How can the Tulane Green Wave baseball team bounce back from a rough week?
It's been a rough week for the Tulane Green Wave on the diamond.
The Sluggerbirds dropped an American Conference weekend series to the Florida Atlantic Owls, only winning Sunday's final game to avoid being swept. They followed that outing up with a walk-off loss to the 18th-ranked Southern Miss Golden Eagles on Tuesday night.
When things are going well for Tulane, then the program actually looks pretty good. However, it's been hard for the program to find any consistency. Here's a look at what's been good, what's been bad and what's frankly uncertain for the Green Wave over the past few days.
The Good: J.D. Rodriguez continues to shove for the program.
Out of the entirety of Tulane's pitching staff, Rodriguez has had the strongest all-around performance so far this year. The senior is a perfect 5-0 on the year and has demonstrated the ability to be both a strong weekend starter and a pivotal bullpen player. He boasts a solid earned run average of 3.53 and has tied the team-high with 43.1 innings pitched on the year, with 45 strikeouts to 23 batters walked.
The Bad: Outside of Rodriguez, the pitching staff is shaky.
The Green Wave has had just one good outing from Friday night starter Trey Cehajic in league play, and Saturdays have largely been a wash on the mound. The bullpen is one of the weakest in the league, and aside from Sam Larson, Jack Brafa and a few key innings here and there from a few other players, the team hasn't found a completely trustworthy arm just yet. Everyone has shown flashes of being great, but nobody has been able to put it together for an extended period of time. That's not good, considering the fact that the postseason is less than a month away.
The Uncertain: Which batter will step up for the Sluggerbirds?
Jason Wachs is the only everyday starter batting over .300 for the Green Wave: his .340 average is just under 60 points higher than the next-closest player. However, he's slowing down just a bit from his mid-season hot streak.
Tye Wood, Matthias Haas and Trent Liolios have been the latest players to step up for the program, but with their successes, other student-athletes who started the year on the right foot are starting to slip. There are far too many inconsistencies up and down the batting order, and if there's ever a time to get hot, it's right now. The Green Wave can't afford to drop many more contests if it wants a shot at solid seeding in the American Conference Tournament, and with how much pitching has struggled, the bats might have to carry the load.