Queue the fat lady

Is that Jungmann guy any good?

Matt, vey good thoughts. I agree that this race is over. Now we’re playing for seeding.
 
I want to bounce an idea off of you with respect to the win streak.
 
If you look at our team as three discrete entities strung together: pitching, defense, offense – then maybe peaking isn’t the issue. Imagine three different lines on a graph.
 
The defense has been a constant. And shouldn’t change. Loy is healthy, after all. And Augie is the coach. I don’t see an inattention to little things lasting long.
 
The pitching hit a tiny microblip in Lubbock, corrected, and rests more on the individual performance of the player that day. I don’t see that eroding globally.
 
We hit miserably early, grew a little, plateaued, and then burst throught into realization. I like that our hitting growth has been spread over all nine batters and that we’ve got 7 guys in the line-up who can put it over the fence with a mistake. This is a recent trend, I don’t see stagnation yet.
 
Augie would probably rap me on the head for breaking up the spirit of a team into disparate elements and for ignoring the whole, but I see two reliable constants and another area still in growth. 17 wins is just a consequence.
 
What say you?

I am worried about Ruffin’s last three outings. Sincerely hope it is not a trend…………..

Didn’t Ruffin pitch two perfect innings against OSU?

Scip you have obviously haven’t played baseball in a long time. It has an uncanny ability to get in your head. There’s a lot of time to stew in between plate appearances, outings, or chances in the field, whereas there’s less time to think in most other sports and more opportunity for athleticism to flow. Technique is crucial in all three aspects of the game. What starts as a slight drop in the batter’s hands, a pitcher not staying closed, or a fielder not using proper footwork or staying down, gets into the player’s head and turns into a slump at the plate, BB’s or whiplash in a pitcher’s neck, errors, etc. And somehow, one player getting mentally fucked is pretty contagious for the others. Huckleberry would love your tidy analysis but it ain’t that simple.

What I think makes Augie the best of all time is his inordinate focus on the mental side. All his augie-isms, philosophy, etc. keep his players loose and having fun. That way a small error in technique by one player doesn’t become a cancer, and the players don’t take the little stuff too seriously. Augie piloting the collective psyche is the reason I could see us maintaining a high level of play, not the convergence in the three areas. On a lot of teams with the same talent level, any or all of those aspects could change overnight.

I don’t doubt the mental side of the game in baseball at all. No other sport is like it, in that respect.
 
However, I was assuming Augie wizardry as a given.
 
And Matt’s point is about the need to manufacture adversity so that we don’t have a sense of peaking. I’m saying maybe we’re not peaking right now. Maybe we can hit and pitch even better.

Good thoughts TTough.

Scipio, if you want to look at each element individually, that’s fine for offense/defense. Pitching and defensive fielding are too closely tied to realistically split – especially on this team. The one caveat is that everything is predicated on a single player’s performance – the pitcher. Fortunately for this team, there is so much consistency on the mound that most concerns in this area are moot. The real balancing act here in the next 30 days will be how long to let arms pitch vs resting arms for postseason freshness. In the same vein as the original point, the crux is keeping confidence and performance at it’s peak while logging the minimal number of innings.

Offensively, the key has been getting the lineup to take their share of ownership in the team. It’s too easy to sit in the dugout and watch All Americans dominate on the bump. Now that the bats have bought in to the idea that they play a role in winning, the team is streaking.

Coincidentally, this is a very relaxed club. All the guys are trusting their team to do it’s part to win the next game. A loose clubhouse is a benefit when expectations are so high.

Maybe my dick will grow an extra 3 inches tonight

Then it would double.

BURN! Seriously, I hear what you are saying, my point is that we can’t do much better than 17 straight, the best staff in the country, close to the best D, and the bats are extremely hot for this bunch. Baseball is just one of those sports where it is really hard to keep hitting on all cylinders, no matter who you are. IMO the chances of us stumbling in or on the way to Omaha are a lot greater than the chances of us not having peaked yet.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade places with any other club and I love what we’re doing, but I know what Matt was saying about manufacturing adversity. Change really is a constant in baseball, Matt wants a shakeup or at least something to prevent complacency. We’re playing at the highest level but if you thought fat little girlfriends can get in a team’s head, wait til you see what these kinds of chicks can do:

Does anyone know what’s up with Dicharry? I don’t think he’s pitched in over a month. Is he injured?

texastough -

Ah, but Augie doesn’t care about wins as a justification of process. I’ve heard him say this many times and it’s core to his belief system. Never expect a result, right?
 
If we win 35 in a row against scrubs, he’d be pissed if we’re playing poorly in his judgement. Similarly, if we lose playing well, then baseball is a cruel game, and he shrugs.
 
I guess my point is that peaking may not just be revealed by wins or stats, but do we still see opportunities qualitatively for us to get better? To Cotcher’s point, maybe he’ll just make some up.
 
Fun discussion anyway.

All very true, and I’m rooting for convergent peakiness to occur June 29. The much more important question is, what does peaking mean to Clipper?

Clipper may go to Omaha too.

The only way that would happen is if Warren Buffet asked Clipper to share his wisdom . . . I can’t wait

http://www.texassports.com/sports/m-basebl/stats/2009-2010/teamcume.html

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/college/top-25/2010/269877.html

http://www.boydsworld.com/baseball/rpi/currentrpi.html

Thanks Matt, Scip, and all for your sagacious thoughts. (the word sagacious is for Scip) :)

I have attended many games this year. This is a great Longhorn baseball team, very focused, as indicated by the .980 fielding percentage and 2.34 team ERA.

May I caution to temper enthusiasm. Rice, Stanford, and Oklahoma are the only opponents in the Top 25, they are in the lower 20 – 25.

I would cover you all in gasoline and light you on fire for five seconds with that girl.

The above is the adversity we face. I like our chances!

Nordberg, no you wouldn’t, then you’d have to go elsewhere for your polemic fix. Besides, what would you do with the extra 3 seconds?

Clipper would have to be tricked into going to Omaha. It’s a writing hurdle, but nothing you can’t handle.

I don’t know, he went to Lame-arie, and “one thing you should know, it’s nowhere near Jackson Hole.”

Hmm. Good point.

Question Time.

Texas and Stanford played home and away for many years, and, as I lived just down the road from Stanford, I’d go every other year when the ‘Horns were at Sunken Diamond. If I got there early enough, I’d be treated to a Texas pregame routine in which the players huddled closely together and mumbled in unison. One time I got up on their dugout to see what in heck was going on. Through the mob scene, it appeared to be two players simulating sex, one bent over receiving, one behind giving and with a little lasso action embellishment. Everybody else was muttering some chant probably too obscene to say out loud.

One of the strangest things I ever saw. Anybody got any idea what was going on? Oh, and Augie was looking on roaring his approval.

Unless I’m mssing something, shouldn’t it be cue?

Perhaps Rick Barnes can give Augie some pointers on holding a team together and maintaining peak performnace into the second half of a season…

Rick is like Bizzaro Augie. “Guys, the most important thing to remember is that you suck. You’re terrible, all of you. I don’t even know why I offered scholarships to any of you. Now go out there and play hard!”.

Old Time Horn-

that’s an old corporate team building exercise. It used to be pretty commonplace in corporate America but for some reason grew scarce in the 90’s. Which was also around the same time that my then law firm started scrutinizing our corporate card expenditures for certain entertainment establishments after a couple of idiots took a law clerk from BYU for a night out on the town.

OTH – prevents a-hole puckering, keeps them loose

stuckinmn — ?

Corporate? Looked more like a Mau Mau fertility rite with the whole team jumping up and down like Watusis. Is this something they do/did at home games? Struck me as very strange and un-Texas-like.

BigHorn32 -
 
Cotcher likes his fat women orderly before they sing.

That little pre-game exercise is called The Bohemian Grove.

Vasherized,

Searching for Longhorn baseball, Bohemian Grove produces some interesting results, none edifying. Is there anything behind the little ritual other than to fire the team up via simulated bestiality? What are they chanting? How do they get a player to play the girl? Is it the same guy each time?

I like this article. Normally yer other articles are all about spin.