re: Jay says he knows what 7-8 pitchers he will be leaning on for now

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Who are you benching?

I understand York shouldn't just be automatically given a position but nobody else has even shown a competent ability to play 1st, much less shining at the plate.

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There are options at 1B if Yorke continues to slump.

Braun
Dardar
Simpson
Yamin

Arrambide can play 1B, but you need him behind the plate. I wouldn't be upset if he were on first when Serna needs to catch, but that isn't an everyday solution.

Brown has played 1B as well, but I don't recall seeing him there in the few scrimmages I attended. If Stanfield came back and you needed someone like Harden in there, you could push Brown to 1B and Harden to RF. But last night didn't help the chances of that playing out.

As for Yorke, he's looked ok at 1B before that really bad play last night. I'm not ready to give up on him. But at this rate, I wouldn't be upset if someone else got a shot, either. i.e. Yamin or Braun.

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we got to pick and choose what pitchers we wanted disappointed we only have 7 or 8 now

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Some will improve. It's hard to think Williams won't improve after what he did last year.

We have about 9 that seem to be good options.
Evans
Moore
Schmidt
Sheerin
Guidry
Rizy
Plog
Theophilus
Noot

You need about 8-9 come tourney time. I think everyone forgets that in 2023 only 4 pitchers pitched in the CWS for us with a sub 4.00 ERA (Skenes, Ack, Guidry, Herring). Cooper and Floyd were in the 4's. Now that I'm looking, Hurd was 7th on the CWS roster with a 5.68 ERA. Yes, that team had the bats to make it happen. But my point is that several guys who had a rough regular season were able to turn it on when needed.

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If we look in another direction at 1B (I'm not ready to write off Yorke completely, but I think a break could be needed), Simpson or Dardar makes sense allowing Ruckert more chances at 2B. I think Pearson showed he's not ready to handle 1B defensively. I don't think Yamin's bat will play well enough over the long term.

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Even though Serna is an option, I don't feel like he's an upgrade over Yorke at this point. His ceiling is higher, but he's is 10th on the team in plate appearances, and he's trailing Yorke basically in every statistical category. I don't feel like we have the slack in our lineup to go through his growing pains right now. If you are going to replace Yorke, I feel like it needs to be someone who is hitting better than him (Dardar or Simpson) or someone who hasn't had many chances (Yamin). To be clear, my bias is pushing Yamin, b/c he's the ultimate team guy, and I like him. Jay has seen Yamin hit or 2 years now and he hasn't given him an at-bat in a meaningful situation for a reason.

As for Braun, I'll take your word for it if he hasn't played much 1B. I'm pretty sure he played 1B in the limited scrimmages I watched, and he was ranked highly as a 1B in recruiting. So I assumed he was a seasoned 1B. I also thought Jay had said before the season that Braun was our future 1B... but that may have come from some talking head and not Jay.

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I also thought Jay had said before the season that Braun was our future 1B... but that may have come from some talking head and not Jay.

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He probably said that. And Braun probably is the future at 1B. But there will be growing pains there just like you mentioned with Serna's bat.

I do think that Serna, Braun, and Ruckert will get a lot of opportunities as the season goes along because along with Arrambide, they're the backbone of next year's line up.

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He is the only one in the current "circle of trust" that Jay will put up with wildness due to potential. Yes everyone hopes he can get several different pitches dialed in for strikes.

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His height means that it could just take him longer to get it all together. It also means that little disruptions get magnified. He pulled it together later in his outing last night. I wonder if the turf mound messed him up initially?

Rizy is our box of chocolates.

Because he can easily pitch Friday night. He threw for one inning bro. Do you think his arms shot after 12 pitches?

why the discussion of benching york? he gets walked a lot and has power. Jay said in the interview after the game that Pearson playing first the other night was a personnel mistake by him. i think his plan is to play yorke every game at 1st
although if we had someone capable of playing a bit better defense then we could dh yorke and possibly get a different bat in the lineup if they shuffle things up that way.
not sure who that would be though.

serna wouldn't really be worth a dh spot in my opinion,he hasn't shown much but he may get better with abs and the ceiling is high.

Those may very well be the 8 guys, but Williams hasn't been very good, and Rizy continues to be all over the place, with flashes of brilliance. Noot isn't super consistent, either, but I think he makes competitive pitches more often than not, and will end up having a good year.

It's enough guys to get by if the starters give you innings like they did this weekend. The hitting isn't good right now, but my real concern is the defensive play. I had those same concerns before the season, because there weren't any good options, strictly from a defensive standpoint, at 2nd and 3rd, and our catchers aren't exactly gold glovers at this point. That issue is looking worse than I imagined, and it absolutely has to get a lot better or we're in for a long year. That will get you crushed in the SEC if you can't make routine plays.