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May 29, 2015

David, Sonny, Fes, our baseball team

David Price went seven against the A’s allowed five hits, no runs with one walk and three ring ups. David and the Tigers defeated the A’s 1-0. David was throwing the heater at 93-94 and 95 a couple of times and threw some nice breaking balls at key times. He had some trouble but got out of all of the jams he got himself in. David improved to 4-1 on the season with a 2.97 ERA, a 1.17 WHIP (walk and hits per innings pitched, very good number for Dave) and has 14 walks and 57 strikeouts on the year. David has 1,204 strikeouts in nine years of pitching, an average of 133 K’s per year, and his first year with the Rays, the tail end of 2007, he was a closer.
The Tigers are now 28-21 and two and a half game back of the AL Central division leading Minnesota Twins and KC Royals, which are at 28-18.

Sonny on the hill for the A’s tonight vs the Yankees at O.co. Coliseum in Oakland. Sonny is 5-2 with a 1.77 ERA, 18 walks and 61 K’s. He faces Chris Capuano of the Yankees, who is 0-2 with a 7.36 ERA.

Pedro and the Pirates are on fire. The Pirates have won seven in a row and Pedro is hitting better. The Pirates are now 25-22, six back of the division leading Cardinals, which are at 31-16. The second place Cubs are at 25-21.

Festus Ezeli finished the clinching game for the Warriors over the Rockets to send them into the Finals versus the Cavs with 12 points and nine boards and played some pretty good defense against Dwight Howard, who finished with 18 points and 16 boards, but was five of 13 from the field, so not a great percentage for a center who is taking high percentage shots. Fes looks like he’s in Steve Kerr’s plans for the NBA finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The series start next Thursday, June 4th, @ 8 PM CT/ 9 PM ET on ABC. Like the Warriors over LeBron and the Cavs in 7.

Our baseball team has been inconsistent this year.. We haven’t shown that we have a solid 1-2-3 starting pitching rotation and now we’ll need solid day four and five pitchers. Our defense has been pretty good, but our hitting with runners in scoring position has been erratic. But we kind of limped into the postseason last year and won it all, so this is doable again, possibly. We are the  No.1 seed in our regional this weekend with our first game against Lipscomb, which beat us in the regular season 3-1, slated for a 7 PM CT/8 PM ET first pitch on ESPN3. We finished the season 42-19, No.2 seed Radford finished 43-14 and won the Big South. Nop.3 Indiana, the number three seed, is 34-22, and Lipscomb is 39-18.  Radford and Indiana square off 2 PM CT/ 3 PM ET on ESPN3.

We’ll need to get good pitching from Carson, Walker and Pfeifer and guys like Kilichowski and Kyle Wright will need to pitch like they did last weekend at the SEC tournament where they were both terrific. If we can get good pitching and we hit in the clutch, we have a good chance to advance to the super regional, where, if Illinois were to win their regional, we would go to the Illini. If some other team defeats Illinois at their regional, we would host the Super Regional.

Festus gave the Warriors some big time minutes Wednesday night that helped propel them into the NBA finals

Couple of predictions: the NBA Finals and college baseball

 NBA Finals

I picked the Warriors over the Cavs in seven before the playoffs started and I’m sticking with that prediction. Like Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, Andrew Bogut and the Warriors to get the franchise’s first NBA title since 1975. The Oracle Arena home court, where the Warriors are 45-3 this year, will get the team over the top against LeBron and the Cavs. If the Cavs had the home court advantage, I would probably pick the Cavs, because they have a very strong  home court advantage at Quicken Loans Arena having won  26 of their last 28 there. But the Warriors earned it by having the best regular season record in the NBA, so I’m going with the Warriors in a classic series.

 

Warriors over Cavs in 7

 

College baseball

Like the Gators of Florida to win the national title. Their stud pitcher, A.J. Puk, throws it 97 and 98 MPH and is almost un-hittable. Puk is 8-3 with a 4.23 ERA, but that ERA is deceiving because he has been impossible to hit the last month of the season. He has 28 walks and 85 ring ups. Logan Shore (7-6, 2.79)  is the Gators’ number one guy and he is pretty outstanding, too. They play excellent defense and hit it well. Every pitcher coming out of the bullpen seems to have an ERA under 3.00. They are loaded with arms and they hit it pretty well, too, and their defense, which has only committed 35 errors in 60 games for a .985 fielding percentage (No.1 nationally), is the best in the country. Catcher Mike Rivera had 302 chances this year and committed only one error. He also threw out 14 of 28 attempted base stealers, which is an amazing 50% rate. Third baseman Josh Tobias (116 chances) and center fielder Buddy Reed (132 chances) committed only one error apiece. Tobias, a switch hitter, is the Gators’ leading hitter at .357. They hit 53  homers this season, 14 by DH J.J. Schwartz and 13 by left fielder Harrison Bader. They get the job done with the bats, and with their pitching and defense, they’ll claim the national title, the Gators first in the program’s history.  The Gators finished national runners-up in 2005 and 2011, and have appeared in eight previous College World Series.

Florida over LSU for the national title in 3

games.

 

Stephen Curry and his Golden State Warriors teammates capture the NBA title

 

Hard throwing A.J. Puk leads his team to the national championship

 

 

 

 

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