Is Earley the hitting coach or is it somebody else? We seem like we make good contact but they're just line drives.

At this point do we even have a hitting coach?

Hitting, or the lack thereof, is the problem. Period. Teams fielding 950 commit errors on 5% of their fielding chances. They don't occur uniformly, sometimes in groups. Hitting needs to be good enough to help overcome errors. Depending on fielding 980 to win is a bad strategy, but would be a huge advantage. Our starting pitching is plenty good to win. And I respectfully disagree with what Lamkin said, pitching with a big lead is indeed a lot different than in a tie or close game. Bottom line is 2 runs won't win many games, 4 is not good either. Credit to the Alabama pitchers though.

To me this lack of offense is the biggest head scratcher this season. Our lineup card was all world and supposed to be 11-12 deep. Frankly that was the biggest reason for our preseason #1 ranking. If I were to guess from watching it appears that we've been doing home run derbies for batting practice all offseason. Lately we're hitting more for contact, but now it's weak singles that can't sting together runs.