Catching up with some of the stories from the week I’ve been away.
Uniform Start Date gets nixed after only one season. The NCAA voted today to undo the scheduling mess of the Uniform Start Date just imposed this year. The rule was created to give Northern schools like Michigan a more level playing field with Southern schools. Programs like Michigan have to travel to Florida or Arizona in the early weeks of seasons which can cost a school a pretty penny. The start date did cause problems however with scheduling, as many schools are playing multiple mid week games, throwing some RPIs into tailspins, detracting from study time for student athletes, and -GASP!- forcing some major programs to play more road games in the midweek. The Southern schools don’t like it at all. Welcome to our world.
In an article by Kendall Rogers at Yahoo! Sports, Coach Maloney was the vocal opposition to the change:
“It will enhance the financial burden that we already to go through, because now we have to add another week to the schedule, likely on the road,” Maloney said. “Adding the week to the start of the season just shoots down the original intent of the uniform start date.”
So it looks like next year its back to an extra weekend series in Florida playing weak competition while teams like North Carolina who has already played 30 home games this season will get another 2-3 more home games. There’s no reason for not adding the week to the end of the season. Well, there is one reason, but I seriously doubt the NCAA is worried about sharing Omaha with USA Swim for a week.
Chris Fetter to the Pitcher Of The Year Watchlist. The College Baseball Foundation released their preliminary watch list for Pitcher of the Year and Chris Fetter is Michigan’s man. He’s one of 4 BigTen pitchers to make the list. Chris has virtually no shot at winning the award. Stephen Strasburg of San Diego is “god.” There was rumor that he’s already negotiating with the Nationals for a 6 year $50million contract. So while its nice to be on the list, its a slim slim slim chance that Fetter takes the hardware.
Posted under Baseball
Tags: chris fetter, coach maloney, northern schools getting hosed
That giant rookie contract for strasburg is gonna kill the nats when his arm falls off ala mark prior. He’s a great talent, but his throwing motion does raise injury concerns. Also, Micheal Inoa scoffs at Steve Strasburg, kid is 17 and he’s 6’7″ throwing mid 90’s heat. A’s gave him a 4.25 million dollar signing bonus last year.
Heard OSU just pitched a no hitter against Michigan. Great going, Michigan. Let OSU embarrass UM again.
Wow, aren’t you the class act? Shouldn’t you be commenting on MLive?
Apparently you don’t quite understand that Wimmers is running for BigTen pitcher of the year as well as nationally (although also behind Strausburg). The kid is good. He’s a strikeout pitcher. We’re a team that strikes out a lot. It was a bad matchup. It showed.
Formerly, how would you rank the B10 pitchers this year? I don’t follow much college baseball, I know about some of the bigger names nationally, Strasburg obviously , and White out of UNC, and in the B10 I know Fetter, Wimmers is obviously pretty good, and that one out of Indiana, whose name I can’t recall but was mentioned in a scouting report I read about Phegley.
There are a few different levels. I’d start with the top 3 in Arnett (Indiana), Fetter, and Wimmers; Jake Hale (OSU’s closer) could also be included on this list if you include non-starters. He was one of the top starters in the BigTen last year.
Any of those guys could be named the top guy. After that you drop to the level of TJ Macy (Penn State), Nolan Moody (MSU), Matt Bashore (Indiana), Ben Reeser (Illinois), Buske (Minnesota), Phil Haig (Illinois). There’s probably a few more in this level, but I just haven’t seen them enough. That or there Eric Katzman who pitches on that level once every 3 weeks. These guys are mid to late round prospects, but aren’t the guys I would imagine seeing in the big leagues.
Those top three are really the class of the BigTen and would be aces on nearly every other staff in the country. I’m interested to see if Wimmers continues his greatness or if he goes Mike Wilson. Wilson had a similarly successful sophomore campaign then fell off the face of the earth.
As a league I think our top guys, both tiers, make us competitive with any other major conference. The problem the BigTen faces is lack of depth. Most southern conferences don’t work half as hard and garner twice the talent. The BigTen has made strides to catch up the last few years, but they still aren’t quite there.
The OTTER Chris,
In the world of UM vs OSU, having OSU no hit UM is not a good thing. You aren’t that obtuse to realize that or are you?