SEC Baseball Tournament Around The Corner
- Max Pinto
- Apr 24, 2019
- 4 min read
With the SEC baseball tournament right around the corner, things are starting to heat up. Conference play is at a full go right now, and the standings are starting to get wild. Baseball this year has been great in the SEC, and some teams are leading the pack that have not done so in many years. Today I am going to talk about the standings and who are the hot teams to win the tournament, which teams are struggling this year and might be in trouble, and which two teams will not qualify for the conference tournament.
The Georgia Bulldogs are at the top of the SEC East right now and have been dominant all year long. They are a team that shows that pitching and defense win baseball games. The Bulldogs pitching has been unreal this year especially the starting pitching. Starting pitchers Emerson Hancock and Tim Elliot have been amazing this year, and nobody has been able to figure them out. This year Hancock has an ERA of 1.04 and has 77 strikeouts. He already has seven wins as a starting pitcher and still has a couple more starts before the tournament comes around. Elliot has also been an excellent starter for them this year with a 1.52 ERA and 50 strikeouts. It is not every year you see two starting pitchers for the same team put out these types of numbers, and that is why the Bulldogs are so dangerous this year. It is not just there starting pitching that has been great this year, as a team there pitching staff has a 2.57 ERA and 414 strikeouts. The Bulldogs will make the SEC tournament and are one of the top teams set to win it because of their dominant pitching.
The Vanderbilt Commodores are currently second in the SEC East and are a very good team this year. I had the opportunity to play them this year, and they are one of the best all around teams I have ever seen. The Commodores offense has really stood out this year. Junior outfielder JJ Bleday has been on fire this year with a batting average of 363 with 20 homers. Sophomore Austin Martin has also been a hitting machine this year with a batting average of 400 and a team-leading 58 hits. As a team, they have a batting average over 300 which shows that they are an outstanding offensive team. It is teams like Vanderbilt that scare Georgia because if one of the Georgia pitchers is having a bad day, the Vanderbilt hitters will take advantage. Last year in the SEC tournament the Commodores lost to Texas A&M in the first round. Since they got embarrassed in the tournament last year, they will be coming into this year's tournament with a chip on their shoulder, and that will help them play even better.
One team everyone is shocked that is struggling is the Florida Gators. The Gators are known for always winning especially in 2017 when they won the national championship. The Gators have only won 7 conference games this year. The problem is that the Gators have four freshmen in the starting lineup. At the beginning of the season in an interview with Kyle Wood coach O'Sullivan said “We’re young, but we’re talented,” O’Sullivan said. “There’s gonna be a learning curve and they’re gonna have to learn from some mistakes early on, but I fully expect that if we stay healthy and we could progress like we normally do, we got a chance to be a pretty good team at the end of the year”(Wood). As much as coach O'Sullivan wished that was true, it has not been the case this year. They do not look like how they usually do and are currently 5th in the SEC East. Since they are so young, it is going to be interesting to see if the freshmen can step up and help them win an SEC tournament championship.
Since only 12 of the 14 teams make the tournament, it is always fun to see who does not make it in. Right now the two teams at the bottom of the conference are Kentucky and Alabama. Both teams have not been able to figure it out this year in the conference and out of the conference. Alabama has only been able to win one SEC weekend series, and it was against South Carolina who has also been struggling. They have a team batting average of just 262 and only two hitters with a batting average over 300. They will have to step their game up if they want to make the tournament because they have a tough SEC West schedule coming up. Kentucky baseball has only been able to win one conference weekend series as well, and they have been swept three times this year. They just finished making a huge new stadium last year with very high expectations and this season has been a huge disappointment. It will not be a surprise if Alabama and Kentucky are the two teams to not make it this year.
Sources: SEC baseball standings
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