BASEBALL: Game 1 update file

Ole Miss basketball player Dwayne Curtis, the senior who transferred from Auburn, just threw out the first pitch. The game is under way.

Check the comments section for updates.

– PA

Baseball: a few lineup notes

Michael Guerrero is starting and is in the six hole as DH. He’s missed the last 15 games. … Jordan Henry is starting in RF and is leading off. Fuller Smith is batting second. … Sean Stuyverson is at short and is in the eight hole. He’s batting .237. … Zach Miller, in the seven hole, has dropped below .300 and is hitting .297. …

Auburn’s leading hitter is DH Hunter Morris. He’s in the three hole and is hitting .359. … Third baseman David Cunningham is hitting .364. He’s a redshirt freshman, a recent addition to the lineup who got a break when a former starter screwed up for disciplinary reasons. He’s got 88 at-bats to Morris’ 184. … Morris is playing with a bruised side he sustained April 22 against Samford.

Check back at 6:30 for the in-game blog.

– PA

FYI: Today’s agenda

Well, let’s try this agenda thing again.

The plan, anyway, calls for me to complete a tennis story advancing the Rebels’ NCAA regional with Indiana, Vanderbilt and Marist. I’m going to try and knock that out here shortly and then get on with the major business of the day — cutting and hauling three trees out of the backyard. I don’t own a chainsaw, so I didn’t get anything done on the tree-cutting front yesterday.

It appears there were no deaths from yesterday’s tornadoes, for which I am grateful. I don’t want to speak for homeowners in town, but I didn’t see any destroyed homes in the neighborhood here, less than a mile west of the airport, but there were several with heavy damage.

I’m going to have to bail out on the school picnic chaperone plan.

Cleanup continues today, and hopefully I’ll get a lot accomplished there before leaving this afternoon for a very important baseball series at Ole Miss. Important yes, but somehow it seems less important after yesterday. Still, the Rebels need to win this series against Auburn to solidify their postseason hopes.

I’ll have the in-game blog going tonight. Check in and leave a question or comment.

– PA

BASEBALL: Control vs. command

I’ve had it wrong all this time.

In trying to analyze the Cody Satterwhite situation I’ve made reference to control problems at times. Obviously control for a baseball pitcher deals with balls and strikes, walks and strikeouts. I’ve also used control to discuss a pitcher’s accuracy regarding where in the strike zone he attempts to throw a pitch.

Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco told us Wednesday that isn’t control. The word for that is command. If a guy can throw a fastball not only in the zone but can consistently throw it on the outside edge of the plate, that guy’s got command.

Bianco said Satterwhite was very good with most of his pitches at Georgia but lacked command on a handful. That small amount hurt in the end, because three of the seven hits he allowed were home runs.

Command was good most of the day, and Satterwhite averaged 95 miles an hour on 100 pitches. One of the things that happens when a guy throws 95 is that a batter who rarely hits for power can look good if he gets a clean swing, because the faster-pitched ball is going to jump off the bat. That happened twice in the Georgia game Sunday.

At times Satterwhite has had control problems.

Bianco sees that Satterwhite has limited his earned runs allowed and that he’s gotten very little run support. He remains firmly in Satterwhite’s corner and believes Satterwhite continues to be the best option to give his team a chance to win on Sundays.

Last year Bianco stayed with Scott Bittle and it paid off with some big innings late in the year.

As Bianco helped us with the control vs. command issue, we were able to help him with the plural tense for a third baseman.

– PA