Baseball early season scheduling

I don't know about every team, but I know Mizzou played a couple of double headers to get to 14 games, which reduces the number of playing dates (and opens up more practice time).

I think the number of games thing is easier to talk about but isn't actually the scheduling thing that made this season a little more difficult (and still only marginally).

It's the layout of the games. Having two friday-monday swings. Having two weekends with multiple opponents.

Florida is at 14 games and had at least one cancelled due to weather.

Yeah, I think Jay is regretting not having the usual off days in between to coach what he needs to. No one should be tired but I’ve seen silly fans make that comment.

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Yeah, I think Jay is regretting not having the usual off days in between to coach what he needs to. No one should be tired but I’ve seen silly fans make that comment.

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Most people with a brain know this. OP isn't one of those people.

Project is spot on. It’s not purely the number of games. Every team is cramming games early in the year. This number of games early in season also lightens the load come SEC play when we don’t have to play multiple Tuesday & Wednesday night games when our main focus is weekend series. In that sense, it’s smart. The main issue is the timing in between games to practice which is a very easy scheduling fix in future seasons.

With that said, Jay is still probably taking a bit too much of the blame here, given the flat nature we’ve played in basically every facet of the game these past 6 games in addition to the lacking quality of these opponents. Better teams would not be having these same multiple issues, at least not to this degree.

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I've mentioned it specifically toward Arrambide and maybe being fatigued having to catch that many games and possibly rolling into his performance at the plate

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That's on Jay (or Josh Jordan) to an extent. He has a backup catcher in Yamin who looked every bit as serviceable as the freshman in offseason play. I get that it is sort of a balancing act when you sign highly rated position players and you want to give them their opportunities to develop and keep everyone happy in this transfer portal era, but it seems like it could have been managed a little better IMO. Especially when you consider that Cade has been getting beat up since the first week of practice.

Eddie has good length and did a good job blocking and receiving in intrasquad play. The wildcard is that overall our pitchers have been relatively wild and maybe they don't want to put him in that precarious position in a game that counts. Not exactly sure why he hasn't gotten much of a shot so far, but he could catch, cover 1st or bookend a corner outfield spot if necessary to give us a better look at what he can do offensively.

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Not exactly sure why he hasn't gotten much of a shot so far, but he could catch, cover 1st or bookend a corner outfield spot if necessary to give us a better look at what he can do offensively.

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I don't think Yamin puts together enough good at bats for Jay to trust him. A few stats from the fall and spring combined comparing Serna and Yamin:

Serna - OBP .292 / 29% K rate / 4 HR
Yamin - OBP .328 / 41% K rate / 1 HR

I think when the offensive production looks like that you go ahead and take they guy that is young with the potential and let him play over a guy like Yamin. Hope that Serna can grow defensively and get better as the season goes on. It was the same with Arrambide last season and he did improve as the season went on.

I agree with you in principle Bay. But Yamin arguably looked better defensively than the freshman in the offseason so we know he can at least match that part of Serna's game (at least at this point in his career). Yes, Serna smashes the ball when he finds one, but he looks lost right now at times and Cade has been used hard and taken some lumps.

I know the first year player needs to work through it to get better, I just think that Yamin may be able to help us more than he has been given the opportunity to and would like to see him get a few more chances to show what he can do.

We should have both underclassmen catchers back for next season, so there is plenty of time for further development for all here assuming we don't lose one to injury or the portal ala Brady Neal. As Arrambide is not doing as well offensively as he did in offseason play, I believe that if we continue to progress with the current playing time breakdown, he may potentially continue to become fatigued come conference and tournament play and the downtrend may continue. He wasn't catching +/- 80% of the time in scrimmages and exhibitions.

And I'm definately not campaigning for Yamin to become the everyday catcher or first baseman, I would simply like to see a better sample size than his current 2-4 with 1 HR, 1 K and 2 RBI's through roughly a quarter of the season. I do believe that he provides some value despite the limited reps he's gotten. I think that he can help share some of the workload and make our catching corps better by it.

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Most people with a brain know this. OP isn't one of those people.

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I'm not talking about what Jay said. I'm talking about what people on this board have said, as I clearly stated in my post. Thanks for the input the though.