Are we the only team that loses people to the draft/injury ever year?
You are welcome to show me one that has ever lost 20 guys at once how we did. Just show me one period. Doesn't even have to be immediately successful.
Surely not. And if not, how do other teams handle it?
It's unprecedented.
If so, why does it happen to us?
We touched our voodoo doll in the wrong place, I guess.
Why are we always "rebuilding"?
We won the SEC last season and was a host and national seed.
How are Ole Miss and LSU always better than mediocre-bad?
No perfect storms there I guess.
The truth is -- you take away 7(now eight) arms -- and both of those teams would struggle about as bad as we are now. How do they not blow out arms? They don't hire Wes Johnson. That's the extreme error in all of this -- at least in how he perceived and used our program. Word is out about it in the baseball world as well. Talked to a couple scouts about it last week, who said he severely overworked guys during the season(not in pitch counts but in how they approached off days and conditioning) -- said specifically he tried to take a Dominican type approach where those guys throw a ton year round. Our guys weren't used to it for the most part -- threw a lot truly fatigued rather than just tired -- and the slough of injuries is the result of that. Basically pushing for fast results and the first train out of town rather than taking a controlled approach to building how he had done previously at DBU.
For the record, I think Cohen was a good coach. I don't blame Cohen for the arm problems. Nobody could have foreseen that.
I don't -- but I do. There had to be growing disconnect from the guys on the team to not see or hear the warning signs if it truly went down how the scout says it did. He hired him -- and everyone was pumped about the hire -- but it seems he gave him way too much leash without balancing it out. He gets at least some of the blame for all of those injuries since he made that hire and he didn't oversee the process well enough.
But to think Cohen shares no blame for the lack of offensive depth on this current team is a bizarre position to take. So your stance is essentially that he had no idea any of these draft eligible guys from last year were going pro?
Where did I say he shares no blame? I missed that part of the conversation. He got caught with his pants down in the ball change. MSU freaked out on him. He knew he had one year to fix it or face a scalding hot seat. He brought in a couple of elite JUCOs who lit the world on fire for one year. Surely he thought he'd get a couple of them back or they wouldn't be quite as good as they were -- and that the next crop of elite jucos could step into their place. Hell, we didn't know we were losing Kruger until way after the fact. None of the JUCOs are working out this year how Lowe and Kruger did last year. That's the difference in the lineup. And it's really not something you can evaluate in recruiting, lest they be just as good as those last two. The bright lights have to come on before you actually know on them. Which is why I hate going the JUCO route in the first place. Once you start -- you almost have to keep doing it. And cross your fingers that you keep getting lucky. You just add Kruger's bat to our lineup -- and this is an average or better offensive team. But, yes, he had consistently screwed up in high school hitter recruiting -- and misevaluated guys' intentions with the draft. Add any one of those elite HS guys we've lost late almost every year to this lineup -- and we're a whole different team. It doesn't excuse the fact -- but it's reality.
He was just blindsided and never had an opportunity to recruit accordingly?
Perfect storm indeed.
We have the talent on the hill to be one year away from competing for national titles again -- if it was all healthy and getting experience right now. The good news is that we aren't wasting another great pitching team on a poor hitting team like we did in 2012 and 2014. Those guys will all get redshirts and have leverage against the draft if they decide to use it. Of course, with our luck, most of them go just as they are getting healthy, and we never get anything out of them. I imagine Canni is going to have to have that talk with the guys with scholarships on the line, depending on their approach...
