DEL OLALEYE
The college football report: A cocktail party and trouble at Ohio State
Oct 24, 2018, 7:03 am
Things are getting rocky for Urban Meyer. Tom Pennington/Getty Images
The weekly college football report:
Florida vs Georgia means something again
We’re into Week 9 of the college football season and the path to the College Football Playoff has become much clearer for some teams and has been completely shut off for others. Unless you are in the SEC, losing from here on out pretty much means you’re done. Everyone is waiting for Alabama vs. LSU next week in Death Valley but another SEC matchup this week may be just as important to the national title picture. Florida vs. Georgia is once again part of the national conversation. I didn’t remember the last time these two teams had national title hopes at the same time so I had to look it up. It was 2008, both teams were ranked inside the top 10 and Urban Meyer was leading the Gator program at the time. Florida won the 2008 game 49-10 on their way to the program’s third national title. Dan Mullen was the offensive coordinator on that Florida team, which was why he was such a natural fit when Florida started looking for a new head coach after firing Jim McElwain.
Florida fans love offense thanks to Steve Spurrier’s successful run there and Mullen is expected light up the scoreboard eventually. For now the Gators are a defense-first football team. That defense gets its biggest test of the season against a Georgia squad trying to bounce back from a blowout loss at the hands of LSU. Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm was awful against LSU which makes sense because he has not been good in true road game starts against defenses who can minimize Georgia's rushing attack. Lucky for Fromm and Georgia this game is at a neutral site. Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs bounced back from a similar defeat at Auburn last year and almost won the national title. Their road back to the title game begins in Jacksonville this Saturday against the hated Gators.
Things are less than ideal in Columbus
Urban Meyer’s run in Gainesville ended with him losing control of the program and begging out due to illness. We’re not hearing the same kind of stories about Buckeyes players that we heard about Florida players, but the talk of his current health status sounds similar. Amazing what a blowout loss on the road at Purdue will do to get pundits talking. Former Buckeyes player and current ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit says Meyer isn’t the same on the sidelines. The Buckeyes head coach is apparently dealing with headaches and the tension between him and the Buckeyes administration hasn’t exactly subsided since Meyer’s three-game suspension ended for his part in the Zach Smith scandal.
I imagine Ohio State fans aren’t thrilled about getting blown out by a middling Big Ten team for the second year in a row either. Iowa took Ohio State’s soul last year too. Winning solves all ills though. Michigan comes to Columbus to end the year; potentially a top 5 Wolverines team. If Urban Meyer beats another Michigan team that has hopes for a national title like he did in 2016 all of this will be forgotten. Ohio State could very well be 11-1 with the win and on its way to the Big Ten title game. Nothing matters more in Columbus than winning. They’ve proven that time and again.
Hate Watch Game of the Week
It is pretty simple. Gators fans have dreams of winning the SEC. I want those dreams to end. Bulldogs by ruthlessness in the Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is the play. To be honest my hope is that the SEC cannibalizes itself and none of their teams make the College Football Playoff. This is just one step of many in a very unlikely dream of mine. I can dream, can’t I?
With overnight temperatures dipping into the 20s this week in Houston, it seems good timing to have the warm thoughts of baseball being back, at least spring training games. The Astros have more shakiness about their squad than they have had in nearly a decade, but the Astros still have a nucleus of an American League West contender. With the exits of Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, it’s just a notably different nucleus than in recent years.
Jose Altuve is the last remaining mainstay of the greatest era in Astros’ history, and he is one of the biggest stories of their preseason as he for the time being at least is left fielder Jose Altuve. By every indication he is embracing the challenge with class and energy. The obvious impetus for test driving the move is the soon-to-be 35 years old Altuve’s defensive deterioration. It can be tough for the player himself to notice that his range has declined. The voiding of defensive shifts after the 2022 season shined a brighter light on Altuve’s D decline. Still, last season Altuve made his ninth All-Star team and despite also displaying some offensive decline remained the clearly best offensive second baseman in the American League. It’s part of the tradeoff of reducing the defensive workload on Yordan Alvarez, and hoping to upgrade defensively at second with some combo of Mauricio Dubon, Brendan Rodgers, or other.
The natural comparison in Astros’ history of a franchise icon losing his defensive spot and making a late-career position change is to Craig Biggio. Biggio’s All-Star days were behind him when the Astros moved him from second base to center field for the 2003 season because of the signing of free agent Jeff Kent. It spoke to the athlete Biggio was that at 37 years old he could make the move at all. After not quite a season and a half in center, Biggio moved to left when the Astros traded for young stud center fielder Carlos Beltran. Both Kent and Beltran left in free agency after the 2004 season, and Biggio moved back to second for the final three seasons of his career.
Second basemen are often second basemen and not shortstops in part because of their throwing arms. Altuve’s throwing arm will be an issue in left field. Even though Daikin Park has the smallest square footage of fair territory in Major League Baseball because of its left to left-center field dimensions, Altuve’s arm will be a liability. In understandably wanting to put an optimistic spin on things, manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown have talked of how Altuve will be able to get momentum behind throws more so than when playing second. That’s true when camping under a fly ball in the outfield. That is not true when Altuve will have to cut off balls hit toward the left field line, or cutting across into the left-center field gap. There will be balls that would be singles when hit to other left fielders that will become doubles when Altuve has to play them, and baserunners will go from first to third and second to home much more readily. As an infielder Altuve has always been outstanding at running down pop-ups, so there is reason to believe he’ll be solid tracking fly balls in the outfield. However, the reality of a guy who is five feet six inches tall (in spikes) is that there will be the occasional fly ball or line drive that is beyond his grasp that more “normal” sized outfielders would grab. Try to name a good outfielder who stood shorter than five-foot-nine...
Here’s one: Hall of Famer Tim Raines (also originally a second baseman) was (and presumably still is!) five-foot-eight.
Here's another: Hall of Famer Hack Wilson was five-six. Four times he led the National League in home runs topped by a whopping 56 in 1930 when he set the still standing record of 191 runs batted in for a single season.
And another: Hall of Famer five-foot-four “Wee” Willie Keeler. Who last played in 1910.
Just a bit outside
Another element new to the Grapefruit League in Florida (and Cactus League in Arizona) this year is the limited use of what Major League Baseball is calling the Automated Ball Strike System. The ABS is likely coming to regular season games next year. This spring will be our first look at its use in big league games. Home plate umpires making ball and strike calls will not be going the way of the dinosaur. Challenges can be made until a team is wrong twice. Significantly, only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge and must do so within two seconds of the pitch being caught. No dugout input allowed. No time to watch a replay.
The Astros’ spring park in West Palm Beach is not among the 13 facilities set up with ABS cameras. That seems silly given that the Astros share the place with the Washington Nationals. More use would be gotten from, and more data collected there than will be from a park with half the spring games played in it.
The countdown to Opening Day is on. Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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