Yup. Uphill battle now. Pitching wasn't good, offense was worse. We still have nothing even close to a 4th starter and basically have to punt the 4th game of every weekend. Peterson and Kasperbauer were about it for the offense.
I think moving to a 4 game series was a huge mistake. I'm sure it boils down to $ but I don't see head coaches hopping on board with this format.
If you look at it as your top 3 pitchers are your Friday,Sat,Sun guys (typically the case, at least in my time in the program), that 4th spot is typically your top arm out of the bullpen.
Now pitching coaches need to make a cost/benefit decision to go with a Johnny Wholestaff approach to game 4 or start your top bullpen arm in game 4 and not have a stopper for the first 3 games. Surely you can play around and figure out a modified staff but at some point pitchers that normally would only throw during midweek games (b/c of the 4 game series, hardly have any midweeks) are now called upon in critical conference play situations.
Not ideal for MAC programs and likely leads to ugly baseball.