Austin Wood's Performance Against BC

Hook 'Em Danno

Hook 'Em Danno

1,000+ Posts
Let me preface this post by stating that I'm in total awe of what Austin Wood accomplished last Saturday. Because of his performance, Austin has indeed made a place for himself in Longhorn history. That being said, I wonder what the lingering effects will be, if any, of his 169-pitch, 13 inning performance. There's been a lot of debate about it over the DFW airwaves, but I've not seen much discussion on this board (unless I just missed it). I'd like to hear from my fellow 'Horns on the topic.
 
When you consider that he'll have a full 7 days off before we ask him to pitch again, I think he'll be fine.

There have been several college pitchers this year go around 100-125 pitches ... 40 more will likely not hurt him.
 
the debate is tiring. this is by no means out of the ordinary. this isn't a first and there have certainly been other pitchers who have pitched more in a single game on more than one occassion in a season.

i'm not sure why some people are making it such a huge deal, especially these radio announcers. are they out of material? he wasn't forced into it, he'll get seven days of rest and hydration of minerals. the only discussion should be how much of a bad *** he is for doing what he did knowing that every time he pitched all it took was one swing to end the game since we were the away team. that is pressure.
 
If you don't count the 7th and 8th, Woodie threw 135 pitches with the game on the line EVERY PITCH. The only comfort was that of those 135:

-- Only 21 pitches were thrown with runners on base.

-- Only 5 pitches (2 at-bats) were thrown with runners on and less than 2 outs.

-- Only 4 pitches (one at-bat) were with RISP.

Final note: A loss on Saturday would've put Texas on the brink of elimination. It's no exaggeration to say that Woodie saved the season.
 
I think people are getting too caught up in the number of innings and not so much the actual pitch count. 13 innings is not as much as it sounds when you're averaging an insane 13 pitches per inning. Yes, 169 is a lot of pitches, but starters reguarly go 110+ when they're getting the job done. That's part of it as well ... a lot of these blowhards don't know that Austin has been a starter for most of his career and that he wasn't some closer who has been trained from day one to throw one or two innings max.

The rest of it, IMO, is that these people just don't know what the hell they are talking about. They spend their careers focusing on professional baseball, and that is the only perspective they care about. It doesn't matter that it took inconceivable amounts of mental toughness and intestinal fortitude to pull off what Austin Wood pulled off. It doesn't matter that you have to see the game as being bigger than yourself in order to do that. All that matters is that he might have hurt his professional prospects. If pro baseball had more players like Austin Wood who were literally willing to give their all for the team, MLB might regain a lot of the fans it has lost in recent years over these greedy, coddled, drugged-up, money-hungry jerks.

All of these writers and "experts" had holier-than-thou attitudes about college baseball from the get-go, and this is just one more talking point for them. The only time they lift a finger to cover the sport is when they see something to criticize. To hell with all of them.
 
Well why should anyone let Austin Wood have anything to say about this situation?

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I know I sat there cringing as Wood came out to pitch over and over. We all must have some worry about it. But it was his moment, it was brilliant, Augie is a coach who loves his players and would never hurt them for the game, and we will remember this forever.

And the people that hate Texas will hate us forever and use this as a club, who cares what they say?

We're Texas
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I'm not too sure about the 169, but what worries me is the 30 pitches the day before + the 169 = 199 pitches in 24(err, 28?) hours.

Time will tell, of course, and the thing in his favor is he was used to pitching on consecutive days.


I was racking my brain trying to think and for sure Swindell used to come back and close out a third game of a conference series after pitching a complete game on Friday night. So that would be 150 or so on Friday, + 20-30 on Saturday night. So it's in the same ballpark.



I wonder if it helps that he is left-handed?

Somebody who has a better memory than I do, did Gus do the same with Dressendorfer?
 
I don't need evidence for this. It's common sense. If that was aggy we were playing, and we were beat by an aggy pitcher throwing the same amount of pitches, this board would be bitching. Considering the dynamics involved, I don't realistically expect many to own up to this.
 
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