Ryan Rosenblatt

You guys are home.

I tweeted it a little bit ago. Got the information from the SID and Coach Savage himself.

Cole will sit at 95-96 all game with his two-seamer that has pretty good tail to it. When he wants it, he has 99 and has it late in the game. He's touched 98-99 after 100 pitches this season so it's always there when he needs it.

His slider has great break to it and he throws it hard so it's really tough to pick up. He gets guys waving at that all day. His change up has come a long ways this year and while not something he'll throw more than 15-20 times in a game, it is an effective pitch.

Cole's issue is two things. 1) He can get wild, either walking guys or falling behind in the count. 2) His offspeed pitches are tough to hit, but he doesn't really have a "get me over" breaking ball so if you guys are picking up the fastball, you won't go chasing after his offspeed pitches. It's pretty rare for teams to pick up the fastball though.

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Ryan - The Southern California LSU Alumni will be hosting a tailgate party this weekend. Hope you'll join us. Here's our site (which linked to the UCLA site to buy tickets today. )

LINK

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Looks great. I'll be there for sure.

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Feel free to join us on gameday. Here's how we do on tigerdroppings.com We'd love for some of your input here.
In-game thread

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Looks like fun, but I'll be at the stadium all weekend so I won't be around to join in. I will do my best to check in here after the day of games though.

For your game threads, if you have any questions that you can't get an answer to via TV, hop on twitter and send it to me that way. I'll do my best to answer.

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Ryan - serious question - will the cops be out in force to check if we are drinking out in the parking lot this weekend.

Just to let you know - our fans drink...a lot.

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Truthfully, nobody knows. If this were a regular season game they would be around and just making sure the beer is in plastic cups. We haven't hosted in the postseason since 1986 though and have never had a weekend of 2,000+ crowds like we're going to see this weekend so we're not sure on their plans for beefing up parking lot security...or not.

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Ryan, what rotation do you think UCLA will go with this weekend? What has been Gerrit Cole's biggest problem in the losses he has taken?

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I talked to Coach this morning and he said they would make a decision tonight, but the impression I got was that we'll see Claypool on Friday with Cole throwing Saturday.

Cole's issues in his starts is always command. His stuff is electric with a mid-90's two-seamer that he can run into the upper 90's when he feels like it, a solid slider and much improved change up. It doesn't mean much when you're putting guys on base or pitching in hitter's counts though.

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Did you make the Super Regional in 2000?

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No and I regret it to this day. I still hear stories of how awesome it was.

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Ryan, how long have you been writing for UCLA?

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Five or six years writing about UCLA and started casually covering the baseball team in 2006. Started covering it in-depth in '07 and probably have done more coverage this year than in any past year, but I've been going to games for about 15-16 years.

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UCLA Fan Here
awesome.. ive read ur twitter... welcome to tigerdroppings... the top fan msg board on da intrawebs

any clue what the splits on ticket sales are so far? seems like our cali alumni base quickly swooped up many of the tickets

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I couldn't get an exact split from the CTO because I don't think they know. When I spoke to them last at 4 or so they said that there were one or two single reserved seats left and that they were down to less than 50 general admission tickets left. Based on what I've been able to piece together, my guess is about 50% LSU fans when you take into account the tickets that each participating team is automatically allocated.

Capacity for this weekend is 2,050. I know you guys got on those tickets fast so I'm expecting a ton of Tigers. So long as you all bring your grills, I'll be okay with it.