re: Javi gets a bad wrap. Why do people hate him so much?

Yeah, maybe Javi has improved in his hitting coach duties, but to be honest, I think we are just a more talented team this year compared to last.

In game one against Stony Brook last season, we started Arby Fields and Alex Edward in our outfield. Coming into this season, Arby was advised to sign as an undrafted free agent because Mainieri couldn't promise him a spot on the team with Laird, Stevenson, McMullen all coming, and Sciambra coming back from injury. As for Edward, he is quickly finding himself in the Chris McGhee/Buzzy Haydel role – senior that is more of a cheerleader than a player.

Add in the fact that we somehow got year-1 improvements on the left side of the infield with Ibarra and Bregman already outperforming what Hanover and Nola did last season.

This influx of new speed and new hitting has drastically helped an already solid hitter in Katz so much so that he has already surpassed his home run and RBI totals from all of last season.

One of the big memes from last season was "Thank God Rhymes is hitting over .400 else our offense will be terrible", well Rhymes is "slumping" by hitting only .350 so far this season and we are just fine.

I know I rambled a bit, but the bottom line is that we have seemingly hit on most of our freshman and JUCO transfers this year.