UK baseball faltering through the second half of SEC competition

 

April 27, 2014

As the season winds down and the competition stiffens, UK baseball is faltering in the homestretch.

This UK baseball team is just not the same as it was earlier in the year.

This was once a powerhouse team that showed its strength through a high-powered offense and instilled fear into opponents with its starting pitching every weekend.But that offensive strength has weakened, and no one is scared of UK’s three-man rotation anymore.

The weekend series with Ole Miss embodied that fact. The Cats’ starters gave up 17 runs in 12 innings of work while the offense produced seven runs in that time. UK lost the series, dropping to 9-12 in the SEC and completely out of the conference championship race.

The disappearance of the starting pitching hasn’t gone unnoticed by head coach Gary Henderson and has been a nagging concern for him.

“It’s been gone in the last four games,” Henderson said after Saturday’s series-deciding loss. “We’ve gone four, three, three, and five (innings) in those games. We were really solid for the first 39 games, but those short outings have an accumulating effect.”

While the offense is still this team’s strength, the lack of early-game production hasn’t helped bail UK out of those short outings.

If there has been one bright spot for the Cats during this middling stretch, it’s junior A.J. Reed. The star hitter has driven in 20 RBIs in the last 12 games and has continued his power tear, knocking in his NCAA-leading 19th homer of the season on Saturday. But the future professional can’t fix UK’s ailments by himself.

Reed alone isn’t good enough to return this team to the prominent force it once was.

“There’s multiple things that get taxed a little bit, and we have to get back to taking care of the things we were good at for the first 39 games,” Henderson said.

The problem is the Cats have shown little signs of returning to that previous form. They are a shell of themselves at this point in the season, and that shell can’t measure up with the rest of the prevalent teams in the SEC.