Who's In & Who's out

 

Record 20-10

Conference 7-5 (2nd in Asun East)

RPI : 36

Quad 1 Record : 3-3

Quad 2 Record : 5-3

Liberty had struggled to a 6-9 record over it's past 15 games after coming out of the gate red hot.  A heavy hitting FGCU team made it's way to Lynchburg feeling pretty good after taking 2 of 3 from ASUN East leading Kennesaw State.  Liberty dominated the weekend series by a combined score of 27-8.  Liberty held the Eagles to fewer runs on the weekend than they average per game (credit to Matt Warner for digging that up).  The Flames got quality starting pitching in all 4 games this week and it got better with every start.  Horn went 5 1/3 with 9 K's on 102 pitches in the Friday night game.  Orndorff, Hillier & Mathieu paced the offense with 2 RBI each.  Carter, Fluharty & Beamon combined to allow just 1 unearned run the rest of the way. Saturday was the Dylan Cumming show as he went 8 strong for the longest outing of the season.  His ERA is down to 2.85 as he allowed just 1 earned run.  Erickson would pitch a clean 9th.  Offensively, Hillier added 3 more RBI and Orndorff & Betts added 2 each.  Joe Adametz tossed 7 innings of 1 run ball Sunday to guide the Flames to a win.  Erickson pitched 1 2/3 before existing with bases loaded.  Beamon would come in to get a tapper back to the mound for the final out.  Orndorff was right in the middle again with 2 more hits and 2 more RBI.  Hill hit a HR had 3 RBI.  Gray Betts had 3 hits from the leadoff spot.  FGCU hits homeruns with the best of them but Liberty limited to them mostly solo homeruns and kept the scoring down.  

Changing it up

Liberty reworked it's infield in an attempt to try get the best 9 hitters on the field but more importantly shore up the suddenly leaky defense on the infield.  Hill moved to short, Keeter to 2B and Foster to 3B.  Foster is definitely better at 3B than second and Keeter is better at 2B than Foster was defensively.  The wild card is can Hill play SS consistently.   Liberty won all 3 games so you don't mess with success.  If Hill can play adequate defense at short and Keeter can get on base at a decent clip this move should continue to play dividends.  

Trey Gibson started in the midweek game against another very good hitting team in UVA and delivered his best start of the year against UVA.  Logan Mathieu's bat has begun to heat us as he is up to .204 after dropping as low as .106 2 weeks ago.  Keeter is hitting just .219 but he's that versatile pest type of player that always find's his way in the mix of the action.  He's carved out a nice role on this year's team.  Ty Wilson also made his season debut against UVA 1 ER in 2 innings.  

On Deck: 

This week doesn't get any easier as the #21 VT Hokies will roll into Lynchburg.  Liberty played them in a fall scrimmage and won fairly handily in the 9 inning portion.  They are paced by Gavin Cross who is a top 25 national prospect for the upcoming draft.  It's another team that can flat out rake as they have a 1.044 OPS.  They are 40th in the RPI but just 4-5 in true road games but 13-2 in non conference games.  If you remember last year it was a little testy in the burg as the Hokies thought the Flames had their signs.  I have been a life long hokie hater so this one means more for me in any event.  Should be a fun matchup.  Baseball in the state has improved in a big way the last 5 years or so.  Gibson will get the start for the Flames looking to follow up the UVA start.  

Next up, Liberty heads to Kennesaw State for another crucial 3 game series vs the East leading Owls.  They have a 2 game lead on the Flames currently.  They are 21-9 overall and 11-2 at home and 10-2 in the conference slate.  They are sitting at 12th in the RPI at the moment and they are 2-2 in Quad 1 games.  Their best win is a slugfest 14-12 midweek split win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.  They also have a huge matchup with the Georgia Bulldogs Tuesday evening as well so both teams will be coming off big time P5 Top 25 games heading into the series.  KSU is another offense heavy team but they do have about 6 reliable arms that they ride pretty hard.  If the Flames can get into the bullpen early it could spell trouble for KSU as they only have 5 pitchers with an ERA under 4.91 and more than 10 innings of work.