Yet another baseball weekend unfortunately brings more bad news for the baseball team. The Crimson Tide went to Knoxville hoping to rebound from a disappointing series loss last weekend, but things didn't get any better. Alabama won the first game, dropped the second one, and headed to the Sunday game with a chance to win the series.

And things looked great for a while, too. Going into the bottom of the eighth, Alabama led the Vols by two, who were suddenly down to their final six outs. Miers Quigley had pitched a gem to that point, but was obviously out of gas -- he had almost a 100 pitch outing against Southeastern Louisiana mid-week, and was pitching on only three days rest. In the previous couple of innings, the Vols had drilled Quigley, but we were fortunate enough to have the balls hit right to us, and we kept them off the board. A pitching chance was obviously needed... well, obvious to everyone but Jim Wells. Unfortunately, Wells send Quigley out for the eighth, and after a walk and a single opened the inning, the Vols hit a towering three run homer to take the 5-4 lead, and they never looked back on the way to a 6-4 win.

Continuing to plague Alabama was even more struggles at the plate. All told, we left twelve runners on base, and eight runners in scoring position. We had countless opportunities to put this game away, but never could do it, and ultimately some bad managerial decision-making did us in.

The outlook for the Tide is not looking particularly good. LSU lost a series to Ole Miss this weekend, and Auburn was swept by South Carolina, but unfortunately we could not gain any real ground on either of them. We stayed even with LSU, and gained only a game on Auburn. All told, it puts us in a three-way tie for second place in the SEC West. And that, honestly, sounds better than it really is. As a whole, the SEC West is really bad, and only Ole Miss is a decent squad. The entire SEC East is better than the bottom five in the SEC West, and it seems like only two teams from the West will make Hoover. That is very bad news for Alabama, as it looks like we're going to have to edge out both LSU and Auburn just to make Hoover. Being brutally honest, at absolute best, we look to be the eighth best team in the conference.

The Tide will return to play mid-week with a neutral site game against Southern Miss, and then will take on Mississippi State -- easily the conference's worst team -- in a home series next weekend.

After surprisingly taking back-to-back series from nationally ranked Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, the Tide seemed to be in good shape heading into a week that features series with UAB and LSU. The Blazers are nothing overly special, and LSU is probably, at best, the seventh best team in the conference, so things looked to shape up nicely.

It didn't quite go as well as planned.

A late double secured victory for the Tide in game one against UAB, but the following night the Blazers soundly outplayed the Tide en route to a relatively easy victory, thus forcing a series split. On Friday, we traveled to Baton Rouge to play LSU, but the game was postponed, forcing a doubleheader on Saturday. After getting a split in the doubleheader, Alabama had the Sunday game, and therefore the series, seemingly locked up. After a big sixth inning the Tide carried a three run lead, but it all fell apart amid a myriad of poor hitting and poor pitching. We ended up losing 9-7, with the go-ahead run coming on a wild pitch, after leaving eight runners on base and having eight strikeouts, to go along with two errors. At the end of the day, we lost a game, and a series, that we should have won based solely upon a complete lack of execution of the most elementary of baseball fundamentals.

Our continued lack of competent execution of fundamental baseball remains a major concern. We do not have an in-state scholarship program, nor do we have any institutional support for baseball in general. It all combines to mean that we aren't going to beat many conference teams with superior depth and talent, so we have to play sound baseball to get the job done. Unfortunately, we seemingly cannot do that. We walk entirely too many batters, have too many wild pitches and errors, and on the offensive side of the ball we leave entirely too many runners in scoring position because of an inability to put the ball in play during key situations. None of that bodes well for the Tide.

The one positive, I suppose, you could take from the LSU series is that it was on the road, and thus far SEC teams have struggled greatly on the road in conference play. I have long argued against the traditional belief of home field advantage in football, but in baseball it's another story, and in particular it seems to be a very big advantage in SEC baseball. So far this season, the home team has won 20 of 24 conference series, and we have yet to break that trend in our own right (2-0 at home, 0-2 on the road). However, regardless of home field advantage, the point remains that at some point we will have to go on the road and win some series, and being quite frank, we won't have many easier opportunities than we had in Baton Rouge this past weekend. Arkansas and Mississippi State may be easier, but only slightly so, and after this past weekend you cannot feel good about our chances there either.

Either way, after losing the series to LSU and splitting with UAB, the Tide sits tied for third in the SEC West with the Bayou Bengals. And that's bad news for us. Only the top eight teams make the SEC Tournament, and with essentially the entire Eastern division looking superior to just about everyone in the West, we will probably need to finish second in the West to just secure ourselves a spot in Hoover.

Things won't get any easier for the Tide this week. After two relatively light games against Mississippi Valley State and Southeastern Louisiana, we will have to travel to Knoxville to face a good Tennessee team. The Vols are one of the best teams in the conference, and are fresh off taking a series from nationally ranked Florida. Sufficed to say, we've got our work cut out for us as we go on yet another road trip this weekend.

Just a quick heads up, the Tide baseball team took two of three from the 15th ranked Ole Miss Rebels over the weekend just one week after taking two of three from a top ten Vanderbilt team. The full baseball/softball update will be up tomorrow, but just thought y'all might want an update on what is surely the end of times the craziness that is Tide baseball.

Cats and dogs, living together...

Update [2008-3-31 0:6:25 by outsidethesidelines]:

To go a bit further on what Todd said, we surprisingly took two of three from the Rebels. And honestly came this close to getting the sweep today. To put it mildly, it has been very surprising to see this team suddenly come to life.

We started off the conference season with a murderer's row stretch of three series against top ten teams. After being swept by Kentucky, and swept in a mid-week series against UNO, it looked like we might even start 0-9, and anything better than 1-8 would be nice. And then we came to life. After winning series against both Vanderbilt and Ole Miss -- with the two losses in both series coming in 2-1 games -- Alabama is now surprisingly tied for the SEC West lead with a 4-5 conference record.

Things get a lot easier now in terms of the schedule, and it is very much time for us to take advantage of that fact. Next weekend we travel to Baton Rouge to play LSU, which has struggled greatly the past few weeks and is now the sitting tenth overall in the conference. After that we could a pretty average Tennessee team in Knoxville before Mississippi State (dead last in the conference) comes to Tuscaloosa. We essentially went .500 against a ridiculously tough stretch, and now the easier part of the schedule comes. It's time now to just go out, play solid baseball, and just keep winning series.

After surprisingly taking a series from Vanderbilt this past weekend, Alabama swept Jacksonville State in a home-and-away series over the course of the past two days. After taking the first game yesterday 12-6 thanks to a couple of big innings early, the Tide followed it up tonight with a 5-0 victory in Jacksonville. Miers Quigley had a great showing in the second game, going all the way for the complete game shut-out.

The win makes it four straight for the Tide, and pushes us to a 13-11 overall record. Ole Miss, another top ten ranked team, will be coming to Tuscaloosa on Friday for a very critical weekend series.

All things told, maybe things aren't as bad as we thought. The opening of the SEC schedule was absolutely brutal -- featuring Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Ole Miss, all three of which are top ten teams -- and if we can somehow take this upcoming series from the Rebels, we will emerge from that brutal stretch with a 4-5 conference record. That's not great, but things will get much, much easier as the rest of the schedule unfolds, and the record should improve accordingly. Also, while the mid-week sweep by UNO sounded bad, I did notice that they beat LSU in Baton Rouge tonight, too, so maybe that's not as damning as we once thought.

Who knows? Maybe these guys aren't all that bad. Time will tell.

Since some of you are interested in a few baseball updates here and there...

After a terrible start to the baseball season -- swept in the SEC opener by Kentucky and then hammered by lowly UNO in a two game mid-week series -- things looked like they were going to get ugly. And with Vanderbilt and Ole Miss on the schedule in the next two weekends, it seemed like the worst was yet to come.

When Vanderbilt came to town, they took the Friday night game 2-1 in a surprisingly close pitcher's duel. After a very surprising 9-7 win by Alabama on Saturday, the Tide followed up that strong performance with a 10-3 victory on Sunday to take the series from the Commodores.

It all may very well be a fluke, but it's nevertheless nice to see. At the very least, we played competent baseball this weekend -- which is far better than the Little League play we had showcased the past few weeks -- and looked pretty good at times. Taking a series from Vanderbilt is pretty impressive, especially considering the Commodores won the conference last year and that they are ranked in the top ten of just about every single college baseball poll.

Things still aren't looking all of that good for the Tide, which still sits at just .500 overall and only 2-4 in conference play, but it's a positive development. I said a couple of days ago that we should all be fairly happy if we go to Baton Rouge in two weeks with anything north of a 1-8 conference record, and we've surpassed that this weekend alone. Hopefully it's a sign that things will start to improve.

Baseball will resume mid-week with a home and away series against Jacksonville State, and next weekend the Ole Miss Rebels -- who came into this weekend a top ten team before losing a series at home against Florida -- will come to Tuscaloosa for another three game series.