All season, Oregon’s baseball team has been hoping and waiting.
Waiting for the offense to finally play up to its potential. Hoping new offensive strategies and advanced scouting reports would finally open up the floodgates.
With few exceptions, that hasn’t happened.
Projected to finish in the upper-half of the Pacific-10 Conference, the Ducks have struggled this season. They’re currently 20-16, which doesn’t seem so bad until you consider they’ve only won three of ten Pac-10 games, and many of those 20 victories have come against subpar competition.
Yet Oregon’s pitching has met — and possibly even exceeded — the lofty expectations placed on them this season. The Ducks’ team ERA is a staggering 2.81. That’s the third-best mark in the conference, behind only top-25 juggernauts UCLA and Cal.
The quality and consistency of Oregon’s pitching is even more impressive when one takes into account the struggles of many of Oregon’s more highly regarded players. As a team, the Ducks are hitting .241 — second-worst in the conference, forcing Duck pitchers to operate with little breathing room on many occasions.
Even more disturbing, however, are the individual performances Oregon has received from several players that helped carry the team to a postseason berth last season.
Multiple veterans have struggled this season, and several experienced Ducks see their batting averages at — or below — the Mendoza line.
But before completely writing off the veteran hitters, it must be noted that college baseball is now, in many ways, a completely different game that it used to be. Long a sport dominated by batters who used powerful aluminum bats to launch balls long distances, college baseball is a pitcher’s game this year. Because of safety concerns, the flex of bats is limited, and it’s more difficult for batters to launch balls long distances the way they did in the past.
As a result, runs are down, and many hitters are struggling to adjust. Nonetheless, Oregon head coach George Horton seemed to run out of patience before Monday’s 4-0 win over San Francisco.
In that game, Horton inserted five freshmen into the starting lineup. Fresh faces like Brett Thomas and Kyle Garlick, who had been spot contributors for most of the year, started alongside freshmen Aaron Jones and Stefan Sabol. That lineup notched another win, 14-3 over Portland Tuesday. Then last night, the freshmen made it three for three, with a win over Pac-10 foe Arizona.
Yet with 24 games left in Oregon’s season, and the Ducks in need of a sustained winning stretch to salvage any hopes at qualifying for the postseason, you’d think at some point, Horton might be tempted to revert back to a lineup of mostly veterans, particularly if the young players falter.
It’s a conflict that coaches and managers run into frequently. How do you balance the urge to win now with the desire to prepare younger players for the future? The track records of players like KC Serna and J.J. Altobelli indicate that they will bounce back at some point. But is sticking with them worth potentially compromising the development of players who will be with the program for several more years?
I’m not sure what the right choice is.
The one thing I am confident of is that athletes perform best when they’re confident. Yanking guys in and out of the lineup based on small sample sizes won’t serve anyone well. So, despite the temptation to do otherwise, Horton should pick a relatively stable lineup and stick with it, at least for a while.
That’s the best way for the veterans to regain their confidence — or, for the younger players to develop the swagger it takes to be successful in the Pac-10. It might not result in Oregon winning a College World Series title this year, but it’s the right call.
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