Question from Dinard’oh:

Last evening was just a “baseball is kind of random sometimes” night, right? RIGHT?!

Dinard’oh is referring to our gruesome 10-2 loss at the hands of the Indiana State Fightin’ Ridiculous Larry Bird’s Moustaches.

Yeah, it sucked, but the Chuggers lost to TN Tech, the Gumps lost to UAB, and the somehow still #1 team in the land LSU Gumbo Bengals lost to University of Louisiana Lafayette. So yeah... mid-week baseball fever, right?

For our team in particular, we were basically down two starting pitchers in the weekend series ‘gainst the South Cackalacky Game Penises. As such, we fully exhausted our bullpen to win that series two games to one (and, honestly, would have similarly exhausted our bullpen had we lost). In particular, Greysen Carter and Patrick Reilly had to come in and pitch multiple innings when Carter Holton proved he was not yet ready to come back from arm fatigue and only went 2/3 of an inning pitched on Saturday. Without their heroics—especially from Reilly, who was lights out and avoided the completely-falls-apart inning that has plagued him in his Diamond Dores career—we do not win that series. I hope I do not have to convince you that a series win against likely Regional Host and possible National Seed South Cackalacky is more important than a Tuesday game against The Moustaches. They run-ruled The Jorts last night 13-3 for Jobu’s sakes.

Further, The Moustaches are a good veteran team who will take it to most anyone who rolls out freshmen on the mound... especially when it’s a Johnny Wholestaff night. If you’re going to be angry, be angry at our hitters who couldn’t take The Moustaches’ own Johnny Wholestaff to pound town. In short, ISU is an NCAA Tournament team, and likely a #2 seed. We should expect to beat them in a series or a Regional, but not quite literally every game, and also not quite literally in a Johnny Wholestaff match in which your first two Johns Wholestaff were not available due to having to bail out Carter Holton on Saturday.

Hope this helps.

Question from shoogymgshoogs:

How do we end up stuck with Indiana State as the #2 in our regional?

If they don’t first decide to give us Louisville.

Seriously, though, the NCAA Baseball Tournament Seed and Feed (formerly Chuck’s) people don’t seem to take locale/regionalism into account as much as they used to, so I’m not sure there will be any rhyme or reason to who we get.

Question from Parlagi:

Do you prefer Thu-Sat or Fri-Sun series?

Also, should every SEC team rotate playing a mid-afternoon Tuesday game to show on SECN, and why is your answer yes?

Friday through Sunday. While I completely understand the desire to have some SEC teams play on Thu-Sat and the rest play on Fri-Sun for TV/Streaming reasons, who but me, you, and a few other weirdos are really spending all their time watching every SEC college baseball game (and also sometimes aTm and Missourah—spits)?

My problem with it is only that it fucks with your pitchers, as you either have to keep pitchers on their schedules, and hence lose one of your weekend starters for the first game of every Thu-Sat series, or fuck up their rest/training schedules and put their arms at risk. I would have much less of a problem with this if baseball weren’t hamstrung by the 11.7 scholarship limit, so you could potentially be 5 quality SPs deep and stretched out. With the current rules, it’s just unnecessarily risky.

Question from VUallday:

It’s been on our bucket-list for a few years, to attend the SEC baseball tournament in Hoover. General Admission tickets are all that are available from the SEC website,and the cost seems reasonable. Right now we don’t know where any teams will fall in the brackets, so its a bit of a guess to plan attendance this early. Is it possible to just go on Saturday and Sunday, as my grandson has a baseball game Friday night and he’ll be going with us? Will I even want to go if the Dores are eliminated before the weekend? I definitely want to see them play, so is earlier in the week best?

Overall, just what is the best way to attend the event and how should we plan it?

I’ll let Parlagi handle that one:

I’ve been to the championship game twice (2019 and I think 2015) and had no problem getting same-day tickets at the box office. All I did was show up in Birmingham with no plan.

You may not have the best seats but you’ll be fine; there aren’t a whole lot of bad seats in a AA minor league stadium.

There were still quite a few fans of eliminated teams there. It was just a fun time.

As for me, I would suggest making it a full vacation, buying the entire ticket pack, and going to as many games as you can. You know the LSU fans will be there, so there’s always a few gourmet tailgating lunatics with RVs in the parking lot you can party with. Unfortunately, given the nature of my work schedule, the last time I was able to go to Hoover was in 2007, when I was still in grad school. That was a pretty good tourney to catch for a fan of the Diamond Dores.

If you’re more of the “within driving distance and can go for the weekend,” Parlagi is correct that you can pretty much always buy tickets on the day of. Further, unless it’s really early in, there will always be some excellent seats you can sneak into after you buy your cheapies. Think of it like attending any minor league game in this country of ours.

As for what to do in Hoover... umm... you can go to Birmingham, I suppose?

Question from BarnDore1950:

Will we see Michael Doolin again. I know he hasn’t pitched since his COVID shortened freshman season. I haven’t heard anything on his status.

I’ll let shoogymgshoogs handle this one:

I can answer this one. He’s out for the season. See link.

As for me, though I root for him to try to return next year, I fear The Doolin Banjo’s Vanderbilt baseball career will follow the same trajectory as TJ Pecoraro’s did. He’s now missed the better part of three years with arm injuries. Rough.

Question from RocketCityVandy:

Given relative power rankings and momentum, how likely is it that we get caught this weekend looking past THEM towards Kentucky?

Also, how weird does that sentence sound?

Not a chance in hell. Kentucky and The Chuggers are about the same difficulty level this year (The Chuggers have the far superior pitching staff, and Kentucky seems to be riding... umm... I’m not really all that sure what makes them good... they’re like Auburn was last year, but with a few guys combining to be the Ragazzo Robusto ala Sonny DiChiara). Further, it’s THEM. We hate THEM. They drink with their butts.

If you can’t get a team riled up to face their hated rivals, then we all might as well go root for The McKendree Lady Bowlers. Is that what you want??? IS THIS THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE?!?!?!