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2019 Softball Season thread

alabamagrizzly

Well-known member
Time to get this ball rolling. The season is now a week away and looks like this Griz team has a chance to surprise some folks. The preseason polls came out and it’s no surprise who one and two are.
2019 Big Sky Conference Preseason Coaches' Poll
1. Sacramento State (6) ... 36
2. Weber State ... 30
3. Portland State ... 24
4. Montana ... 20
5. Northern Colorado (1) ... 16
6. Idaho State ... 15
7. Southern Utah ... 6

I find it interesting that Sac St gave their 1st place vote to N. Col over WSU. The main knock on both Sac and WSU will be returning pitching experience. Sac’s returning pitchers had an era in ‘18 of 4.02 and WSU’s was 3.78 after both teams graduated the last three con POTY winners. By comparison, our returning pitchers had a 3.01 era last year with our top four pitchers all returning.

On the offensive side, WSU, graduated three starters including their standout 2B McKinley Brinkerhoff who had a .338 career BA and 69 career SB’s while starting at 2B all four years of her career. Sac on the other hand returns practically their whole lineup including league MVP Suzy Brookshire who may own almost every career con record before her career is over. Montana on the other hand will only have two returning starters from what was an extremely disappointing offensive team, even by Delene Colburn standards. The upside of our incoming Fr though is very encouraging depending on how quickly it will be reached.

I’m sure these girls are eager to get out there and start proving them wrong next weekend. It should be a good start with UC Davis hosting two games against us plus single game matchups vs Santa Clara, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal State Bakersfield.

Go Griz!!
 
Sort of interesting that Montana's first tourney of the year will be the NorCal Kickoff (kickoff?? :roll:) co-hosted by Cal Davis and Sacramento State... so the two teams will get early scouting reports.

Looks like Montana will play only one game @ the Sac State complex. I couldn't tell if any Montana games would be streamed, so I contacted the coaches (Erin Thorpe of Davis and Lori Perez of Sac State). No reply from Perez, but Thorpe wrote a nice note, indicating that the two games Montana plays against Cal Davis would be streamed. Those games will be Feb 8 @ noon and Feb 9 @ noon. Thorpe wasn't certain about streaming for the other games, however.
 
grizzlyjournal said:
Sort of interesting that Montana's first tourney of the year will be the NorCal Kickoff (kickoff?? :roll:) co-hosted by Cal Davis and Sacramento State... so the two teams will get early scouting reports.

Looks like Montana will play only one game @ the Sac State complex. I couldn't tell if any Montana games would be streamed, so I contacted the coaches (Erin Thorpe of Davis and Lori Perez of Sac State). No reply from Perez, but Thorpe wrote a nice note, indicating that the two games Montana plays against Cal Davis would be streamed. Those games will be Feb 8 @ noon and Feb 9 @ noon. Thorpe wasn't certain about streaming for the other games, however.

Good investigative work GJ. I’m really looking forward to seeing how dominant our pitching’s gonna be, mostly how healthy Hood is albeit she looked good in fall(not much of an indicator vs D-1 ball). Also really excited to see the new Griz and watch them develop and continue the building of our program.
 
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
Nice start to the season for this young team. A 3-0 hard grinder win vs Santa Clara.

Awesome to hear!

Tuff loss in game 2 today vs host UC Davis. Hooked, I know if you were watching, you’d be questioning the call in the 2nd inning to send the runner around 3rd to home on a dropped IF fly that was booted towards the 1B dugout. Runner was thrown out at home by a long ways for the 3rd out in which ended up resulting in a 1-2 loss. Tuff break but a young team that will go through a lot of growing pains this year hopefully preparing them for the con tourney.
 
alabamagrizzly said:
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
Nice start to the season for this young team. A 3-0 hard grinder win vs Santa Clara.

Awesome to hear!

Tuff loss in game 2 today vs host UC Davis. Hooked, I know if you were watching, you’d be questioning the call in the 2nd inning to send the runner around 3rd to home on a dropped IF fly that was booted towards the 1B dugout. Runner was thrown out at home by a long ways for the 3rd out in which ended up resulting in a 1-2 loss. Tuff break but a young team that will go through a lot of growing pains this year hopefully preparing them for the con tourney.

I missed it unfortunately. Hope to catch a bunch on line this season. We usually go over to a handful of games in Missoula as well. Love that you follow these gals like you do!

Can’t comment on that play since I missed it. Sometimes being aggressive is always the best way to be, especially if the fielder needs to make the perfect toss to make the play then all you can do is tip your hat. But there are also times and situations to make those aggressive plays. It’s often a cardinal sin to make any out at third or home, but hi also hate not being aggressive. A fine line at times
 
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
Nice start to the season for this young team. A 3-0 hard grinder win vs Santa Clara.

Awesome to hear!

Tuff loss in game 2 today vs host UC Davis. Hooked, I know if you were watching, you’d be questioning the call in the 2nd inning to send the runner around 3rd to home on a dropped IF fly that was booted towards the 1B dugout. Runner was thrown out at home by a long ways for the 3rd out in which ended up resulting in a 1-2 loss. Tuff break but a young team that will go through a lot of growing pains this year hopefully preparing them for the con tourney.

I missed it unfortunately. Hope to catch a bunch on line this season. We usually go over to a handful of games in Missoula as well. Love that you follow these gals like you do!

Can’t comment on that play since I missed it. Sometimes being aggressive is always the best way to be, especially if the fielder needs to make the perfect toss to make the play then all you can do is tip your hat. But there are also times and situations to make those aggressive plays. It’s often a cardinal sin to make any out at third or home, but hi also hate not being aggressive. A fine line at times

Early season non-conf games are a good time to make changes in your game. Being more aggressive running the bases is fine by me. This might be a faster team, overall. Overall, a decent debut from this team. They hit the ball hard through the lineup; just hit a couple of hard liners right at outfield defenders.
 
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
HookedonGriz said:
alabamagrizzly said:
Nice start to the season for this young team. A 3-0 hard grinder win vs Santa Clara.

Awesome to hear!

Tuff loss in game 2 today vs host UC Davis. Hooked, I know if you were watching, you’d be questioning the call in the 2nd inning to send the runner around 3rd to home on a dropped IF fly that was booted towards the 1B dugout. Runner was thrown out at home by a long ways for the 3rd out in which ended up resulting in a 1-2 loss. Tuff break but a young team that will go through a lot of growing pains this year hopefully preparing them for the con tourney.

I missed it unfortunately. Hope to catch a bunch on line this season. We usually go over to a handful of games in Missoula as well. Love that you follow these gals like you do!

Can’t comment on that play since I missed it. Sometimes being aggressive is always the best way to be, especially if the fielder needs to make the perfect toss to make the play then all you can do is tip your hat. But there are also times and situations to make those aggressive plays. It’s often a cardinal sin to make any out at third or home, but hi also hate not being aggressive. A fine line at times

Agreed. It was tuff to tell with the lack of cameras(only one stationary camera behind home plate) and no good view of where the fielder picked up the ball to throw home. It might have just got a really good bounce to make an easy throw. Coach knows these girls are young too and you gotta try to take advantage of every opportunity and sometimes try to create opportunities. Like I said though, these girls are gonna learn a lot this year and be better for it.
 
A roster question: A first glance of the team via streaming & it looked like a pretty small squad. Are the Griz down another player? From a group team photo of 17, the roster is now trimmed to 16... absent Kaelyn Smith, I believe. Is this correct?
 
grizzlyjournal said:
A roster question: A first glance of the team via streaming & it looked like a pretty small squad. Are the Griz down another player? From a group team photo of 17, the roster is now trimmed to 16... absent Kaelyn Smith, I believe. Is this correct?
After a quick social media stalk, it looks like she’s still in Polsen. I’ll dig a little deeper. Another question, why no Micheala today? She was slated to pitch against UC Davis on the pregame site but Maddy went out there. Guess we’ll see tomorrow if she comes out.
 
alabamagrizzly said:
grizzlyjournal said:
A roster question: A first glance of the team via streaming & it looked like a pretty small squad. Are the Griz down another player? From a group team photo of 17, the roster is now trimmed to 16... absent Kaelyn Smith, I believe. Is this correct?
After a quick social media stalk, it looks like she’s still in Polsen. I’ll dig a little deeper. Another question, why no Micheala today? She was slated to pitch against UC Davis on the pregame site but Maddy went out there. Guess we’ll see tomorrow if she comes out.

I see Micheala did get one inning. That’s good. Kaelyn is listed in the school registry. Usually we never here what the story is like Savannah Voyles from ‘17 and Ava Dolan from this year. She’d be a big loss for the depth though if she’s no longer playing.
 
Tuff loss today for the girls vs Santa Barbara. After battling back to tie it up 6 all in the 5th, the Griz gave up 5 in the top 8th. Santa Barbara’s had a good weekend though after putting up 12 against Sac yesterday.
 
Unfortunately it looks like no live feeds to the games this weekend. A lot of watching the gametracker. Bradley should be a winnable game but the rest will be real good tests. I think splitting the Texas State games and splitting the San Jose St/New Mexico St games will be a very successful weekend.
 
Despite outhitting both opponents 21-17, the Griz lost both games today in two hard fought battles, 5-6 and 6-7. On the bright side though, Fr RF Brooklyn Weisgram hit the first homer for the Griz this season. As a team, the hits are coming, but for some reason, our strength of pitching has taken a bit to wake up this year. Once they get dialed in though, this team will become a conference favorite this year.
 
alabamagrizzly said:
Despite outhitting both opponents 21-17, the Griz lost both games today in two hard fought battles, 5-6 and 6-7. On the bright side though, Fr RF Brooklyn Weisgram hit the first homer for the Griz this season. As a team, the hits are coming, but for some reason, our strength of pitching has taken a bit to wake up this year. Once they get dialed in though, this team will become a conference favorite this year.

Two tough one run losses where they left runners on base to tie the game. Saw a runner got gunned at the plate again, too. Ugh. Hope our pitching gets dialed. Like they are hitting the ball around well this early.
 
Fr SS Maygen McGrath is Montana’s first Fr Big Sky Conference Player of the Week in the history of our program.

https://gogriz.com/news/2019/2/18/softball-mcgrath-named-big-sky-player-of-the-week.aspx
 
Well this team is now just 3-13 on the season. Not getting any hopes up that the conference games will go much better. Any way to bring Pinkerton back. This coaching staff is already failing imo.
 
HookedonGriz said:
Well this team is now just 3-13 on the season. Not getting any hopes up that the conference games will go much better. Any way to bring Pinkerton back. This coaching staff is already failing imo.

Come conference schedule, don’t let that 3-13 record fool you. This team is and will be a much better team by then. Pitching, for whatever reason has taken a slide this year. We’ve committed way more errors then years past at this point but a lot of that is on a mostly brand new infield and very little on field practice except for game time due to the beautiful weather in Missoula. The bats are the best they’ve been since our record setting 2016 season. I definitely have higher hopes for this team right now then what I had at the beginning of season. Up until this last weekend at Stanford, we had been in all but two games. Last weekend saw our tuffest competition yet facing three teams who are either ranked nationally or receiving votes and one of them we faced twice. As far as blaming the coaching staff, most of our struggles have come because of our pitching, along with some untimely errors. In years past, our pitching had been our strength and Coach Meuchel has been the pitching coach throughout our program history. Basically what I’m saying hooked is have a little more patience. I believe this team will still surprise you.
 
alabamagrizzly said:
HookedonGriz said:
Well this team is now just 3-13 on the season. Not getting any hopes up that the conference games will go much better. Any way to bring Pinkerton back. This coaching staff is already failing imo.

Come conference schedule, don’t let that 3-13 record fool you. This team is and will be a much better team by then. Pitching, for whatever reason has taken a slide this year. We’ve committed way more errors then years past at this point but a lot of that is on a mostly brand new infield and very little on field practice except for game time due to the beautiful weather in Missoula. The bats are the best they’ve been since our record setting 2016 season. I definitely have higher hopes for this team right now then what I had at the beginning of season. Up until this last weekend at Stanford, we had been in all but two games. Last weekend saw our tuffest competition yet facing three teams who are either ranked nationally or receiving votes and one of them we faced twice. As far as blaming the coaching staff, most of our struggles have come because of our pitching, along with some untimely errors. In years past, our pitching had been our strength and Coach Meuchel has been the pitching coach throughout our program history. Basically what I’m saying hooked is have a little more patience. I believe this team will still surprise you.

I hope so man. I’ll cheer my ass off for them and catch some home games with the kiddos again, but man I gotta think they’ve lost some games they shouldn’t have. I feel like if they were going to make some noise in Conference their record would be a lot better now. Hopefully a lot of young, early, growing pains and it only gets better. I’m a bit nervous.
 
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