MEMO to Grimes....

[Ta town]

Since J.T. obviously won't let you know I will.

They will continue to throw on the outer half of the plate till you prove to them that you are willing to drive through the ball and take it opposite field.

Damnit! this is frustrating...

Same goes for you Lassley

Ballz marie this is terrible

[WSU Cowboy]

This is my 1st post under baseball. Ater the late inning debakal in right field, where Grimes lost the pop-up in short right field and the right fielder had to run 50 yards to have the ball pop out of his glove........ I was was horrifird to see Grimes find humor in what happened and had a big smile on his face. This is unacceptable and I do not understand why Gene has lost controle of this team. I keep hearing Gene, the coaching staff and the radio guys
say that the certain players have been told do something a different way than they are doing it. Yet the player, for what ever reason, contiues to do it hisi way, Why is this player still playing ? Coach Marshall doesn't put up with that.

[Schmakey]

Wasn't that left field? Wow, these errors are even happening to the fans.

[Hovpen]

I have a feeling we will see an entirely different lineup next fall. Watch for "my way or the highway" out of Gene the rest of the season. It has to be done.

[KC Shox]

I have a feeling we will see an entirely different lineup next fall. Watch for "my way or the highway" out of Gene the rest of the season. It has to be done.

I certainly hope so, only two of the 10+ players who got an at-bat last night was hitting over .300. Ugh!

And I hope your feeling is correct, it all depends how bad the draft kills us.

[t7017s]

This is my 1st post under baseball. Ater the late inning debakal in right field, where Grimes lost the pop-up in short right field and the right fielder had to run 50 yards to have the ball pop out of his glove........ I was was horrifird to see Grimes find humor in what happened and had a big smile on his face. This is unacceptable and I do not understand why Gene has lost controle of this team. I keep hearing Gene, the coaching staff and the radio guys
say that the certain players have been told do something a different way than they are doing it. Yet the player, for what ever reason, contiues to do it hisi way, Why is this player still playing ? Coach Marshall doesn't put up with that.

The problem is that we don't have any backups. Normally we have guys on the pine for that, but not this year. The whole damn team is pretty much freshman class. I assure you there is not a better ss on the team than grimes. I assure you there is not a better of than Jones. I get what your saying and would tend to agree but this year there isn't anyone to pull from the pine top replace guys for making mistakes or not listening to the coaches. That is a large part of this years problems. There isn't really a way to take away guys playing time to get "it" across to them because there isn't anyone behind them. These kids just have to buck up and weather the storm and find a way to overcome the obstacles and growing pains.

[t7017s]

I have a feeling we will see an entirely different lineup next fall. Watch for "my way or the highway" out of Gene the rest of the season. It has to be done.

I certainly hope so, only two of the 10+ players who got an at-bat last night was hitting over .300. Ugh!

And I hope your feeling is correct, it all depends how bad the draft kills us.

Hard to draft kids that are not eligible.

[SekShocker]

Wasn't that left field? Wow, these errors are even happening to the fans.

It was LF and the player that they showed on TV that was smiling and joking with somebody either behind the left field wall or in the OU bullpen was Taylor Brown not Grimes. I never saw, at least on TV, Grimes smiling or laughing.

[Ta town]

i don't have a problem with Grimes or Brown...

It's what seems to be an inability for hitters to adjust at the plate. I've will tell you I hadn't had a chance to watch many games till about two weeks ago. So I really don't know much of the hitters approaches before KSU manhattan. I see hitters consistently allowing themselves to fall behind and not on good pitchers, just fastballs down the middle. Nothing makes a pitcher better than starting him off 0-1 or 0-2. I mean sure don't swing at anything but for crying out loud don't let somebody jive a 88 mph fastball down the heart of the plate and just stare at it.

What are the coaches putting in these guys heads?

[SB Shock]

The problem is that we don't have any backups. Normally we have guys on the pine for that, but not this year. The whole damn team is pretty much freshman class.

I don't know why some seem continue propagating this myth. 6 out of the 9 normal starters are upper classmen (Baez is only on out of the 6 who is in his first year at WSU).

Upperclassmen

Brown
McKeever
Jones
Baez (JC Transfer)
Lassley
Caster


The 3 freshman in the lineup is:

O'Brien
Grimes
Rosecrans

Major contributers from the bench (and I use that loosely):

Bascue
Hall (out for season)
Engrav
Letourneau (Frosh)
Gilmore (JC Transfer)

So 9 out the 13 (not counting Hall) hitters are upperclassmen, that is hardly the whole team. The hitting issues are not about that WSU has a bunch of young hitters and therefore the future is bright because they will mature, the issue is that beyond McKeever, all the upperclassmen have underachieved to this point in the season and don't look like the belong in Div I.

[ShockTalk]

I have a feeling we will see an entirely different lineup next fall. Watch for "my way or the highway" out of Gene the rest of the season. It has to be done.

I certainly hope so, only two of the 10+ players who got an at-bat last night was hitting over .300. Ugh!

And I hope your feeling is correct, it all depends how bad the draft kills us.

Hard to draft kids that are not eligible.

May be he's speaking of our current crop of incoming recruits.

[t7017s]

So... Gould and Green. I don't see any of the other commits going. At this point if Gould decided to go it wouldn't kill us as we have a pretty solid 1-4 starting pitchers and will be getting Hoch, Fleming, Muncrief, Sossamon, etc back for the bullpen. But it sure as hell would break my heart as the kid can really hurl it. Gould, Cooper, Lowell, Flynn and Kelley could well be the best starting 5 in the country next year providing Gould comes and Flynn continues to progress slowly like he has been.

Now losing out on Green would really suck as we need an OF really bad at this point. Losing Hall really hurt us in the OF this year and Green would really solidify what I think will be a very very good team next year.

We have 2, 3rd basemen coming in Goro and Springer. That moves O'Brien behind the plate where he should be right now. Lassley is killing me this year behind the plate. I cant remember a time when we didn't have one of the best catchers in college behind the plate. I take that back... Brandon Green wasn't one of the best but he was moved over from 3rd out of necessity and was still much better back there than Lassley has been. Lassley does a pretty good job working with the young pitchers but is not worth a damn on defense or throwing the ball anywhere in general. What we really need more than anything is a 2nd baseman. Man we need that worse than the dessert needs the rain.

Watch out next year if we stay healthy!!!

[Shocker85]

Brandon Green wasn't one of the best but he was moved over from 3rd out of necessity ...

I think you mean Brandon Hall, who was essentially stop-gap between Muich and Weber.

--'85.

[t7017s]

Brandon Green wasn't one of the best but he was moved over from 3rd out of necessity ...

I think you mean Brandon Hall, who was essentially stop-gap between Muich and Weber.

--'85.

Yeah, your right. I got last names switched around in my head. Brandon Hall is what I meant.

[shockfan89_]

I don't know why some seem continue propagating this myth. 6 out of the 9 normal starters are upper classmen (Baez is only on out of the 6 who is in his first year at WSU).

Upperclassmen

Brown
McKeever
Jones
Baez (JC Transfer)
Lassley
Caster


The 3 freshman in the lineup is:

O'Brien
Grimes
Rosecrans

Major contributers from the bench (and I use that loosely):

Bascue
Hall (out for season)
Engrav
Letourneau (Frosh)
Gilmore (JC Transfer)

So 9 out the 13 (not counting Hall) hitters are upperclassmen, that is hardly the whole team. The hitting issues are not about that WSU has a bunch of young hitters and therefore the future is bright because they will mature, the issue is that beyond McKeever, all the upperclassmen have underachieved to this point in the season and don't look like the belong in Div I.

SB - I think the point is inexperience mixed with youth. Of the 13 you listed McKeever, Jones, and Lassley are the only ones that played any real innings last year (Hall also but he is out for the season). So your facts are correct but the other side is 9 out of the 13 hitters have no (or VERY limited) D1 experience and are new to WSU and the ones that do have experience haven't stepped up and had great or even good years.

I THINK the talent is there but we have thrust all of them into contributing roles their first year with the program. I cannot recall that has happened before. We usually have 2 or 3 Fr. sprinkled in with seasoned upperclassmen that are producing around them.

You can criticize the coaching staff for not bringing in good talent but keep in mind this group was rated the 15th best in country and you can probably count on one hand the number of top 20 recruiting classes WSU has had over the past 32 years. So if the coaching staff missed it, so did all the publications that rank recruits. To me it seems more likely the inexperience is whats causing things. At least thats what I want to believe...

As a side note we are also very inexperienced from a pitching standpoint and do things that we typically dont see like walk leadoff batters and get behind in the count. In the past when we have had inexperience on one side we have usually had veterans on the other to help even things out. Couple those two things together and you have a recipe for mediocracy.