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I know that Yeskie is a legendary pitching coach, but trying to get outs overwhelmingly by strikeout is very inefficient. It takes too many pitches to get outs, and runs up the pitch count quickly with your starters. I bet we haven’t had more than 3 starts in SEC games this year when the starters went more than 5 innings. Remember when Mestepey used to pitch. He could get through the 7th in about 80 pitches because he got so many ground ball and fly outs.

We lead the nation in Ks. That would work fine if we could stop with the walks and wild pitches. That is what is often extending innings and giving away runs. Earlier in the season, the defensive mistakes were a major contributor there, as well.

As for pitching to contact, who on this staff beyond Cowan do you trust to try and do that without giving up a barrage of HRs, which we already struggle with? Sheerin, Evans (when healthy) and Fontenot are 3 of the few we have who can put enough movement on a fastball to keep them from being fricking hammered. And even those 3 can’t do it all the time and leave some hanging up in the zone.

It was pretty clear tonight that the strategy was to try and induce some swings and misses or get some weak contact on breaking balls just out of the zone. But the pitchers have to execute and none of Paz, Lach and Garcia did that consistently. They threw a ton of non-competitive pitches and got swings on few to nine of them. We have seen all of them have brief outings where they showed themselves capable of hitting these pitches, but this inconsistency, especially in the road series, has been a big issue all season.

Who are Yeskie and Jay supposed to rely on when we have no idea who will show up ready? Sheerin looked like that guy at one point, but has been poor in 2 of the last 3 series. Guidry is completely unreliable as one of our most senior guys. Who other than Cowan can they count on to land pitches that are called week to week? I don’t expect my coach to be a sports psychologist. I expect him to figure out who is too fragile and avoid them and week out the ones who get here and can’t hack it.

It’s ultimately on Jay and Yeskie to fix it, but that’s going to require some turnover as well as development. Some of these guys just aren’t SEC-level pitchers. If they can’t execute on this stage, then the raw talent level really doesn’t matter. Cut them loose and move on.

This post was edited on 5/9/26 at 10:50 pm