Sunday, May 31, 2009

Pitching notes

by Barca Blog - As expected, Caleb Cotham will take the mound for the Commodores against Middle Tennessee in an elimination game Sunday afternoon at Patterson Stadium.

Cotham, pitching with a torn meniscus, shined in his first start in three weeks last Saturday at the SEC Tournament. The redshirt sophomore allowed only one run on five hits with seven strikeouts in a seven-inning complete game against Arkansas.

No word yet on who VU would start if they advance to Sunday night's contest with Louisville (or Monday night for that matter). Corbin did suggest that it wouldn't be out of the question to use Mike Minor or Sonny Gray at some point in relief if the Commodores can keep winning.

"Guaranteed, Sonny and Minor are going to be asking for the ball again," Corbin said. "Common sense would tell you they won’t return, but it happened in 2007 with David Price. If you’re playing winner take all, you do whatever you can. Those guys are competitors. We’ll do what we have to do. I’m not going to run them out there for a long time, but we’ll wait until we get there."

Minor threw 134 pitches Friday while Gray registered 107 Saturday.

Also, Corbin explained why Gray was pulled after eight innings instead of leaving him on the hill to finish off a complete-game shutout against Indiana.

"It was more along the lines to get Taylor (Hill) some work because he hadn’t pitched in four weeks (May 5 vs. Belmont) and I really wanted to get him out there on the bump. Sonny had gone over 100 pitches. He could have finished it off and probably wanted to. In order for us to win this tournament, we’ll have to play five games, and using Taylor for one inning would not hurt us. He really needed the work if he’s going to help us down the road."

No comments:

Post a Comment