Final Thoughts, Pre-Super-Regional

Well, I completely got the date wrong for the start of the Clemson-ASU super-regional in my last post. I woke up yesterday morning expecting to watch the game in the evening; didn't realize it started Saturday until I checked espn.com a few hours later. I hate it when I do this, I was all geared up to watch the game last night and then suddenly the rug gets pulled out from underneath me. Oh well, I managed to catch some of the other super-regional games last night so it wasn't a total loss.

A few final thoughts:

• The extra day probably helps ASU more than us given the lack of depth in their pitching staff, although there's been enough rest to probably not give either team any real advantage.


• The MLB draft starts June 9th (I double-checked the date this time), so this is the last weekend to play in front of the scouts. At this point, anything that happens this weekend probably doesn't make a difference, teams pretty much know the strengths/weaknesses of individual players. But as a player, the days leading up to the draft must be nerve-wracking, and I wonder if they don't end up pressing in an attempt to make a last-second good impression, or alternatively if they don't hold back something to avoid a stupid injury. The only first round lock playing in Tempe this weekend is Mike Leake, but I wonder if fringe second and third-round guys like Chris Dywer, Ben Paulsen, and Jason Kipnis wouldn't be affected by this kind of mindset.


• Arizona State starting pitchers landed five times in Boyd Nation's Pitch Count Watch, which requires a start of ~130 or more pitches. I think its safe to say that ASU has ridden their starting pitchers if things are going well, with little regard for climbing pitch counts.


• By contrast, Clemson makes only one appearance on the list, last week's Dwyer start against OSU. I think this might suggest Leggett is a little more "new-school" in favoring pitch count limits. In the post-season, though, I doubt there's a college coach alive that cares about pitch count other than as a proxy for arm fatigue.


• Related to the above, I came across this ridiculous article at MLB.com today. It sounds like some MLB mouthpiece concern-trolling college baseball for not having rigid pitch counts in their post-season play that align with the current interests of MLB. Look, I get that MLB sees college players as future assets, but don't tell me these college kids don't want to win as much as their managers. I'm all for keeping pitch counts down in general, but in the post-season its just a different story.


• A general rant on pitch-counts: I definitely fall in the camp that thinks MLB takes things to a pretty ridiculous extreme. Its no wonder that major league teams find half of their staff injured two-thirds of the way through the season, these guys are being selected for pure stuff and no endurance. The other extreme is equally stupid, though--say in Japanese baseball, where you get high school kids throwing hundreds of pitches on consecutive days in the Koshien Tournament. That system ends up selecting for pitchers that have rubber arms and little else. There's a happy medium where pitchers are extended enough to identify guys that are high injury risks, but still retain guys with excellent stuff.


• Speaking of Japan, if you have a weak stomach you might want to look the other way:
  
  You read that right--Lemon Vinegar KitKat. Yeah, not the first flavor one would naturally associate with chocolate. I hear there's Apple Vinegar, as well.

LET'S GO TIGERS!!!