2023 Season Notes

[Loebarth]

@Xmas32 If memory serves I believe it was an internal issue that was never revealed. Bolt was using him as a bullpen guy and intending to use him as a closer. My assumption was that Bragg didn't agree so he transferred. 

[Loebarth]

So below is the current LIVE rpi for the 2023 D1 Baseball. Nebraska sitting out of the top 100 and the last opponent is out of the top 200. Who here thinks Nebraska has even a remote chance at earning an invite to the post season? If they don't win the B1G tourney, they don't deserve a post season appearance.

 

This year is every bit as big of a disappointment as last year was. This staff hasn't performed any better than Frost's staff has. Middle of the pack in the B1G conference, a conference mind you that shows how little emphasis it puts on promoting baseball and they are still only mediocre. Bolt is not the manager/coach the fans should want. This program has now suffered through 2 years of lackluster, pathetic, disgusting displays of team chemistry, manager abilities, development abilities and effort. Bolt won with Darin's recruits and has done nothing with 2 all american's and several other all conference players. Are you kidding me? What excuse will be forthright at seasons end?

 

Bolt needs to be treated the way Coach Frost and Coach Hoiberg were. Next season it's post season play or your done!! Tired of watching mediocrity and most assuredly, tired of supporting it!!!

 

[SouthLincoln Husker]

6 hours ago, Loebarth said:

So below is the current LIVE rpi for the 2023 D1 Baseball. Nebraska sitting out of the top 100 and the last opponent is out of the top 200. Who here thinks Nebraska has even a remote chance at earning an invite to the post season? If they don't win the B1G tourney, they don't deserve a post season appearance.

 

This year is every bit as big of a disappointment as last year was. This staff hasn't performed any better than Frost's staff has. Middle of the pack in the B1G conference, a conference mind you that shows how little emphasis it puts on promoting baseball and they are still only mediocre. Bolt is not the manager/coach the fans should want. This program has now suffered through 2 years of lackluster, pathetic, disgusting displays of team chemistry, manager abilities, development abilities and effort. Bolt won with Darin's recruits and has done nothing with 2 all american's and several other all conference players. Are you kidding me? What excuse will be forthright at seasons end?

 

Bolt needs to be treated the way Coach Frost and Coach Hoiberg were. Next season it's post season play or your done!! Tired of watching mediocrity and most assuredly, tired of supporting it!!!

 

Wow, dude I don't know what to say except you need to relax.

[BigRedBuster]

Looking back at our record, a combined record of (I think) 3-6 against UNO, Creighton, SDSU, and NDSU just can't happen.

[Loebarth]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Looking back at our record, a combined record of (I think) 3-6 against UNO, Creighton, SDSU, and NDSU just can't happen.

This is exactly why we as fans should be demanding more from the staffs and administration. There is simply "NO" excuse for this. Even if you flip those numbers that equates to 3 more wins but in honesty we should have had at worst a 7-2 record. Bolt was clueless going into this season as evident by the first weekends performance. Then, with the opportunity to win 3 (2 against the SEC) again he (Bolt) stubbornly left a pitcher in that should have been pulled. (How many times have we seen this?)

 

Finally, when the season is lost and there's zero chance at actually reaching post season (without winning the auto bid) Bolt decides to play to win. It makes zero sense and personally, I'm tired of seeing it. Winning the B1G conference should be expected from this program EVERY year. Sadly if the reader opens this link (College Raptor) they likely will be shocked in learning Nebraska isn't in the top half of the B1G in baseball revenue. 

 

Look, the Nebraska Men's athletics are dismal at best and as fans it should really become unacceptable to us. From wiki I'll post Nebraska's baseball success since joining the B1G conference and anyone who in anyway thinks their conference performance is even marginally acceptable is not at all in my realm of belief. When are we going to have a revenue men's sport that we can actually and proudly stand behind and support?

 

Certainly we've been competitive to a degree but in every case except 2021 we're a 1 and done post season team. As a fan, this is just not a success rate that I can really get behind and proudly support. 

 

[BigRedBuster]

21 minutes ago, Loebarth said:

This is exactly why we as fans should be demanding more from the staffs and administration. There is simply "NO" excuse for this. Even if you flip those numbers that equates to 3 more wins but in honesty we should have had at worst a 7-2 record. Bolt was clueless going into this season as evident by the first weekends performance. Then, with the opportunity to win 3 (2 against the SEC) again he (Bolt) stubbornly left a pitcher in that should have been pulled. (How many times have we seen this?)

 

Finally, when the season is lost and there's zero chance at actually reaching post season (without winning the auto bid) Bolt decides to play to win. It makes zero sense and personally, I'm tired of seeing it. Winning the B1G conference should be expected from this program EVERY year. Sadly if the reader opens this link (College Raptor) they likely will be shocked in learning Nebraska isn't in the top half of the B1G in baseball revenue. 

 

Look, the Nebraska Men's athletics are dismal at best and as fans it should really become unacceptable to us. From wiki I'll post Nebraska's baseball success since joining the B1G conference and anyone who in anyway thinks their conference performance is even marginally acceptable is not at all in my realm of belief. When are we going to have a revenue men's sport that we can actually and proudly stand behind and support?

 

Certainly we've been competitive to a degree but in every case except 2021 we're a 1 and done post season team. As a fan, this is just not a success rate that I can really get behind and proudly support. 

 

The lack of success in men's sports at Nebraska, while at the same time having much better success in women's sports, is mind blowing.

 

I get the reasoning why we aren't as competitive against warm weather and southern schools.  The really good players want to go somewhere where they can play year round and play home games right from the start of the season.

 

But.....there's no reason why we shouldn't be winning the majority of games against teams like NDSU, SDSU, UNO and Creighton....and throw in that we should be a top team in the Big Ten.

[Xmas32]

18 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

The lack of success in men's sports at Nebraska, while at the same time having much better success in women's sports, is mind blowing.

 

I get the reasoning why we aren't as competitive against warm weather and southern schools.  The really good players want to go somewhere where they can play year round and play home games right from the start of the season.

 

But.....there's no reason why we shouldn't be winning the majority of games against teams like NDSU, SDSU, UNO and Creighton....and throw in that we should be a top team in the Big Ten.

 

The lack of midweek success this year against those teams you mentioned has really stood out to me. The team generally plays well in conference and competes against P5 schools. I really appreciate that Nebraska plays Omaha and Creighton a couple times a year and I hope that trend continues because it's great from a local standpoint. That being said, you have to wonder if it makes sense to play both teams 2x/year versus swapping in a home and away against a team like Mizzou, KU or some other geographically close-ish P5 school that can help boost up the RPI a bit. It certainly doesn't help that San Diego and South Alabama aren't very good this year.

[Loebarth]

If the season ended today they'd be the 4 seed.

I think that is perfect because they'd get to "prove" to the committee they deserve a post season invite by having to first beat the 1 seed (already in the field of 64) then also win against either the 2 seed (also in the field already) or the 3 seed (redemption for an absolute lackluster affair 3 weeks ago). Hopefully the alignment doesn't change and the sker's are the 4 seed. Still have 2 more games to play and this team doesn't seem to be able to stay focused on anything for any duration so... fingers crossed that lady luck is on our side. 

 

edit:

also, their first game would be against the 4th big ten team that D1 shows as a qualifier. So, in simple terms.. they'd play all teams projected in the field

[Xmas32]

25 minutes ago, Loebarth said:

If the season ended today they'd be the 4 seed.

I think that is perfect because they'd get to "prove" to the committee they deserve a post season invite by having to first beat the 1 seed (already in the field of 64) then also win against either the 2 seed (also in the field already) or the 3 seed (redemption for an absolute lackluster affair 3 weeks ago). Hopefully the alignment doesn't change and the sker's are the 4 seed. Still have 2 more games to play and this team doesn't seem to be able to stay focused on anything for any duration so... fingers crossed that lady luck is on our side. 

 

edit:

also, their first game would be against the 4th big ten team that D1 shows as a qualifier. So, in simple terms.. they'd play all teams projected in the field

 

I think we're all on the same page here in that the only way Nebraska gets in to regionals is if they win the conference tournament. I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that they have zero shot of regional play otherwise.

 

IIRC, I think the Big Ten moved to the CWS style 2 bracket system. So you'd have the 1/8/4/5 seeds in one bracket and 2/7/3/6 in the other.

[Loebarth]

Bracket 1: (huskers bracket)

yes chance to win 2 games against projected post season qualifiers,

so we they start against Rutgers (the 5 seed) if we they win and Maryland wins, we they next compete against Maryland.

So, two games against projected field of 64 qualifiers in their bracket.

 

Bracket 2:

Cross Bracket Play: (Bracket 2's winner of the losers bracket)

If they win their first 2 next they will likely play either Iowa or Indiana (both projected field of 64 teams) in the cross bracket match up. (winners of the loser brackets cross over and play the winner or the winners bracket. (at least in 2022 that was the case).

 

Assuming Nebraska doesn't lose and plays the highest possible seated opponents. Their tourney play would be:

• opponent 1 (5) Rutgers,
• opponent 2 (1) Maryland,
• opponent 3 (3) Iowa (cross bracket),
• opponent 4 (2) Indiana (championship)

 

The 4 teams projected to qualify for post season play. 

 

 

So, my point is, they can play themselves into consideration but they must reach the championship game.  (consideration does not mean invite, though invite may come pending other conference championships)

 

Best scenario for post season is winning the automatic bid. (smh would I be shocked if this team showed that kind of focus)

 

edit: scratched the "we" for "they" and added bracket play.

[BigRedBuster]

2 hours ago, Xmas32 said:

 

The lack of midweek success this year against those teams you mentioned has really stood out to me. The team generally plays well in conference and competes against P5 schools. I really appreciate that Nebraska plays Omaha and Creighton a couple times a year and I hope that trend continues because it's great from a local standpoint. That being said, you have to wonder if it makes sense to play both teams 2x/year versus swapping in a home and away against a team like Mizzou, KU or some other geographically close-ish P5 school that can help boost up the RPI a bit. It certainly doesn't help that San Diego and South Alabama aren't very good this year.

I don't follow this enough to know. Was there a common theme with pitching in those games?  Was he saving his better pitching for the weekend and throwing someone not as good out during the week?

[Xmas32]

5 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I don't follow this enough to know. Was there a common theme with pitching in those games?  Was he saving his better pitching for the weekend and throwing someone not as good out during the week?

Midweek games are always a bit of a crapshoot since it's pretty rare that you're going to have good #4 starter on a college team. From a quick look at the game logs from those midweek games. It seems like Nebraska just tried to 'bullpen' the games and have all their guys throw a couple innings at a time. I think they were hoping that Garza would take ownership of one of their rotation slots but he was a disaster and Walsh...who was the midweek guy got bumped to the 3 spot. It also hasn't helped that Bunz took a huge step back, Cristo hasn't really developed and they lost Bragg. I would've liked to see them try and stretch a couple guys out but it seemed like nobody really grabbed the brass ring. I can't speak to what Nebraska's development part is like and if that was the goal this year with having lots of guys get innings.

 

I get that baseball is a weird sport and flukey stuff happens all the time but consistently dropping games to Omaha and the Dakota schools is really bad. Those teams are flat out not good.

 

@Loebarthhas mentioned the teams lack of focus quite a bit and I certainly agree with him that during the midweek games against 'lesser' opponents, this team seems to think they can just roll the gloves out if you will and win games. This team is just not talented enough to do that as presently constructed. I don't know what next year holds for Bolt but they are going to lose 3 big pieces in Brice, Max and Shay and I don't know how they are going to fill those spots.

 

 

[Loebarth]

@Xmas32 - I don't worry about run production replacement as much as I worry about arm depth. In honesty, I don't think we have a Friday starter on the team. Both Olson and Jace allow umpires and sadly bad weather (especially wind) to affect their games. Friday starters can't allow that to happen as it places too much stress on the pen. 

 

Off season recruitment (imo) needs to focus first on pitching. Depth yes of course but first a true Friday starter. When Olson and Kamiska are on they are AWESOME.. but.. when they lose their heads it's over. So a tough minded, mid to up 90's with an out pitch (slider) and change is huge. The pitching loses after this season are even more alarming. Shay, Buntz, Perry, Ornelas, Garza .. gone!! << That's virtually our weekend bench and that's scary!!

 

So, Production.. not worried about. Pitching, terrified!!

[Mavric]

 

[Mavric]