By Sun evening Duck was on the menu in Starkville. The Diamond Dawgs not only won all three games in the series, for the sweep sweep of the season, they owned Oregon in everyone of the games. If not for the bullpen allowing 2 solo HRs in the 8th, not one of the games would have even been close. The Diamond Dawgs had 24 runs to Oregon's 9 for all three series. However, this isn't the time to anoint the Diamond Dawgs as the greatest team. Even with a great weekend series, we came out with things to fix and improve if we want to get back to Omaha. So what might you ask needs fixing if we beat the Ducks...Well the following things were bad and thankfully didn't bite us in the butt:

1. Base running was laughable in this series for the Diamond Dawgs. We had folks get thrown out because they got aggressive, went for more, and then chickened out. Half of the guys ignored the coach on third signaling them to stop. These running errors cost the Dawgs easily an additional 14 runs on the series. This is an easy fix and our guys have to be smarter.

2. Better hitting and plate discipline with the bases loaded. We had more than 6 instances in the series where we loaded the bases with no outs to 1 out and came away with not a single run outta the deal. In each of these, we had batters who chased junk balls that were no where near the strike zone and it cost us. Guys have to have better discipline at plate. Again an easy fix.

3. Our bullpen has got to step it up. In each of the games this series, our starters were great and the games were well in hand when they turned things over to the bullpen. Our bullpen surrendered 6 of the 9 runs Oregon got this weekend. The pen also surrendered these runs with 2 down in the inning. With the exception of Breaux & Humphries...no Tatum was great Fri and Ugh on Sun...the rest of our pen needs alot of work on location and pitch selection. Walks kill and our pen walked way too many Ducks this weekend and it hurt us some but it could have been much worse. The common theme for the walks problems with location and pitch selection. Our guys in the pen really need to find a change-up pitch and not depend solely on nibbling the corners. Nibbling is ok, but late in all three games Ore just stood there and let our guys nibble/fail and take a free base. I think part of this trying to get Ks over simply just getting the batter out. Who cares its a ground out, pop out, fly out or K...just get the outs. This is not an easy fix, but one that is vital...as you must have a great bullpen to get to Omaha.

Now, so everything doesn't think I am down on the Diamond Dawgs...as I am not. Yes it was a great series and victory. Yes, I am over the moon we swept the Ducks. However, I really want this team to get going and on a roll...which means you gotta fix things that were problems. Like our batting order...which got fixed and the line-up model we used this series was very effective.