Subtitle: CONTROLLED RECKLESSNESS!!

Somewhat unintentionally, we've neglected Mizzou Baseball in favor of Mizzou Softball recently, and I think there are three main reasons: 1) Tim Jamieson is too clean-shaven (we like our coaches of diamond-based sports to have a couple days' worth of growth), 2) we're unabashed front-runners, and 3) let's face it: why reinvent the wheel when we've already got ourselves a near-perfect Mizzou Baseball blog to which we can link on a daily basis?  To say the least, SimmonsField.com and its proprietor, trripleplay, has all of your Mizzou Baseball needs covered.  (And if one site is not enough, I have the feeling our own Uribe Auction will be doing a fine job at his place -- or some place -- soon enough.)  This week, trrip unleashed a lovely three-part season preview.

Part One: What Can We Expect?

Rebuilding year? Or rehabbing year?

The string of high profile pitchers of the past few years (Scherzer-Crow-Zagone-Gibson-Tepesch) ran into a speed bump last season, which was one big reason the Tigers' string of post-season appearances hiccuped as well.

A look at the 2011 pitching staff, though, shows that Pitching U may be back on track. Junior transfer Matt Stites is a likely high round draft pick - potentially a first rounder if he shines at the D-1 level like some expect him to. Sophomore Eric Anderson was touted as a hot prospect until his season was crippled by injury. And there are at least 2 or 3 of the incoming freshman pitching class that could be scouts' favorites as they develop over the coming three years.

As for the offense, in college baseball every year is a rebuilding year. Every college baseball fan wonders how their team is going to replace the offense they lost from players who were drafted or graduated. And every year, those inconsistent young hitters from the past season turn out to be the matured offensive lynchpins of this year.

The biggest key, though, for getting the Tigers back on the track they were for the previous eight years, is having the patience to let the numerous injured pitchers and players get back to full strength. Most of them won't quite be there on Day 1. But most of them should be contributing at a high level by the time the Big 12 season gets underway.

Part Two: Pitching

I expect Tim Jamieson to follow his usual course of action and use the first few weeks of of the season to shake out the pitching staff, throwing those pitchers that looked good in practice up against real D-1 college opponents, giving them a chance to sort themselves out into weekend starters, mid-weeks starters, bullpen workhorses, and closers.

The main difference this year for MU pitching is the presence of a new pitching coach, Matt Hobbs. The new banner on the practice facility sums up his philosophy, which includes something called Controlled Recklessness. Should be interesting. Much better than the uncontrolled type.

After the jump, a Q&A with trripleplay!

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As with the Oregon preview last week, The Beef wrote a softball preview that he couldn't actually post himself because of web filters at work.  So I am passing it along.  And if somebody just glosses over this paragraph and thinks that I wrote the preview, that's fine too.

Every time I get out...they pull me back in...

Such seems to be the way of the Mizzou Softball team and my now trying to find a free hour or two to put together another preview piece.  But on a marvelous Sunday afternoon, the Tigers played probably their best game in the past few weeks to dispatch the upstart Oregon Ducks 7-2, qualifying them for their second straight berth in the Women’s College World Series, and qualifying me to do one more of these.  Mere minutes before Kristen Nottelmann struck out right field fan favorite Sam Pappas, the Hawaii Rainbow Wahine scored as improbable a win as has been seen in NCAA softball recent history.  Who knew a coin flip to determine the home team on a "neutral" site would prove to be so big, as junior Jenna Rodriguez snuck one out over the left field fence for a 2-out, 2-run, walk-off, series-ending, WCWS-clinching homerun over #1 Alabama.  As we will soon see, it was NOT the first homerun for this squad.  You know how we do it, so let's start at the top with the pure numbers:

Last year (2009): Hawaii was 30-24 last season, going 15-6 in the WAC.  For the season, they hit .268 (with just two starters over .300) with 62 homeruns.  They did not make the NCAA’s last season, but this is a strong program typically, one which was just a win away from making the WCWS back in 2007 before falling to Tennessee. The 2009 squad did see seven seniors graduate and move on, and that new blood coming in was pretty amazing in 2010 as we will soon see.

Record (2010):

• 49-14 (including 3-0 in Hawaii Regional and 2-1 in Alabama Super Regional).
• 24-8 at home, 16-1 on the road and 9-5 in neutral games (including NCAA's).  19-1 in the WAC.
• #21 in the last USA Today poll on Monday before NCAA's began.  #16 in the NCAA RPI's

Stats (updated through Super Regionals for Hawaii and their opposition):

• Team batting average of .326 (.245 for the opposition, .302 for Mizzou)
• Team slugging of .654 (.370 for the opposition, .492 for Mizzou)
• Team OBP of .410 (.315 for the opposition, .402 for Mizzou)
• 154 HR's (50 for the opposition, 58 for Mizzou)
• 17-23 in stolen bases (24-29 for the opposition, 115-141 for Mizzou)
• 2.88 ERA (7.23 for the opposition, 2.32 for Mizzou)
• 342 K's/135 BB's in 401.2 innings (351K's/179 BB's for the opposition, 335 K's/109 BB's in 365 innings for Mizzou)
• Fielding percentage of .958 (.952 for the opposition, .967 for Mizzou)

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It is almost unfair to zero in on one player's performance as the reason for Mizzou's advancement to their second consecutive Women's College World Series.  Lisa Simmons went 3-for-4 this weekend and scored the game's only run on Saturday. With Mizzou up just 3-2 yesterday, Nicole Hudson hit a bomb that still hasn't landed.  Down 2-1 in the bottom of the 7th against Creighton, Cat Lee delivered the game-winning 2-run double.  Numerous players made outstanding defensive plays.  It's cliche to call something a team victory, but clearly so many members of the Mizzou softball team were required to make plays for Mizzou to go 5-0 in NCAA play the last two weekends.

That said ... clearly one player has stolen the spotlight.  The offense has come up with timely hits but little sustained offense, having scored more than four runs just once in the last six games.  A pitching staff that lost its ace a couple of months ago has had to come up huge ... and one pitcher in particular has done just that.

After Saturday's shutout win over Oregon, Ehren Earleywine (a.k.a. Coach Stubble) expressed amazement over the development of sophomore Kristin Nottelmann over the last month or so.

"Two months ago, Kristin couldn't have done that," Earleywine said. "She just did not have the confidence, didn't have the courage, she didn't have the toughness, she hadn't put the time in in the bullpen. She's just really developed into such a special kid.

"If you'd have told me she was going to shut out Oregon today, seriously, I just don't know what to say. I'm so proud of her.

"I would have never predicted it. It's not a knock on her, it's just the amount of distance she's come in such a short amount of time.

"It's been like, 'Kristin, when are you gonna dig in? When are you gonna care as much as we care?' Now, she's the best player we've got."

It's safe to say ... she dug in.

I thought it would be interesting to check out how Nottelmann's season has progressed, from getting shelled by Alabama, to struggling after Chelsea Thomas' injury, to this dominant run in the NCAAs.  Below are all of her appearances against major conference (and NCAA Tournament) opponents.  Feasting on the SEMO's and SIU-Edwardsville's of the world help your overall numbers, but they don't tell you a whole lot.  So we're going to focus on only the real teams against whom Nottelmann pitched.

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Oklahoma City, here we come. Retire your razors, folks. The Tremendous Stubble movement keeps rolling.

Short version:

Entire interview:

The Beef cannot post from work, so he passed this along to me. Or, to put it in much cooler terms, this Mizzou-Oregon Super Regional preview is so XTREEEEEEEEEEEEME that he wasn't allowed to post it!!!!!  Yeah, we'll go with that.  Take it away, Beef!

So I went back to what I had written last year and basically have just copied the format.  Lots of interesting tid-bits about the Ducks as they make their first ever appearance in a NCAA Super Regional round, and the Tigers host their first ever Super Regionals. Let's break them down and see where we come out.  Let's start at the top with the pure numbers:

Last year (2009): Oregon was 16-34 on the season, 3-18 in conference.  For the season, they had only one batter who hit over .300, and they had no one who hit over .200 in 21 games of Pac-10 play (as a team hitting .145).  Needless to say, they have come quite a way since last year.  This was a team who made the NCAA's in 2008 won two games while there, finally falling to OU in the regional-clinching game.

Record (2010):

• 36-19 (including 3-0 in Atlanta Regional). 
• 14-5 at home, 5-10 on the road and 17-4 in neutral games (including NCAA's).  8-13 in Pac-10
• #20 in the last USA Today poll on Monday before NCAA's began.  #24 in the NCAA RPI's

Stats (before NCAA's):

• Team batting average of .299 (.235 for the opposition, .302 for Mizzou)
• Team slugging of .467 (.345 for the opposition, .492 for Mizzou)
• Team OBP of .370 (.317 for the opposition, .402 for Mizzou)
• 50 HR's (30 for the opposition, 58 for Mizzou)
• 43-62 in stolen bases (45-50 for the opposition, 115-141 for Mizzou)
• 2.45 ERA (4.32 for the opposition, 2.32 for Mizzou)
• 441 K's/139 BB's in 348.2 innings (288K's/137 BB's for the opposition, 335 K's/109 BB's in 365 innings for Mizzou)
• Fielding percentage of .956 (.966 for the opposition, .967 for Mizzou)

Non-Conference:

Non-conference saw the Ducks score some nice wins and a 25-6 tally.  They started the season with a win over #36 RPI Notre Dame and then #82 Creighton before falling to #43 Texas Tech 4-3 (Mizzou swept Tech at home).  The next tournament saw the Ducks get shutout by #32 BYU and their best win come against #113 Long Beach State.  They'd get it going the next weekend, going 4-0 with wins against #14 aTm (Mizzou split on the road), #57 Long Island and #16 Hawaii.  They would collect most of the rest of their wins against the likes of 150+ RPI squads like Boise St, Portland and North Dakota.  Unlike Mizzou and the Big XII, once the Pac-10 gets into their conference season, there really are not OOC games.

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What? Two all-sports posts in a week? Who do we think we are?

So the Robin Pingeton Era is about to start for Mizzou Women's Basketball.  We have heard that she is a pretty defense-heavy coach that might bring a rather familiar high-pressure style to Mizzou Arena.  Since we have the stats at our fingertips, let's take a look at what the stats might tell us about Pingeton's Tigers ... give Pingeton the nerd treatment, so to speak.

Mizzou Stats vs Illinois State Stats (2009-10)

The first thing that jumps out here is that Mizzou and Illinois State played an extremely similar pace in 2009-10 -- ISU just played it better.  This isn't a Mike Anderson-style high-pressure defense that Pingeton brings -- it's a high-leverage, low-FG% defense.  It's pretty hard to shoot worse than Mizzou did last year, but as a collective, ISU opponents did just that, making well less than 40% of their 2-pointers, which is pretty brutal.  ISU actually didn't force a ton of turnovers -- they just forced bad shots and grabbed the defensive rebound.

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Two weekends into Big 12 play, Tim Jamieson's Mizzou baseball team stands at 15-11 overall, 2-4 in conference.  Unless they get really hot soon, their streak of consecutive NCAA Regional appearances will probably come to an end ... and that's okay.  This is a super-young team, with five freshman regulars in the field and one big-time freshman in the rotation, and there have been some pretty strong moments so far, even if they have been rather inconsistent overall.

Here's a quick recap on how Mizzou's season has played out so far.

Highlights: Beating Auburn 11-7 in Auburn (Aaron Senne goes 3-for-5 with 4 RBI, Brett Nicholas 3-for-6 with 2 RBI), beating Purdue 22-14 (five homeruns, including two from freshman Eric Garcia, who goes 2-for-5 with 6 RBIs in all), outscoring ATM in College Station over three games, thanks to a 13-4 Sunday win (Senne goes 4-for-6 with two doubles, Brett Nicholas goes 2-for-5 with 3 RBI, and Tyler Clark and Ryan Clubb combine to give miniature Johnny Wholestaff a nice win).

Lowlights: Getting swept at the Houston Classic (three tight losses -- 3-0 to Houston, 4-3 to TCU, 8-5 to Texas after building an early lead), getting outscored 27-9 in a Saturday doubleheader against Baylor this past weekend (20-6, 7-3).

Offense

Since MUtigers.com's stats page doesn't give you too many averages, here is a breakout of Mizzou's 2010 offensive stats.  Players who have started double-digit games are in bold.

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