He has to be. But I'm not blaming him----the last thing he probably thought he needed with this team was another LH guy in the pen throwing 91-93. We've got like 9 of them. I'll take this time to repeat what I kinda harped on in the game thread Saturday. We threw Herring 3 1/3 Thursday to finish the game, then Jump started Friday and threw however long he did, then Ack finished that game, then we started Coleman Saturday. And Loer faced a hitter or 2 Friday as well. So we threw 5 LHP that are all basically the same dude (91/92 from the left side, with a similar arm slot, with similar off-speed pitches with similar shapes and similar velocities) in like 14 of 15 innings after Holman left the game.

Herring fared better because well, he's by far the best of the bunch and he can tick it up to 94/95. But also because he was following Holman and giving Vandy a completely different look. But by Saturday, they were very familiar with that look, so of course they were gonna have good ABs. The only break from it was Hurd's 4 hitters (I think 2 reached base) and however long Herring went Friday, but I don't even remember him actually pitching.

I think one of the biggest disappointments of the staff is we have no RHP that Jay really trusts to throw out there. Maybe Guidry for an inning, but it seems SEC hitters are seeing his breaking ball a lot better this year the 2nd time through the conference. Hurd has been a huge disappointment. As has Little. Not sure what Ulloa has done wrong, but it seemed like he was going to be a high-leverage guy, but for whatever reason, they're not confident using him. And I guess Moffett hasn't developed into a guy they can trust either, though he seemed to have been pretty promising the outings I've seen.

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However, I'm not sure how exclusive he is in just the OF. I think there are chances of him pitching in the future. Maybe not this season but we will see.

There will definitely be some re-evaluaitons after the season. I don't think Brown not-pitching this year has much to do with his pitching talent. I think it was mainly that we had (or thought we did) plenty of LH arms that do what he does on the mound, but OF wasn't quite settled and Jay wanted a good bat/great athlete in the mix until somebody won the RF job. And that was with Pearson at 2nd. Milam moved Pearson to the OF, so that's ANOTHER guy out there, and Kling hit his way out of the every day CF role, so now nobody's grabbed either CF or RF. So I'm gad he gave Brown the offseason reps at the plate. Shame he got hurt and sort of slowed his development.

I also think Jay thought his athleticism would play on the base paths this year in case we needed to run more. And he played him at 1st I think as insurance in case Bear went into a funk like last year and became an auto out against SEC pitching. But he's really been the only guy from last year's class that has actually progressed from last year and cemented himself in the every day lineup.