Bradley baseball

[tornado]

BU Baseball beats SEMO 6-3
Spencer Gaa 3-5 with 3 RBI, 1 stolen base - raises BA to .478 & leads team with 8 RBI despite missing 2 games
Leadoff man Chris Godinez OBP to .516
Pitcher Elliott Ashbeck goes to 3-0, ERA 1.80, and Opponent BA .147 - Matt Dennis pitches 2 2/3 innings & gets save #2

http://www.bradleybraves.com/pdf9/3230413.pdf?ATCLID=209912251&SPSID=25967&SPID=1506&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=3400

[tornado]

Bradley playing a DH vs. SEMO

Game 1 - BU loses 7-2, but top hitter Spencer Gaa pulled his hamstring again after hitting a double and has been replaced.


Game 2- Bradley takes a quick lead ...
BU up 4-0 in the 4th inning...

[tornado]

Bradley's Brent Stong gets Pitcher of the Week March 2

http://cdn.streamlinetechnologies.com/mvc/A35A6A9C-E82F-4A4D-9E42-74A9407EEECC/Baseball%20Weekly%20Notebook%20(Mar.%202).pdf

Despite Spencer Gaa batting well above .400 the rest of the team is hitting poorly
Bradley is in 7th place among MVC teams with a team batting average of just .235
(Gaa leads the MVC among players with more than 12 AB's - hitting .480)
Team ERA 4.84 is 5th in the league
Bradley is currently 7-2 and has 3 games coming up this weekend vs. Belmont & Quinnipiac

[tornado]

Bradley baseball playing sort of a double header today..

10am - vs. Quinnipiac
4pm vs. Belmont

the 10am game is underway - top hitter Spencer Gaa is out of the lineup with hamstring..
Bradley is now batting in the bottom of the 1st - Quinnipiac went 3-up-3-down

[tornado]

Final - Bradley goes to 8-2
Bradley 3 - Quinnipiac 1
Elliott Ashbeck wins and is 4-0, Matt Dennis gets Save #3

[tornado]

Bradley gets a run on 3 hits in the top of the 1st against Belmont in game 2 today
and leads after 1 inning, 1-0

[tornado]

Bradley wins again on Sunday to go to 10-2...nice - Go BU

[Old Coach]

4 game sweep of Nashville
The Braves have improved to 11-2 in the non-con portion of their schedule. I want to see some wins in the MVC season.

[Chico]

4 game sweep of Nashville
The Braves have improved to 11-2 in the non-con portion of their schedule. I want to see some wins in the MVC season.

We all want that, but I'm happy for the good start anyway.

[Old Coach]

We all want that, but I'm happy for the good start anyway.

I agree. I was glad to see that they didn't allow that route to Grand Canyon to have a negative effect on them.

[tornado]

Bradley is 11-2 but didn't get any of the weekly awards this week

http://cdn.streamlinetechnologies.com/mvc/A35A6A9C-E82F-4A4D-9E42-74A9407EEECC/Baseball%20Weekly%20Notebook%20(Mar.%209).pdf

Bradley has a D-I baseball RPI of 12...
Dallas Baptist is 17, Missouri State is 20

nonetheless - none of the MVC teams are in the Top 25, except DBU at 26

as well as Bradley has done, they've largely done it with pitching & fielding (except that blowout to GCU) as their team BA is just .251...bottom half of the MVC

[tornado]

The next two games will determine if Bradley can match the 13-3 start they had last year in 2014...
they are currently 11-2 and have an upcoming 3-game series Fri., Sat, & Sun. against Mercer (9-9)...
then 2 games in Florida against an NAIA and a DIII (Mt. Olivet Nazarene & UMass-Dartmouth)

btw - after that 13-3 start, BU went 11-24 in their final 35 games to finish 24-27
MVC games start March 27 - we were 5-16 in the Valley last season.

[Chico]

The next two games will determine if Bradley can match the 13-3 start they had last year in 2014...
they are currently 11-2 and have an upcoming 3-game series Fri., Sat, & Sun. against Mercer (9-9)...
then 2 games in Florida against an NAIA and a DIII (Mt. Olivet Nazarene & UMass-Dartmouth)

btw - after that 13-3 start, BU went 11-24 in their final 35 games to finish 24-27
MVC games start March 27 - we were 5-16 in the Valley last season.

Forget about last year. Let's just hope things are different this season.

[tornado]

BU definitely has better pitching and some speed & hitting at the top of the order...
the games they have won have been with scoring early and holding the opponents to 5 or fewer hits in 7 games thus far..

I hate to do this but...if we remove that one bad game from the stats..
here's what we have for our pitchers as a group...

11-1, 108 innings pitched, 69 hits, 27 earned runs, Opponents BA of just .187 & ERA of 2.25 for the entire staff..

Again - this is what BU's stats would look like without that one game they got beat 30-7 and gave up 28 hits..

another odd factor - is that our 2nd best hitter is Elliott Ashbeck who is hitting .391 (9-23 with 2 HR & 9 RBI!)
But.....but Elliott is also our best pitcher and has started four games, won all four with an ERA of 1.69 and leads the team with 27 innings pitched
BUT - because he's our best pitcher - they give him the day off after pitching and often don't stress him with hitting in doubleheaders - so he's only appeared as a hitter in 6 games
Not sure the easy answer there - you definitely need a .391 hitter in the lineup but if your best pitcher gets hurt legging a double out, then it would be a bad move.

[tornado]

Bradley beats Mercer 8-2
Drew Carlile went 3-4 with 2 HR, 3 RBI
Elliott Ashbeck got the win (5-0) going 5 innings, 2 ER 9 K

Mercer's starter, Eric Nyquist had a solid 5 2/3 inning then Mercer went to the bullpen when he hit the 100 pitch count and Bradley jumped all over them
Over the next 3 1/3 innings in relief, 5 different Mercer guys out of the bullpen gave up 5 runs on 7 hits

Bradley goes to 12-2