March 14, 2022

Liberty 12 - 2

Liberty split a weekend 2 game series with Campbell after the middle game on Saturday was cancelled due to extreme weather conditions.  A cold front brought snow early, extreme cold temperatures & heavy wind gusts all day.  On the field Campbell dominated Friday night behind 7 scoreless innings from Tommy Harrington and 2 loud dingers from Zach Neto.  There was a bevy of scouts on hand Friday to see the game.  Offensively, the Flames struggled all week other than a 1st inning solo shot from Aaron Anderson against UNC that won that game.  Harrington kept the Flames off balance all night & the Flames couldn't seem to get Neto out either. The Camels bats woke up and the Flames pitching had it's worst outing of the year Friday.  After being shut 7 to 0 Friday the Flames turned the calendar to Sunday to face Campbell's #2 start Kuehler who can run it up to 97 mph.  Sundays game looked like more of the same until the 4th and 5th innings when the Flames knocked Kuehler out and put up 5 runs between the 2 innings.  Were it not for a couple base running errors the Flames probably put up even more runs in the 5th.  Neto went 3 for 3 with another homer and 3 RBI's and wore the Flames out again on Sunday.  Fortunately, Liberty would contain the rest of the Camels lineup by utilizing a one look per pitcher approach.  Gibson & Alba would go 4 1/3 before going to the rest of the bullpen.  Fluharty finally gave up his first run of the year.  Horn allowed an unearned run before Scott Jackson gave the ball to freshman Jeremy Beamon who got his 2nd hold of the week in another high leverage spot in the 8th inning.  He's the type of guy that probably couldn't throw a ball straight if he had to.  That's bad for the 1st basemen on pickoff throughs but even worse for the hitter who is never able to predict where the ball is going to end up.  Beamon has a bright future with the Flames.  Hungate came on and got in a bit of a jam before getting out unscathed as the last our was on a somewhat controversial take out slide at 2b that was ruled interference.   In 2022 you can't kick the leg out period and the runner kicked it way out of the baseline.  All in all, it ended up a draw.  

Takeaways

Offense - Liberty has shown they can mash mediocre & slightly above average pitching all year.  Liberty will need to show better against the Barco's and Harrington's (elite) to get where they need to go.  Typically, once in a regional those are the type of arm's we will see.   That doesn't mean Liberty needs to put up 10 runs.  The Flames just need to stack quality AB's on top of each other and make thes elite guys work.  The Flames are still trying to lengthen the lineup.  Logan Mathieu the reigning ASUN HR leader is mirred in a brutal slump.  His average suffered last year but he still played excellent defense and smashed 15 home runs.  Lazzaro is so good defensively at such a key position that the staff will almost certainly ride with him through his offensive struggles.  I still think he comes around at some level.  The last week and half he's had some very good swings to the opposite field,.  Three Hillier is going to continue to find his way in the lineup one way or the other with the struggles offensively at 1B & LF.  You wonder if Cole Hurtzler may get a shot at some point if Mathieu continues to struggle.  

Pitching - The Flames got knocked around a little bit Friday night for the first time this year.  Sometimes you need to be tested a bit to get the very best performance.  Fluharty has been the most dominant pitcher on the staff this year.  I continue to be very impressed with Beamon.  This is the 3rd high leverage situation he has come in (Florida, UNC & Campbell) and done well at.  Hungate continues to get the job done.  He's put some traffic on the bases but has managed to wiggle out each time.  Love the bulldog approach.  I'll take a clean 9th sometimes though, just for the heart.  

By the numbers: 

12 - Warren Nolan RPI standing

11- game winning streak snapped Friday

38 - wins needed to reach the coveted 40 win mark

54 - Strength of schedule ranking

3 - All important quad 1 wins (3-1 record)

10 - homers from Derek Dingers who is now tied for the nations lead half way to the program record of Pat Sipe's 20 (Non D1).

14 - Ranking by D1 Baseball & NCAA

3 - top 25 wins

2 - remaining top 25 games left on the schedule (as of now, @ UVA @UNC

On Deck

Liberty will travel to Richmond to face VCU in the midweek Tuesday.  Liberty won 3 of 4 from Shawn Stiffler's VCU Rams last year.  VCU is 6 and 8 and #154 in Warren Nolan.  Throw the record out as they have played a really tough schedule that includes a close loss @ Wake Forest, 2 losses @ Ole Miss and 1 at Maryland.  Liberty will head down to North Florida to open up conference play this weekend.  NFU has struggled to a 6 and 11 record thus far.  The only common opponent so far was Florida.  The Gators beat NFU in a midweek matchup 3 to 1.  They did manage to sneak 1 of 3 against BC and they just won 2 of 3 from UCF this past weekend.  UCF is always a solid program so maybe NFU is turning the corner.  Either way, Liberty will need to win at least 3 of 4 this weekend to stay on the pace stay in the regional host hunt.