Let's have a respectful conversation about baseball

[Shamoan]

And not turn this into a name-calling contest or pissing match. Let me preface this by saying this has nothing to do with losing to a talented vandy squad, rather a prompt to discuss solutions to our problems.

What are we doing wrong with our baseball program? Cann turned our product into chicken salad last season but the writing is on the wall that repeating that feat would be beyond his grasp this season...assuming he hadn't been caught doing whatever/whoever. why can programs in our conference (non-lottery state teams at that) maintain success while we struggle with dark valleys that require rebuilds every few years? Our programs inability to avoid the 2-3 year rebuilds is really killing our prospects to build. And I'm talking big picture here....beyond Cann and his tomfoolery. i look around this conference and see teams out-working us on the recruiting trail (pre Cann) and us generally making poor personnel decisions...not directed at any player. Even you rah-rah "msu never does anything wrong" guys have to be frustrated. Why can't we constantly be good and occasionally great?

Maybe it was a cohen problem, but what can we do to get out of this funk and stay out?

 

[BossDawg78]

Someone on here said the other day that we have basically been without a head coach for several seasons. That's the main problem, IMO - no consistency. Not to mention that while Cohen was head coach, either he simply couldn't recruit all that well or he had his mind on other things, because it's obvious the team has some pretty big holes.

We've got to hire and keep a head coach who doesn't run off for another job after a year or two, can keep his goober in his pants and can RECRUIT like a wild man.

 

[MM4MSU]

I truly believe the new stadium will be a great selling point to recruits, and of course John HAS to get it right as for as new coach. I think he will. As far as what has gone wrong (other than the Can snafu), we seem to lose more signees to MLB than what many elite programs do. In addition some of those programs, esp LSU, seem to actually have great players return for senior year. Obviously we can't count on that happening, but we have missed offering some really good players in recent years because we signed players who never made it to campus. Hard to fault that, but some coaches at other schools seem to retain those types. I'll get a look in person today as I plan to attend at least part of our baseball game before heading to The Hump for women's basketball NCAA play. Again, I think better times are ahead, and hopefully this season may get better.

Michael Muse
(MSU '73)

 

[BossDawg78]

we seem to lose more signees to MLB than what many elite programs do. In addition some of those programs, esp LSU, seem to actually have great players return for senior year.

This is one thing I certainly don't understand. It does SEEM like we lose a lot of players to the draft more often than other teams.

 

[tatedog]

We have a lost decade to make up for (Polk II and his sabotaging of the program after that I think often gets overlooked). I think our trip to the national finals in 2013 had a tinge of fool's gold to it--not that in the team didn't deserve to be there, but in that we thought we had made it "back" as a program. We haven't. I was guilty of this.

You can't just skip a decade of baseball in a conference as competitive as the SEC and not fall behind. And then the problems since 2013, including a young AD hiring a young unproven coach for a job that he wasn't mature enough to handle.

There aren't any easy answers at this point.

eta: After reading my post and reflecting, it probably comes off as way more negative than I intended. I'm bullish on both the short (beyond this season) and long term prospects for the program. The stadium has a huge part to play here, as does the fact that I 100% believe Cohen is going to make a great hire.

Overstated a tad in the Op's remarks is the ability of rival SEC programs to go on "auto build." Outside of the Bertman years in BR and the Tanner years at SC, most other SEC programs (including those two sans the named coaches) have had huge dips or rebuilds. Some have been longer and deeper. I'll use us and Ole Miss as a comparison. Even though college baseball basically started there in 2000 and really took off under Bianco, through their glory years our ceiling has remained higher despite it being a relative valley for us. Since 2000 we have multiple SEC tournament titles, an SEC regular season title, multiple appearances in Omaha, including a finals appearance. Off the top of my head I think we either have slightly more or the same number of SR appearances. Bianco is their Mullen... he is pretty consistent, the winningest guy they've had, but will never get past a certain point there. I'm not even going to address Vanderbilt because that is a once in the lifetime of a program coach with some unreal built in advantages.

Understated in my original remarks is also the unbelievable bad luck we have had in the last 20 years. I mentioned it, but seriously how many programs have had to battle through a former legendary coach attempting to sabotage the incoming regime? We also had the rug pulled out from under us with the SEC going away from the Saturday/Sunday weekend format, which negated much of our disadvantage in travel. More recently the carousel with pitching coaches (and head coaches) and injuries has been rough. I was probably too rough on Cohen's hire of Cannizaro as well. I'm not sure it would have been any "smarter" to pass on a guy with his potential simply because he might do something dumb, which lo and behold he did. For reference, Mike Price was ancient when he made an even dumber blunder at Bama.

 

[BulldogBlitz]

Are these the kind of posts the basketball trash talker has when drunk?

 

[jdbulldog]

And not turn this into a name-calling contest or pissing match. Let me preface this by saying this has nothing to do with losing to a talented vandy squad, rather a prompt to discuss solutions to our problems.

What are we doing wrong with our baseball program? Cann turned our product into chicken salad last season but the writing is on the wall that repeating that feat would be beyond his grasp this season...assuming he hadn't been caught doing whatever/whoever. why can programs in our conference (non-lottery state teams at that) maintain success while we struggle with dark valleys that require rebuilds every few years? Our programs inability to avoid the 2-3 year rebuilds is really killing our prospects to build. And I'm talking big picture here....beyond Cann and his tomfoolery. i look around this conference and see teams out-working us on the recruiting trail (pre Cann) and us generally making poor personnel decisions...not directed at any player. Even you rah-rah "msu never does anything wrong" guys have to be frustrated. Why can't we constantly be good and occasionally great?

Maybe it was a cohen problem, but what can we do to get out of this funk and stay out?

Hit the ball more often than we do, field the routine plays, and have some luck with batted balls finding holes....that would be a nice start.

 

[MSUDC11]

I think the biggest problem right now is Cohen’s last few signing classes have not produced on the field to the degree that they were expected to, aside from guys like Pilkington and Mangum, and JUCO guys like Lowe and Kruger who were only here for a year.

 

[tatedog]

Hit the ball more often than we do, field the routine plays, and have some luck with batted balls finding holes....that would be a nice start.

You are asking for an awful lot.**

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

If we’re talking this season, it’s about missing on several key guys to the draft and not having returning players make jumps. To fix that, we have to have stability within the coaching staff- particularly at head coach. Since the end of the 2015 season, we have lost:

Butch Thompson to coach at Auburn
Nick Mingione to coach at UK
Wes Johnson to Arkansas
Cohen to AD
Coggin to be replaced by Cann’s buddy
Cann to an affair that was impacting his work performance
And this offseason we will undergo another total overhaul

That’s a ton of change in coaching over a two and a half year period- particularly in college baseball, where people don’t move around as much and all your recruiting is done years in advance. Luckily we do still have really good classes lined up for the foreseeable future. Losing coaches to SEC head coaching jobs is one thing, but we’ve had a lot of other unexpected bumps along the way. We need the next coach to be a really good hire, bring in a staff, and stay here for 10+ years. We need stability and that’s why Cohen is going after experienced head coaches.

Industry experts like our chances to get a name like Mcdonnell or Schlossnagle. I would obviously love that but a big part of me is going to need to see it to believe it...

 

[8dog]

Nothing is wrong with our program. This has been a perfect storm of instability, injuries and just a horrible class of 2016. We dont lose anymore players to the draft than anyone else. And the seniors coming back thing was really just LSU last year with a few guys. The really good programs dont have seniors with any regularity

we just need stability. We will be fine.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

Nothing is wrong with our program. This has been a perfect storm of instability, injuries and just a horrible class of 2016. We dont lose anymore players to the draft than anyone else. And the seniors coming back thing was really just LSU last year with a few guys. The really good programs dont have seniors with any regularity

we just need stability. We will be fine.

Yep, we are seeing some short term problems rear their heads due to lack of stability in coaching, combined with injuries, and players not making their expected jumps. We still have a really talented young nucleus of players and elite classes lined up behind them. Cohen just needs to make the right hire, and the next coach and his staff need to (for the most part) stay here for a decade.

 

[bruiser.sixpack]

I think you are in to something with the need for a long term coach and continuity. But, and not to turn this in to a negative post about Starkville, look at the programs that have caught up and even passed MSU in support, facilities(until $55 million was spent), and, yes, location.

Fayetteville has a large population base, growing industrially, Walmart, and a long term coach with no aspirations to be in Administration.

Ditto for Baton Rouge, Bryan/College Station, Columbia, Gainesville, and even Vandy and UK are in large metropolitan areas.

All those Head Coaches are satisfied being just that. I feel confident that when John Cohen was hired to be our Head Coach, the intent was for him to re-build the program and be the Head Coach for 20-25 years. He had other plans. I know he loves MSU and particularly Baseball.

But he has an enormous job of finding that guy who will want to build the program and be here 20-25 years. I feel confident that while many of you prefer we hire a well established Head Coach, John is looking for a talented guy closer to the Beginning of his career rather than the end of it. Guys that have no emotional ties to where they are other than to their players.

If these Branded name guys are young enough (35-45), then he likely will reach out to them. But if they are successful where they are, having built something, regardless of facilities and fan support, they are going to be hard to pry away.

Just because we have a brand spanking new stadium, will not be enough to get some of these guys y’all want.

I was at a Series when UCLA came to town many years ago and actually heard UCLA players say if they had known about “This Atmosphere”, they would have gladly come to State to play ball. Now, UCLA has success on the field, and winning NC is more important than playing in front of 4000 outfield fans and 3000 empty chair back seats to those types of players.

Not only do LSU and Arkansas sell our, they fill it up.

Florida and A&M and USCe May have much smaller stadiums but they are usually well attended. Even the lowly Rebs are outdrawing us.

Something has changed toward attending games at State. Find the answer to that while we are trying to find a long term coach.

 

[bulldogcountry1]

I'll agree that the MLB draft doesn't really affect us any more than most teams. The problem is that the best teams replace those recruiting losses with guys who were still drafted. We have to fill our class with jucos, and that's only worked out for us a handful of times since Cohen got the job.

Like others have said, we just need stability. I think basically all of the "bad luck" we have had the last few seasons can be traced back to instability, whether that is a change is coaching philosophy, a change in coaches, or a change in discipline. We need a staff to come in, right the ship, and stay on the same course for years.

 

[PreacherDog]

Lost Decade?

We have a lost decade to make up for (Polk II and his sabotaging of the program after that I think often gets overlooked). I think our trip to the national finals in 2013 had a tinge of fool's gold to it--not that in the team didn't deserve to be there, but in that we thought we had made it "back" as a program. We haven't. I was guilty of this.

You can't just skip a decade of baseball in a conference as competitive as the SEC and not fall behind. And then the problems since 2013, including a young AD hiring a young unproven coach for a job that he wasn't mature enough to handle./QUOTE]

I understand how people are still mad at the way Polk acted on his way out but good grief. His second stint wasnt all bad. We went to CWS in 2007. Now 2008, was not good and Polks behavior was childish when he wanted to namehis succesor. But it is revisionist history to call it a lost decade. Were there a lot of top draft picks? No. But it wasnt a lost decade. We went to 5 regionals in 7 years. Won as many SEC Tournament championships and went to as many CWS as Cohen did. He had a better winning % than Cohen did during his second stint. Credit Cohen had a major rebuild because some of Polk's guys left early.
One area Cohen did better was postseason. Which is big. But we still came up short just like all the other years.
Thing is when will people stop acting like babies about Ron Polk. The dude is our best baseball coach ever. And its not really close. We have been to Omaha 9 times and Polk was coach 7 of those. 4 50 win seasons with Polk coaching 3. Did he sabotage the program? Thats not really true. He acted a fool but there were some decent players here when he left.
It took Cohen a couple years to recruit his own guys and we had growing pains with young pitchers (Routt, Stratton, Graveman, Girodo - 3 of which have made it to the bigs). Personally didnt think Girodo would amount to much after his freshman year. Cohen did a full rebuild then and 2013 was the result of that hard work he and his staff put in. It wasnt fools gold. We lost a ton of production that year (3 major leaguers - Graveman, Renfroe, and Frazier).
Just wish people would stop complaining about Polk already.

 

[57stratdawg]

I was thinking about it last night, I think this is the worse offensive lineup I’ve ever seen at MSU.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

I think the biggest problem right now is Cohen’s last few signing classes have not produced on the field to the degree that they were expected to, aside from guys like Pilkington and Mangum, and JUCO guys like Lowe and Kruger who were only here for a year.

^^^^^This^^^^^ we just are not that talented...and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

 

[ronpolk]

I think you’re not paying enough attention to other programs. Arkansas missed the tournament in 2016 (with a terrible year), ole miss missed it in 2011 and 2017, Alabama has not been to the tournament since 2014, auburn has been twice since 2010, A&M has not missed the tournament recently. However, we have had similar success over recent years. Since SR started A&M have gone to 8 to our 7 and gone to 3 CWS to our 2. South Carolina missed the tournament in 2015 and 2017, Kentucky has only made the tournament 3 times since 2010, Georgia has not made the tournament since 2011, Missouri since 2012.

That leaves Florida, LSU and Vanderbilt has having more consistent success than us. Even with all the regular season success, since Corbin has been at vandy they have only been to 1 more cws than us.

Florida and LSU seem to go to Omaha every year though.

My point is, all but 3 teams have dips. Since cohen’s 3rd year in 2011, we have only missed the tournament once (2015 - looks like we will miss it this year) and we have gone to 4 SR and a conference championship. Except for 1 year in 2015, since 2011 we have been solid.

 

[engie]

Let’s see. Since the first post-Polk spark of life. 7 seasons.
- 6 ncaa tourneys
- 2 hosts
- hosted super
- 4 regional championships
- cws final
- won conference outright
- won conference tournament

We had a great coach 17 us. There will be a little transition here. It will be ok. We are growing around a number in the coaching search college baseball has never seen. And never been close to. We are basically going to name our guy....

 

[engie]

I was thinking about it last night, I think this is the worse offensive lineup I’ve ever seen at MSU.

Thou remembereth not 2012

 

[57stratdawg]

We were bad then, but this year is worse to me. Entering last night, we were (SEC rank):

13 - Average
14 - Scoring
14 - Hits
13 - Doubles
14 - HRs
14 - Slugging
14 - On Base %
12 - Stolen Bases

We don’t hit, hit hard, get on base or steal bases. I can’t imagine it being worse.

 

[Xenomorph]

The only one hitting it was Cann.

 

[mcdawg22]

0-30 calling it.

 

[tcdog70]

You can't have 3 hitters in row below the Mendoza Line. Especially,when your other hitters are Punch and Judy type slap hitters. Only way we will win any games is to start running when we get on base. Hit and run and straight steals. Move Stovall to catcher. Put Allen at second. I think Vansau will start to hit.

 

[JoMo MoJo]

It’s player development. Plain and simple. It’s been Evident over the last few seasons under Cohen and apparently with Cann as well. We may get highly touted players but it seems they don’t progress much. Evan Mitchell would be my Exhibit A. Every time I complained about him I was met with the barrage of ******** about what an awesome player he is. As a pitcher, Evan had to be responsible for more runs by walk than any pitcher in college baseball history. It doesn’t matter if he has a 120mph fastball. Dude couldn’t find the strike zone with a map, a gps and a Sherpa guide. And he never got any better. As a matter of fact he got worse every time he made it to the mound.

 

[philduckworth]

Agree, this year is just the convergence of several factors. You could see this storm brewing a couple of years ago. A great coach and 2 good recruiting classes will put us right back at the top. I do feel like this is a 2 year rebuild though. I hope we hire an innovative offensive mind, maybe even a guy around 40, cough cough, Dan Heefner. We can find a good pitching coach.

 

[engie]

Player development in baseball happens in the summer. Our coaches do not get the time with them to do any major tweaking.

This has been a little anomalous because we had upperclassmen that had really good summers that haven’t done anything at all this season so far.

The pitching is going to improve as this year goes on just over the normal Tommy John cycle

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

I truly believe the new stadium will be a great selling point to recruits, and of course John HAS to get it right as for as new coach. I think he will. As far as what has gone wrong (other than the Can snafu), we seem to lose more signees to MLB than what many elite programs do. In addition some of those programs, esp LSU, seem to actually have great players return for senior year. Obviously we can't count on that happening, but we have missed offering some really good players in recent years because we signed players who never made it to campus. Hard to fault that, but some coaches at other schools seem to retain those types. I'll get a look in person today as I plan to attend at least part of our baseball game before heading to The Hump for women's basketball NCAA play. Again, I think better times are ahead, and hopefully this season may get better.

Michael Muse
(MSU '73)

Hey MM! Long time no see dude. You made some great points. I am hoping we can make a hire at head coach that will make the difference because like you, I think the new digs will make a big difference.

We need Cohen to find and hire the Vic Schafer of baseball.

 

[HammerOfTheDogs]

No.

Does anyone on that team know how to hit a ******* baseball? They were batting .450 in high school, hitting over .300 in summer league. Now they look like a bunch of ******* Challenger leaguers.

 

[Joe Schmedlap]

Go after Florida’s coach. Everyone here seems to hate the guy, but he can damn sure recruit and coach. Upgrade our program and stick it to Strickin. Leave that Cannizaro humping ***** in Gainesville though.

 

[thekimmer]

Go after Florida’s coach. Everyone here seems to hate the guy, but he can damn sure recruit and coach. Upgrade our program and stick it to Strickin. Leave that Cannizaro humping ***** in Gainesville though.

No way. He would be about #20 on my list not that he'd come anyway. Plus it really isn't hard to recruit in florida.

 

[tatedog]

We have a lost decade to make up for (Polk II and his sabotaging of the program after that I think often gets overlooked). I think our trip to the national finals in 2013 had a tinge of fool's gold to it--not that in the team didn't deserve to be there, but in that we thought we had made it "back" as a program. We haven't. I was guilty of this.

You can't just skip a decade of baseball in a conference as competitive as the SEC and not fall behind. And then the problems since 2013, including a young AD hiring a young unproven coach for a job that he wasn't mature enough to handle./QUOTE]

I understand how people are still mad at the way Polk acted on his way out but good grief. His second stint wasnt all bad. We went to CWS in 2007. Now 2008, was not good and Polks behavior was childish when he wanted to namehis succesor. But it is revisionist history to call it a lost decade. Were there a lot of top draft picks? No. But it wasnt a lost decade. We went to 5 regionals in 7 years. Won as many SEC Tournament championships and went to as many CWS as Cohen did. He had a better winning % than Cohen did during his second stint. Credit Cohen had a major rebuild because some of Polk's guys left early.
One area Cohen did better was postseason. Which is big. But we still came up short just like all the other years.
Thing is when will people stop acting like babies about Ron Polk. The dude is our best baseball coach ever. And its not really close. We have been to Omaha 9 times and Polk was coach 7 of those. 4 50 win seasons with Polk coaching 3. Did he sabotage the program? Thats not really true. He acted a fool but there were some decent players here when he left.
It took Cohen a couple years to recruit his own guys and we had growing pains with young pitchers (Routt, Stratton, Graveman, Girodo - 3 of which have made it to the bigs). Personally didnt think Girodo would amount to much after his freshman year. Cohen did a full rebuild then and 2013 was the result of that hard work he and his staff put in. It wasnt fools gold. We lost a ton of production that year (3 major leaguers - Graveman, Renfroe, and Frazier).
Just wish people would stop complaining about Polk already.

The irony of this sentence is truly astounding.

 

[tatedog]

No way. He would be about #20 on my list not that he'd come anyway. Plus it really isn't hard to recruit in florida.

John Cohen would literally bring back Cannizaro before he picked up the phone to call that guy.

 

[Todd4State]

How far back do you want to go? I think the FIRST thing we did wrong was beg Polk not to leave in 1991. We had a problem holding onto our past and it bit us not just once but twice when we brought Polk back after McMahon had us relatively stable. After Polk finally left a lot of our fans weren't behind Cohen because he wasn't their guy and you had Polk causing problems off the field but we persevered anyway and were basically finally back to where we were when Polk took over in 2002. I mention that because when you lose ten years basically you lose a lot of ground in baseball. A lot of baseball people thought we were a dead program and we had to get a lot of things back up to speed so that we could go forward.

Cohen did lose interest and I think at the same time he tried to take some shortcuts that had short term success but created long term problems. Like hiring Wes Johnson and allowing him accelerate his program to the point where most of our young pitchers got hurt and then signing too many JUCO's. I think Cohen also somewhere around 2016 realized that we needed someone with MLB/scouting connections on our staff to get the players that we need to win a National Title. We lost a few guys in Mangum and Stovall's class that he thought we would get and then the next offseason we lost Lowe who I have heard from a few people that Cohen thought he would stay for his senior year. If you have someone with scouting connections those kinds of things get avoided plus you are able to better prepare in terms of replacing them with other high end high school players like Tanner Allen. Mingione and Coggin had more JUCO connections so we were trying to replace Austin Riley with Tanner Poole. Whereas Vanderbilt and Florida were replacing guys that they lost with another high end high school player like a Dane Dunning.

I don't think we got outworked in recruiting - it's more that we had a different and for us a mostly flawed approach to recruiting than others because we were relying more on JUCO players than most teams in the SEC. Most of the higher end JUCO prospects like Reynaldo Riviera go pro because they just aren't interested in playing college baseball for a year at that point. I would not be surprised if we have lost more JUCO signees to pro ball than high school.

Stability is a huge need right now. But whoever we hire needs to be someone that has really strong MLB/pro connections that can also identify raw players that can be developed like Brent Rooker. The number one thing that legit baseball prospects care about is someone that can get them better as a player and can get them to MLB. They don't care about the ballpark, how many fans are there, and at the same time they don't care about the Vandy education. They want someone that is going to get them into MLB. That's why programs like Louisville, Vanderbilt, Virginia, TCU and etc. may not have a great history but are superpowers for now and became superpowers overnight. We certainly have the resources to ability to attract a coach with that kind of background- see Cann. That's what is going to get us out of this funk. And it's also good that we're building the new stadium and it looks like Polk is coming to peace with MSU now- those are positive things as well.

To add to that- whoever we hire needs to bring in an elite pitching coach. I almost can't emphasize that enough. And it needs to be someone that can properly and safely develop our pitchers velocity. Obvously an elite hitting coach would help and both need to be able to recruit well. I'd also like to have a coach that is good at teaching baserunning or a coach that is good at developing catchers. Hopefully the NCAA will allow teams to add another coach so that we can add one of both.

 

[Hankp22]

A few questions about this team

1. For those with inside knowledge on our program, what is the outlook for Jordan Westburg?

2. And similarly, what about Jordan Anderson?

3. I know Ashcraft is done for the year with another hip injury if I remember correctly. What is his long term prognosis moving into next year?

4. Spencer Price is currently classified as a JR I believe. So he should be a RSJR next year if he opts to return. Any feel for his outlook in 2019?

I am to the point where I want to see us go full youth movement. I hate it because our starting pitching has a chance to be really good. But I want to start getting more at bats for the young guys.

To do that, I'd move Stovall to catcher. Skelton has been awful. And had his worst game today. And obviously you keep Mangum in center. Aside from that, I want to see a youth movement take place.

Someone mentioned 2012 (which was awful and this year reminds me of it)...but remember how quick it got turned after that. We need to hope some of the injured arms bounce back and some of the younger ones develop. I don't know what the chances are for Small to stick around one more year. He has serious talent. With him being a RS SOPH, he will still have leverage and could earn some draft stock money as a RS Jr at MSU. Then you hope guys like Ashcraft and James make strides. You will get Price back and have a healthy Self.

Between Hatcher, Rowdey, Allen, and Foscue...I do like the potential there for the next two seasons. And for that reason, I'd like to see Anderson and Westburg get bats too. Let them see the pace of SEC play. Between those six, I like our long term odds. Add in a JUCO piece of two, and we can hopefully be a competitive baseball team next year.

Point being, I don't think we are as far off as it seems. Because I do think we have some good individual long term pieces. But man we sure are awful right now.

Turnover at the head coaching spot and within staff has been a killer. It has been a perfect storm. It was a compliment to the program to have Butch and Nick hired away. We all thought Cohen hired a Homerun and it turned out like it did. Time to move on and Couen has to get this one right.

For the record, that was a very poorly coached baseball game today. Our coaching staff turned the odds against our players in my opinion a few times today.

Sorry for the ramble. But I think there are flashes of positivity out there with some of our young bats. It just takes a little time. I'm mainly curious about Anderson and Westberg.

 

[preacher_dawg]

Wait, Starkville doesn't have a Walmart?

 

[preacher_dawg]

Cool, we have another preacher on here!! Whatcha preaching on tomorrow?

 

[Go Budaw]

Thou remembereth not 2012

2012 team stats (over entire schedule including 36 SEC games, and playing with dead ball):
BA: .251
SLG: .333
OBP: .358
OPS: .691

2018 stats with low seam ball and against a schedule of 85% mid major nonconference teams:
BA: .261
SLG: .364
OBP: .346
OPS: .710

Considering the schedules faced and the dead ball that was still around in 2012, I’m taking the 2012 lineup every damn day of the week over the one we have now. If you know anything about SEC pitching this year, you know that all 4 of the numbers above have nowhere to go but down for the rest of the way. The stat-padding portion of our schedule is about 80% done. Thats all not even to mention that the 2012 lineup had 2 legit MLB hitters in it while the current version likely has a fat goose egg in that department.

 

[FreeDawg]

I’m so ready for baseball to stabilize with a dynamic HC for a long period of time. It’s wild when you look back, our program has been so weird since McMahon left. You had Polk 2 which was saved by an improbable CWS run. Cohen played for a natty but had a terrible SEC record of 108-130 which included a 21-9 his last year. Cann has an overachieving year one and literally gets caught with his dick in his hand. It’s almost as if our program is elite and wills itself to the CWS every cpl years but hasn’t been on steady footing in a long time.