by Jaybird » Wed May 15, 2024 8:25 pm
But was it? Was this team ever really good enough to "make a run", or was that just an illusion that some people fell for?
The Big East coaches weren't fooled. They had us pegged for a tie for fourth in their pre-season poll. Back in February, they thought it was a coin flip whether we'd even make the tournament, and that was before our all-BE (one of only two Jays) ace, Cancellieri, got shut down. Including Dom, guys who threw nearly 80% of Creighton's innings in the Big East last year (a fairly crappy year in its own right) aren't here this year.
Servais had to overhaul the staff and he brought in a dozen new arms, seven of them transfers. I think it's safe to say we missed on all seven. One--Brenna--hasn't pitched at all. Two--Coborn and Gluth--have been practically invisible and haven't pitched in the BE. Primeaux and Trapp have given the Jays a combined total of just under 7 innings in BE play. The remaining two--Burke and Saner--have a combined ERA of 11.58 in 23 Big East innings. Think about that. Eleven. Five. Eight. And Ed keeps running them out there, I guess because he feels he doesn't have much choice. And, of course, Dom hasn't thrown even one pitch to a Big East hitter and isn't likely to now. In fact, our weekend rotation is now a true freshman, a converted reliever, and a very shaky transfer. Not one of those guys started a Big East game a year ago.
Last season (again, not a year that Creighton's going to exactly brag about on a banner at Daytrader Stadium), Jays pitchers gave up 22 homers in the Big East, or -8 when you compare it to the homers Jays hitters smashed. This year, that deficit's ballooned to -18; 30 homers yielded--so far--vs 12 we've hit. To me, that's huge. That means we're basically conceding two home runs, or, one more than we're likely to hit, in every Big East game. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Added to that mess, Jack Grace, our other all-Big East guy going into the season, has been limited by an injury. Last Big East season, his slash was .320/.388/.520. This year his numbers have fallen off a statistical cliff: 208/240/208. He had five homers and 17 RBIs in conference last season. This season: zero homers and four RBIs but, in fairness, he's played in less than half the Big East schedule.
Then, there's the mystery of Teddy Deters. He'll be forever beloved as the corndog killer, but he's sorta, kinda, disappeared in conference games. In noncon games, he's hitting .345 with 7 homers and 37 RBis. In the Big East, he's hitting .243 with two homers and six RBIs. Maybe he's hurting too, no idea, but he's really tailed off on the weekends these past couple months.
All of this isn't excuse-making for Ed. He has plenty of things to answer for, starting with how can a team with almost 50% turnover turn in almost a carbon copy of last season's late BE collapse (unless they just weren't very good to begin with and had been covering it up with a high school-level noncon sked), and how did we basically botch the recruiting on pitchers. You look at the resumes for some of the pitching transfers at their last stops and you have to just scratch your head. Maybe we were in desperation mode and had to take who we could get.
My point is, some fans (no need to name names; it's kind of obvious in at least one case) were naive and fell into the trap of inflated expectations based on that eye-popping early performance. That parade of stiffs--Mass Lowell, Coppin, Army, nebraska, etc.--lulled some among us into thinking this team must be really something. That wasn't fair or reasonable. I am surprised--hell, astonished-- that Big East baseball must be so much better than all those noncon schools we've been kicking around, but I don't know what other conclusion to draw. And the sad truth is, we're not as good as some people thought, and we really never were. Instead of claiming that this bunch under-performed, there's a better argument to be made that they're playing to their level, as painful as that is to say.
Oh, and I'm not sure we should pay much attention to the NCAA's RPI. The selection committee sure doesn't. They pretty much throw it out the window. I mean, come on, nebby can't be dislodged from the low 20s no matter how often they lose or who to. If I'm not mistaken, they got blown out at home by So Dak St last week and ended up moving up a spot by Monday. (EDIT: Just checked, and the cornflakes sit at 31 in the RPI. Still way inflated for my money, but the RPI is starting to make at least a tiny bit more sense. The committee will still ignore it, like they always do).
