Bruin Aces - Bauer & Cole - Getting National Recognition For Early Season Domination
by Nestor on Mar 15, 2010 2:54 PM PDT
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Bruins are off to best start (13-0) in our program's history thanks to our two aces: Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer. Both Cole and Bauer were instrumental in yet another phenomenal weekend for Bruin baseball team. They were recognized for their efforts nationally today as Collegiate Baseball, honored hem as National Players Of the Week. Bauer was also named as Pac-10 pitcher of the week. From the official site:
Both pitchers had sensational performances on back-to-back nights at the Whataburger College Classic in Corpus Christi, Texas, over the weekend. Bauer and Cole each struck out 15 batters in their respective starts on Friday night and Saturday evening.
The No. 12-ranked Bruins finished the weekend with three victories, pushing their overall record to 13-0, the team's best start in the modern era (dating to 1955). UCLA's 13-game winning streak is the program's longest since winning 13 straight at the end of the 1969 season (prior to the Bruins' first-ever trip to the College World Series).
Cole improved to 4-0, recording a career-high 15 strikeouts to lead the Bruins past Texas A&M Corpus Christi, 11-3, in the team's first game at Whataburger Field. He allowed two runs (one earned) and five hits through a season-high 7.2 innings.
Bauer struck out a career-high 15 batters in eight-plus innings, pushing his record to 3-0. He took a shutout into the ninth inning before Mississippi State struck for two runs. In UCLA's 5-2 victory over the Bulldogs, Bauer scattered three hits and issued just two walks. He improved his record to 9-0 as a starting pitcher for the Bruins (12-3 overall). He was named Pac-10 Pitcher of the Week for the first time this season and the fourth time in his young career.
While Cole and Bauer had amazing week, I think we should also recognize the efforts of Rob Rasmussen. The left picked up his first win this season thanks to a gritty performance against the powerhouse Sooners on Sunday afternoon.
These guys are going to be busy with finals this week. Their next game is not till Friday, March 19, when we go up against Oral Roberts for a three-game series at Jackie Robinson Stadium. Game time on Friday is 6 p.m. The Bruins and Golden Eagles square off at 2 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday.
If you live around Southern California, time to pack our home games. I think it would also be really cool if the Bruin Den can get the students energized to come out for these games in droves. We have something really special going on with these guys. Time for the entire Bruin Nation to get behind our team.
GO BRUINS.
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Good luck to the guys on their finals.
I certainly didn’t do as hot as I wanted to on the one this morning. Gotta say, finals are the one and only thing I won’t miss about UCLA when I graduate in June.
You guys need to pick classes ...
… that are not finals heavy. Papers were way to go. Unless of course you are in South Campus, then you are just out of luck.
That would work
However, we’ll take any classes we can get at the moment
by lil eg not cs on Mar 15, 2010 4:06 PM PDT up reply actions
I'll never forget
my 4-finals in 24 hours day. I had no choice, I HAD to take those classes. It was like a really bad joke.
Everyone should be allowed to do college twice…if they so choose…for free…
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
by tasser10 on Mar 15, 2010 7:48 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
How about two on a Thursday,
one on a Friday, and the LSAT on Saturday? That wasn’t as bad as yours, but it was pretty bad.
That, as youngsters would say,
is retarded.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
something I just don't understand
I know that there are 60-some-odd games in the season and no team ever goes undefeated. But at this point in the season, UCLA is one of only two undefeated teams in the top-25 (baseballamerica.com) and the other is Arizona St. We have a few very solid wins and have played, what has to be, a competitive schedule up to this point.
What makes several three-loss teams ranked ahead of two impressive undefeated teams at this point in the season? Have they all played much more difficult schedules and just lost to other top-10 teams? Or is there an east-coast bias going on here? I guess the only thing that we can do is keep winning. And luckily this isn’t the BCS.
Maybe Ryan or somebody else who follows baseball closely can clue me in. Just doesn’t make sense since we haven’t exactly played a cupcake nonconference schedule.
There are two things that go into it
1) Preseason rankings have a big impact on things, like they do in all sports. We all know it’s unfair in football and basketball and it’s no different in baseball. We need to be better than most teams to get the same ranking because we weren’t as high to start. By the end of the season, the entire body of work matters far more and the preseason rankings fade away, but this early in the year, they have a major effect.
2) While undefeated is nice and our start is incredible, college baseball is about winning series. A team like Florida won their midweek game and then took two of three over the weekend and stayed right where they were in most polls even though their weekend series was against a weak Charleston Southern team. It’s rare teams go into a weekend looking for a sweep. The goal is to win the series and that’s the expectation from observers. Undefeated for us is great, but it’s rare that teams drop after winning a series so it’s hard to find teams that we can move past.
For everything UCLA baseball, visit my UCLA baseball twitter.
by Ryan Rosenblatt on Mar 15, 2010 7:53 PM PDT up reply actions
thanks for clarifying!
The notion of winning a series instead of winning every game to go up in rankings makes a lot of sense, especially considering the post-season is structured the same way instead of every game being an elimination one.
At some point you have to give a team that is 13-0 its due especially when it gave a 14-1 Vanderbilt team its only loss against its ace pitcher and gave Oklahoma one of its only two losses. The schedule that UCLA has played is certainly comparable to that of the Texas Longhorns. The pitching stats for the two teams are comparable. Both have ERA around 2.00. But UCLA is hitting .355 and averaging 8.5 runs per game while Texas is hitting ,245 and averaging 4.4 runs per game.
Yet Baseball America has Texas #2 and UCLA #12 (and 15-0 ASU #10.). NCBWA has Texas 5 and UCLA 12. I hear what you are saying about the goal being to win a series, but if you go beyond winning a series and win all your games over a month’s time than I don’t have a problem with moving the undefeated team ahead of the team that is merely winning 2 out of 3.
Obviously many voters are reluctant to move the Bruins up when they did not have them as a top ten going into the season. I am surprised at how well this team is doing. I thought they would be the team that is hitting ,250 and winning games 4-2. However, they have exceeded expectations, and at some point you have to conclude it is not a fluke. Evidently that time has not occurred for Baseball America.
by Michael6636 on Mar 15, 2010 10:07 PM PDT up reply actions
I just said that was how it was, not how it should be
The reality is that March rankings are as useless as preseason rankings. It really doesn’t matter where we are now. It’s fun to look at, but that’s about it. I mean, in March, how do you balance how good you think a team will be and how good you think they will be?
If you just want to look at how teams have done, LSU isn’t even ranked because they’ve run up wins against crappy teams at home and when they got one decent opponent, they lost the series. Does anyone really think that LSU isn’t a top 25 team though? No way. It’s just hard to balance how good you think a team will be and how good they’ve proven to be this early in the year.
The big thing that I think is pushing ASU higher than us is that they’ve done it without Josh Spence so most assume they’ll be even better when he gets back. If you go just by what teams have done, we should be ahead of ASU because we’ve played away from home and have played as good, if not a better schedule. You do have to take the lack of Spence into account though and that the Sun Devils have more experience in pressure situations than us.
It’s all a balancing act and it’s nearly impossible to get that balance right in March.
For everything UCLA baseball, visit my UCLA baseball twitter.
by Ryan Rosenblatt on Mar 15, 2010 10:55 PM PDT up reply actions
I think Rye has something
If we win 2 out of 3 in our last series in Omaha, I think we’ll be OK.
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