PFB+ Cowboy Baseball

I know that we are still a few months out from baseball starting, but OSU had a secret scrimmage with Vanderbilt in Kansas City a few weekends ago and hosted Arkansas for 14 innings before that. Are there any PFB writers that have any word on how we looked, specifically how some of the new arms fared? D1Baseball.com had a writer provide a few nuggets from Kansas City, but nothing substantial.

It wasn’t secret, as they were selling tickets and there has been some info come out. We played two 8-innings games against Vandy, losing the first 9-0 (Vandy has some serious arms) and winning the second 7-3.

Offensively, we have a nice mix of veterans (McCusker, Garcia, Morrill, Cabiness) and some talented newcomers. I don’t think we’ll hit nearly as many home runs as last season, but I also think we’ll be much better with small ball.

The mound will be super interesting. Parker Scott, Brett Standlee, and Ben Leeper are all back, but we add some really talented freshmen. Bryce Osmond and Kale Davis were both big time prospects and could easily be in the rotation.

From all accounts, this team has loads of potential. I see it being like most of Josh’s teams…ups and downs early, but really solid when Big 12 play hits. The guys at D1baseball think we’ll be right in the mix to win the conference.

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Don’t really follow ( or even know how to for that matter ) baseball recruiting. Is there a general consensus that we’ll see an uptick in high level recruiting with the new facility & recent success?

Yes, it’s already happening. We are coming off a wave of commitments in the last 4-5 weeks. Not just 2020 kids, but the 2021 class could be special. With the hiring of Marty Lees and Matt Holliday, along with the new stadium, we are really starting to pull in some quality talent.

Of course, the MLB draft can play havoc with any recruiting class, but I think we’ll start to see more top-notch talent choose Stillwater over the pros. The facilities, training, and tools these players will now have at their disposal will be second-to-none. Big bonus checks are great, but players are coming out of college so much more ready than even 5-10 years ago.

We’ve already seen some of this with the newest recruiting class. Bryce Osmond and Kale Davis were top 50-100 prospects, but let MLB teams know they were going to college, so their draft stock really fell. I think we only lost one or two recruits to the draft, which is fantastic for the level of talent we brought in.

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Would love to see a breakdown of the 2019 recruiting class. There is nothing out there!

The trickiest thing in baseball is recruiting guys who are really good but not too good that they’re ejecting after getting drafted in the second round out of Edmond Memorial or Bishop Kelly. Gundy would thrive as the baseball coach.

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I think there will be a significant change in hitting philosophy with the turn over in coaching. I think it will be for the better, honestly. I am all for the long ball, But they got really reliant on it too much over the past couple of years. I think you will see their Runs per game go up significantly in Big 12 play this year as a result of this different approach.

You think Gundy would have recruited Trace Ford to play baseball after watching him rack up 2 sacks and a forced fumble in a varsity football game?

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I had a chance to hear Josh Holliday speak at an event last night; he’s very articulate, easy to see how he can reach high school and college guys. I loved a few of the stories he told of how he recruits, basically he can tell within minutes looking at how these kids treat their mothers, how their teachers speak about them, etc. Really places an emphasis on character, personality fits, and attitude when he recruits.

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Josh is an all time dude. He receives a lot of flak at times, and it is often times warranted… but he truly is a great guy and a fantastic coach. At OSU we want to win, but we never want to be OU and having men and women like Josh Holliday around will keep us where we need to be.

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/dead

Anyone headed up to the first pitch banquet this weekend? Getting anxious for the season to start, still have a bad taste in my mouth from last years tech loss in the supers.

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Does anyone know when single game tickets go on sale? Would like to take my son out of school and make the half day trek back home to see opening day.

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From what I understand, all early-season games that are being held at Allie P. will be free to the public. Season-ticket holders will have a pass that allows them to sit in their seats from last year. They haven’t even done seat selection for O’Brate yet, so for games there, I’m guessing single-game tickets won’t be available until around early March.

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This thread got bumped again and it reminded me that I saw D1baseball.com put out their projected starting lineup for OSU. I thought we would see both Standlee and Scott still in the weekend rotation, but they had Scott, Bryce Osmond (stud freshman from Jenks), and Justin Campbell (freshman from Simi Valley, CA) slotted in. I guess they’ll move Standlee to maybe start in the midweek and bump Varela out of the rotation as a whole? I’m excited to see what Rob can do with all of the arms they have. I really like the quality depth we have.

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Last I knew they were looking at Standlee for relief/multi inning closes

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Don’t know if this already got posted, but D1Baseball has us picked 2nd in the Big 12 this year and #22 in the nation. They also have Bryce Osmond projected as the Freshman of the Year.

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I think I like that. He threw a ton of pitches early in games and was fairly successful. He just ran his pitch count up too quickly to go deep into games.

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I agree. He is a big arm and is plenty capable in a 3 inning type role. Think he would actually excel and would be very serviceable if one of the starters comes out flat to throw innings 2-5 or so.

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It would be nice if he could develop into a Vince Wheeland type where he would make spot starts and was the go-to guy in short relief/long-relief/1 batter/whatever situation was needed. I don’t think we have had a guy quite like that since Vince.

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