Most of Tulane fandom is focused on Tuesday’s basketball game against USC and the progress of Spring football leading up to next season. Interest in our mid-week baseball games at USM and home against Northwestern State is approaching an all-time low. Yet, we have now played 28 of our 56-game regular season schedule, exactly half way. It might be time to see where we stand.
At 17-11, we’re not where we need to be to compete for an at-large NCAA berth. Our remaining schedule is tougher than what we’ve seen so far, and we’ll be playing a higher proportion of away games to boot. If we were able to go 17-11 the rest of the way, we’d be at 34 wins, not close to realistic consideration. To reach 40 wins, which most people don’t think would do it, we need to go 23-5 over the last half of the year. Even our most optimistic fans question that as a possibility.
Currently, Warren Nolan predicts us ending up at 35-21 (18-10 the rest of the way) and an RPI of 126. I don’t put a lot of faith in those predictions at this time, but it is what it is. So, what’s the problem? Well, to put it succinctly, it’s pitching, hitting, defense, and coaching.
On the mound, our best two starters, Fladda, and Cehajic, have ERA’s of 5.54 and 4.28 respectively. They’ve averaged 5.3 innings and 4.5 innings per start each. In the fifteen games started by others, they’ve averaged 2.1 innings per start with an ERA of 6.68. Our best two haven’t been good and our remaining options have been very bad.
In the bullpen, Lombardi and Montiel have allowed 2 earned runs in 31.1 innings (0.57 ERA). That’s beyond good; that’s great! Beyond them, however, our relievers have a combined ERA of 5.97, truly bad. Can all of these things improve? Of course, but, as the weather warms, hitting tends to improve. And the tougher schedule and increase in the number of away games makes major improvements unlikely.
On the hitting side, we’re batting .258 with 22 HR’s. Of course, the same issues affecting pitching will affect hitting. Warmer weather helps, but away games and better competition may negate that advantage. Our current batting average is our 2nd worst over the last 10 Years. Only 2023 was worse. And, if we were to double our current home run total, 44 would only be more than the Covid-shortened 2020 year and the 2021 season over the last ten years. Last season we hit 91 HR’s to give a recent comparison. Despite some claims to the contrary, we are not getting better.
Fielding and defense are also a problem. I’ve mentioned our low fielding percentage before—currently .967, but our inability to make standard plays, the misjudged fly balls, and the inaccurate outfield throws all contribute to overall defense even if not considered in fielding percentage. I simply don’t have the data or, frankly, the ability to compute the more objective statistics, such as total fielding runs above/below average, defensive runs allowed, or defensive range as compared to others, to better rate our defense. But, subjectively, most unbiased observers probably come to the same conclusion: our defense is not very good.
Finally, our coaching. Some people defend our coaching at every turn. That’s fine. Rating a coach is very subjective and people can cite different facts and statistics to support their position. Personally, I’ve met Coach Uhlman, though briefly, and like him as a person. He also probably knows more about baseball and this team than me or almost any one of our fans. It’s his job. And, he may even be the best coach we can hire or afford. I certainly hope not. To be candid, I never thought he should have been hired in the first place. Hiring the right-hand man of a failed head coach, who was at least partially responsible for those results, made no sense to me. But, hire him we did. Like almost all Tulane fans, I wished him well and hoped he would be the one to return Tulane to the “glory days” of Retiff, Brockhoff, and Jones. It hasn’t happened through three years but, given his contract extension, he has still more time to step up to the challenge. Since he’s evidently going nowhere, I hope he does.
To date, Coach Uhlman has a 75 and 83 record, the worst overall record since Doug Hafner, over 60 years ago. Even Travis Jewett (130-116) had a better record. The last two years, our conference has declined and our out-of-conference schedule has been a joke. NIL and our school’s high cost are clearly issues for any Tulane baseball coach and, again, maybe this is the best we can do. But, for me, it isn’t enough. We’ve won the conference tournament the past two years after coming up well short during the regular season. That tells me that our kids have the potential. Heck, instead of one of the weakest schedules in the country, we could have the toughest schedule and still have a shot at a regional by winning the tournament. Why aim so low? But my major complaint with our coaching is the lack of improvement from our players. Some guys come in and play well and then “peter out” in succeeding years. Why is that? We’ve shown that we can play better (see the conference tournaments) but we don’t do so consistently. I think our players are better than they are performing. To me, that’s on coaching. They are not getting the most out of our players. The intangibles of defense and base running that we don’t seem to have is also on the coaches in my view. And, as I’ve tried to show above, I don’t think we’re improving year over year. Pitching, hitting, and defense don’t seem to be getting better. That, too, is on coaching.
Of course, we have 28 regular season games and the conference tournament to go. Hopefully, we can surprise once again in the tourney, because an at-large berth is virtually gone.
Roll Wave!!!
