The Clemson baseball team picked up a series win, defeating the Maine Black Bears to open the season. Here are the takeaways from opening weekend.
Clemson baseball took away a 2-1 series victory over the Maine Black Bears to open up the season. Let’s take a look at what happened this past weekend and some takeaways from the Tigers’ series win.
Game Results:
Game 1: Maine 4, Clemson 3.
Game 2: Clemson 9, Maine 4.
Game 3: Clemson 19, Maine 2.
Recap of the weekend:
It was a great weekend for Clemson baseball. The weather was great and there were solid crowds, for the most part, each of the three days. Now, I will say that on Saturday and Sunday, there were several empty seats, but for the most part, there seemed to be an energetic crowd in Doug Kingsmore Stadium to begin the season.
Several were disappointed after the Friday afternoon loss, but the Tigers just had a couple of mistakes that cost them the game. The pitching from Barnes and Eubanks was solid and the offense was lacking. Clemson baseball made up for the less than superb performance on Saturday by beating Maine 9-4.
The bats really came alive Saturday and we started to see more guys look confident in their positions, as well as in the lineup. Clate Schmidt pitched fairly solid and the Tigers came up with the victory.
Then came Sunday.
Sunday was complete domination. Clemson baseball won the game 19-2 and had a great pitching performance, as well as a great hitting performance. Freshman Jake Higginbotham had his first career start and pitched 5 innings, giving up two runs. The bullpen held the Black scoreless for the final four innings.
Clemson baseball scored 7 of their runs in the fifth inning, including freshman Seth Beer’s first career home run.
Takeaways:
Overall, it was a good weekend. You’d like to have Friday back, but the Tigers gave two solid performances Saturday and Sunday and came away with the series victory. Let’s take a look at the three key areas.
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- Pitching. I was pleasantly surprised by the pitching. The bullpen seems to have some solid arms and the starting was very good. They are not “elite aces,” but you have some good starting pitching that, when the season is in full swing, look like they can give you 5-6 innings of 2-run baseball. I love the fact that two of your weekend rotation guys are lefties. This will make it harder for offenses to pick up on the zone and will give the batters trouble at the plate.
- Defense. This an area that can still use improvement, but I was encouraged by what I saw. The Tigers seem to be more confident and are fielding the ball cleaner. There were a couple of instances that stick out when the ball took a weird hop or a guy did not field the ball cleanly, especially Friday with Eli White and Adam Renwick, but the total product looked a lot better. The outfield lost a couple of balls on Friday and Chase Pender slipped once on Saturday. Those types of things are going to happen, but I think there will be improvement with this team and they will fix those mistakes.
- Offense. Friday, offense was a hard thing to come by. The Tigers struggled at the plate as a unit, but Saturday and Sunday were different stories. Clemson baseball showed what they are capable of doing and I think we will see more of this this season. This team is very explosive offensively and will score a lot of runs before the year is over.
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I would say this was a good opening weekend for Clemson baseball. There are still plenty of things to improve, but the product looks better and the excitement is there. What’s your thoughts, Tiger fans? Comment below with your takeaways from opening weekend.