just a few months. Both are conditioned to be starters, not relievers. Quit going against the grain!

artimus,
i agree with you that corgan and chambless should be starters, but as of now, we have plenty of talented soph, juniors and seniors. those guys will probably remain starters. chambless may become a sunday starter, but for now, marlatt is looking like he will be a starter. chambless and corgan are only freshman, they will be starters for sure next year.

im not sure how else to explain this.

yes you are right,..but for now chambless is not a starter and with our depth, he doesnt need to be.

Meyer should be our Friday starter, and I'm pretty darn sure it will stay that way. I still am not sure what Turner did to get booted from the weekend rotation. Dude has been solid. I've said this before, but I say you go with Meyer on Friday, Turner on Saturday, and either Chambless or Corgan on Sunday. Use Ray in short relief, as he seems to get hitters out the first time through an order, and he can definitely strike guys out. None of this is going to matter too much though if we can't get some consistent hitting going.

artimus, in high school you face worse batters and the games are 7 innings. starting in hs is not the same as starting in college, hate to burst your bubble. corgan has not been able to last late into games so to even suggest he be the friday starter is ridiculous. you want your friday starter going 7+ innings, something meyer has done consistently up until tech. even in the ucla game he gave up just 2 hits in his 5+ innings.