re: Hurd better than Floyd

quote:

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I tried to tell them. People think Hurd is freshman UCLA Hurd. He's just not there yet.

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Yes he is there. It's very convenient for your opinion, that Hurd happened to have a bad game today. Well Floyd was bad yesterday, and all of Tennessee's vaunted starters were bad this week. I'm not thrilled about it for our guys, but it happens.

I've seen Hurd at his best, and I've seen Floyd at his best. Floyd does not have the complete repertoire that Hurd has. Hurd can command four different pitches, and they are all outstanding. For whatever reason today, he barely used any of his secondaries, and didn't control the pitches he was throwing. I don't know why that happened. When he was dominating over the last couple of starts, you saw the depth and the placement of his pitches were exceptional. Today, they weren't.

You asked me in another post how I can say that Hurd was better than Floyd last year when he was hurt most of the year. Because he still threw 34 innings, and was utterly dominant in them. Floyd was not utterly dominant at any point the previous two years. He had some good games late last year, but outside of the game where he came in relief in the Ole Miss game, there was nothing resembling the type of ace performance that Hurd was giving UCLA.

You can talk about Hurd not facing good competition yet this year, before this weekend, but I can say the same about Floyd, and at least Hurd showed something at Texas in a hostile environment. So if we're going to punt on Hurd being what we thought he was because of today, then we have to do the same to Floyd. My opinion of neither is based on this weekend. Everyone can have a bad game. But if I'm going to choose between the two, I want the guy who has top 5 pick type of stuff, over the guy who's got two pitches and has much less margin for error. I think both will be fine. This is strictly an argument over who's better.