The game was suspended in the 9th due to darkness with the Ags trailing 4-2. The game will be completed starting at 1 pm Saturday with the regularly scheduled game to follow 30 minutes afterwards.
I wonder if UC Davis will ever learn to stop scheduling 2:30 pm games prior to Daylight Savings Time each year, especially on Tuesdays ? With no lights you have about 3 hours -or slightly less- to get the game in before darkness is a problem. This is complicated by the fact that pitchers typically have stricter pitch limits early on. More pitching changes leads to more garbage time, where you're just sitting around waiting. Also, the crisp, low-scoring games of old time baseball are not so common at the college level. There are more fielding errors and extra-base hits ( largely due to the aluminum bats) that draw the game out. Remember the famous 24 inning game of 2020 ? Took them two full game days to finish it, all because of a couple of errors that lead to all of Loyola Marymount's runs.
One solution could be to play Friday non-conference games at 2 and schedule road games only for any Tuesday games they want to play prior to Daylight Savings Time. This is assuming that the road games are not at Saint Mary's or San Francisco. This series is being played between two teams with no lights. The battle of the not so bright...ballparks.
A 2:00 p.m. start yesterday and they likely finish the game-unless the Aggies had another rally in them.
If they wind up losing to the Gaels 4-2 that's still a decent accomplishment. Saint Mary's is a very good team. They would probably be middle of the pack if they were in the Big West. As Madcitysxott pointed out the Aggies have a very young team. I give Tommy Nicholson and his staff credit for assembling a quality roster under tough circumstances. I was able to find baseball info on most of the new players, and it's not like they filled the team with a bunch of beer-bellied dudes from a tryout camp. It's a mix of the 2021 high school recruits who didn't bail on the program , a couple of junior college transfers, and some guys who were recruited to play, but just didn't make the team in 2021. The only player I can't find any baseball info on is Jacob Barrera. Not sure if he's played baseball the last 2 years.
We have to be one of the worst teams to schedule on the west coast. For the opponents and for us. Finn has pointed this out numerous times. Main reason: no lights. Why does this exist? Did sac or Chico have to rely on a big donor to get their lights? How does a university with a billion+ budget explain this? I believe the conduits are in, so what are we looking at? $300,000? That is chump change for May and Rocko. Get it done and it will show solidarity with the BB program that no one else has done.
Chico State got their lights when the late Steve Nettleton, a local businessman, gave CSUC the money for the stadium. Sounds like it was a package deal. It was much cheaper to do in the early 90's.
I do remember them saying that an approval from the Sac State president came for the lights in 2015, but I can't imagine Sac State just had the money lying around. Sounds more to me like Sac State athletics raised the money and the president simply awarded the funds for the lights as a reward for baseball doing well. They have fewer sports teams and two ancient facilities that probably cost much less to maintain than UCD's.
Saint Mary's swept the weekend series 4-2, 9-3, and 11-1. Seems like the team kind of went backwards there. It is pretty evident they're feeling the effects of a mostly lost practice season. All you can really do is appreciate the small improvements from here on out.
I can already see that the new coach thinks somewhat differently from Vaughn. Nathan Peng scarcely got to bat the previous 3 years in favor of pitching, but he's doing both so far. He moved Kyler Arenado off shortstop to third base and has freshman Nick Leehy at SS instead. That's clearly an acknowledgement that they're building for the future.
What will be interesting to see is how he handles the next three games. All Tuesday games, and a week off for finals. Normally you would have a mid-week starter or employ a bullpen game, but he needs to keep his weekend starters sharp. The first one is tomorrow against San Francisco. Probably a bullpen game because it will be too short of a rest for any of the weekend starters to pitch a meaningful number of innings. The other two Tuesdays he'll probably have all three starters pitch.
And then after a week off they get to travel to UC Irvine. I would say unless you're going to see your family member play that's not a trip I would recommend taking. With only six games of preparation for an opponent that good that series will be very ugly.
Ironically by playing "Don't @#$! your brother" the players (most of the plegemasters now gone) have @#$!'d over their brothers.
Sure, no problem. I too feel as though the school sports website doesn't do the best job of covering the spring sports. It's almost like they think fans will have checked out after basketball season is done.
And on that note Aggies lost 6-2 to San Francisco on Tuesday. Positive takeaways were the 5 1/3 innings of shutout ball pitched by the bullpen, Jonah Henrickson's homerun, the multi-hit game for James Williams III, and Bryan Green's continued development as a pitcher.
Ironically Williams had his best day at the plate so far in a game where he wasn't the designated hitter and was playing arguably the most physically demanding position on the field-catcher. Some players are just like that-they need to be out on the field to feel completely a part of the game.
Green did give up the runs, but he had a healthy strikeout total, which only points to good things in the future. This is a much smaller roster than normal, so don't expct to see too many variations to the starting lineup (except for maybe batting order) this year. Where they have the player depth to make more substitutions is at catcher and in the infield. Barring injuries the pitching rotation will likely stay the same regardless of performance, and Green will start whenever there's a Tuesday game. This consistency will be good for next year.