I remember 10 months ago, the prevailing opinion on this board

[ronpolk]

If the season completely goes off the rails, he'll sacrifice Foxhall for another year.

This is probably what will happen but assuming we finish with another losing record, the entire staff should be dismissed. If it were just pitching I could see letting foxhall go. But it’s not. We don’t particularly do anything well except hit home runs. Our best 2 players are transfers from other programs. Guys like kellum Clark, who looked very promising as a freshman, have regressed, our SS and 3B both have fielding percentages below .900 (below 800 for 3B), our catchers have thrown out one stolen base attempt out of 23 and one catcher has 6 pass balls… there is just no development going on. We are only as competitive as we are because we really do have great talent.

 

[patdog]

This is probably what will happen but assuming we finish with another losing record, the entire staff should be dismissed. If it were just pitching I could see letting foxhall go. But it’s not. We don’t particularly do anything well except hit home runs. Our best 2 players are transfers from other programs. Guys like kellum Clark, who looked very promising as a freshman, have regressed, our SS and 3B both have fielding percentages below .900 (below 800 for 3B), our catches have thrown up one stolen base attempt out of 23 and one catcher has 6 pass balls… there is just no development going on. We are only as competitive as we are because we really do have great talent.

The scary thing is, we really haven’t played anybody yet. We won’t be hitting as many HRs vs SEC pitching.

 

[Podgy]

We aren’t having any issues recruiting. The staff just made some big mistakes with last years freshman pitching class. Some of that was loyalty to old commits.

But also Cade, Fristoe, Tepper were all top 115 guys. Hunt was 267. It’s just a lack of development

I wonder who else went hard after those guys. I also wonder how many players have improved dramatically under this coaching staff. How much better are Clark and Hancock than two years ago?

 

[Rupert Jenkins]

You can not give credit to this staff for recruiting. They won with somebody else's guys then fell flat on their face. This Miss State University baseball. Players wanna play here. Sure there maybe be 10 more prestigious programs in the country but there is some swagger at State. They simply are not coaching

 

[pseudonym]

Stansbury was 92-68 in the SEC in his last 10 years. We went 72-108 in the SEC over the next 10 years.

Firing Stansbury was a mistake. Firing Lemonis would be 10x worse.

 

[The Cooterpoot]

Stansbury was 92-68 in the SEC in his last 10 years. We went 72-108 in the SEC over the next 10 years.

Firing Stansbury was a mistake. Firing Lemonis would be 10x worse.

Firing Stans was the right move. The hire was the cluster 17. Lemonis gets one more year but Foxhall and others could all be gone. Lemonis gets fired next year.

 

[Perd Hapley]

ASU hasn’t been relevant in college baseball in a while. You’re thinking of Arizona. They were 13-17 in the PAC last year & picked in the bottom half again this year.

No, I’m thinking of Arizona State who in only 63 years as a program has 5 national titles, 22 appearances in Omaha, and is generally a perennial regional team. And 13-17 in a power conference like the PAC 12 isn’t terrible.

Does our team have its issues? Of course. But we still aren’t playing the weak sisters of the poor in our nonconference schedule like we did last year.

 

[patdog]

No, I’m thinking of Arizona State who in only 63 years as a program has 5 national titles, 22 appearances in Omaha, and is generally a perennial regional team. And 13-17 in a power conference like the PAC 12 isn’t terrible.

Does our team have its issues? Of course. But we still aren’t playing the weak sisters of the poor in our nonconference schedule like we did last year.

We’re not playing the sisters of the poor, but the name teams we’re playing are all down. 13-17 in the PAC is pretty bad, that conference has no depth at all. ASU hasn’t been to Omaha in 12 years. And BTW, they lost to Cal-Irvine 16-6 last night. They’re not making a regional again this year. Okie is way down, Ohio St is down, and USM is looking pretty down too.

 

[Perd Hapley]

We’re not playing the sisters of the poor, but the name teams we’re playing are all down. 13-17 in the PAC is pretty bad, that conference has no depth at all. ASU hasn’t been to Omaha in 12 years. And BTW, they lost to Cal-Irvine 16-6 last night. They’re not making a regional again this year. Okie is way down, Ohio St is down, and USM is looking pretty down too.

It’s the first week of March. Nobody knows who is up or down yet. I can already tell we’re gonna take the field against Lipscomb next weekend and people are gonna see their 5-4 record and say they suck, blah blah blah….while disregarding that they took 2 of 3 against Notre Dame to open the year.

Just have to let it play out. We never had a schedule that set us up to only lose 1 or 2 nonconference games. We need to make a regional this year and we’ve ramped up the opposition significantly to keep the RPI where it needs to be for us to do that if we cam win 13-14 SEC games at minimum.

 

[patdog]

It’s the first week of March. Nobody knows who is up or down yet. I can already tell we’re gonna take the field against Lipscomb next weekend and people are gonna see their 5-4 record and say they suck, blah blah blah….while disregarding that they took 2 of 3 against Notre Dame to open the year.

Just have to let it play out. We never had a schedule that set us up to only lose 1 or 2 nonconference games. We need to make a regional this year and we’ve ramped up the opposition significantly to keep the RPI where it needs to be for us to do that if we cam win 13-14 SEC games at minimum.

We tried to put a good early season schedule together. I don’t blame anyone for it. But it’s turning out to be a very weak schedule. And yes, all those teams are down this year, and lipscomb isn’t good.

 

[AstroDog]

Ohio St. split a 4 game series with UCONN which I think played in a Super last year. I like UCONN's coach too. So, Ohio State is probably an average B10 team. And we should beat an average B10 every time.

 

[blacklistedbully]

If we're worse than last year that's likely an indication of his recruiting ability and ability to evaluate talent (players and staff). Does that suddenly improve with another year?

Not making excuses for Lems, but this seems misdirected. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't our recruiting classes under him rated among the best in the country? If everybody else thought they were great classes, it's hard to say Lem's recruiting and ability to evaluate are the problem.

To me it more likely suggests it's on-field coaching and/or motivation. These guys could not have been rated so highly if they couldn't play respectable defense prior to coming here. And these pitchers could not have been rated highly if they could not throw strikes before they came here. Getting hammered for hits can possibly be attributed to them not being good enough for the step up in competition because their rating was based on lesser competition. But even then, having so many of them exhibiting these problems again suggests it is unlikely they were all vastly overated,

I'm no baseball expert, but this seems to me a logical theory.

 

[MSUDC11-2.0]

Still believe Lemonis is safe, Foxhall not so much.

 

[pseudonym]

Firing Stans was the right move. The hire was the cluster 17. Lemonis gets one more year but Foxhall and others could all be gone. Lemonis gets fired next year.

If we couldn’t replace Stansbury with someone better, the decision to fire him was a bad one. How is the next hire not part of the thought process of firing a coach?

We fired a coach for not winning enough and won much less. This is an objective fact, and people still defend it.

I disagreed at the time but said all that matters is wins and losses. If we had won more than we did under Stansbury, I would have said, “Wow, I was wrong. Glad Stricklin knows what he’s doing.”

The last 10 years was a lost decade for State basketball. Stricklin skipped town, but I expect the fans that were wrong to say, “Gee, I guess better than .500 in the SEC in the 2nd most important sport wasn’t so bad after all.”

Instead, the same people want to fire a coach that won our first CWS, has a 16-5 NCAA tournament record, and in three years has earned a top-8 seed twice, something we had done once in 20 years before he got here.

Who is going to do better than that?

 

[blacklistedbully]

If we couldn’t replace Stansbury with someone better, the decision to fire him was a bad one. How is the next hire not part of the thought process of firing a coach?

We fired a coach for not winning enough and won much less. This is an objective fact, and people still defend it.

I disagreed at the time but said all that matters is wins and losses. If we had won more than we did under Stansbury, I would have said, “Wow, I was wrong. Glad Stricklin knows what he’s doing.”

The last 10 years was a lost decade for State basketball. Stricklin skipped town, but I expect the fans that were wrong to say, “Gee, I guess better than .500 in the SEC in the 2nd most important sport wasn’t so bad after all.”

Instead, the same people want to fire a coach that won our first CWS, has a 16-5 NCAA tournament record, and in three years has earned a top-8 seed twice, something we had done once in 20 years before he got here.

Who is going to do better than that?

Mike Bianco if our downfall continues and leads to OM becoming "the baseball school of choice" in Mississippi, with top recruits choosing them over us?

 

[Perd Hapley]

We tried to put a good early season schedule together. I don’t blame anyone for it. But it’s turning out to be a very weak schedule. And yes, all those teams are down this year, and lipscomb isn’t good.

Its currently the #21 schedule in the country. Hard to say thats weak, and it certainly doesn’t suggest that every team we played is down. At least a couple out of OU, Cal, ASU, USM, and Ohio State will make regionals….and the ones that don’t will still be Top 75 RPI teams most likely.

 

[thekimmer]

Is it the pitching coach's fault that we're fielding at .946 ?

No but it’s his fault we have U12 rec level pitching

 

[Podgy]

Not making excuses for Lems, but this seems misdirected. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't our recruiting classes under him rated among the best in the country? If everybody else thought they were great classes, it's hard to say Lem's recruiting and ability to evaluate are the problem.

To me it more likely suggests it's on-field coaching and/or motivation. These guys could not have been rated so highly if they couldn't play respectable defense prior to coming here. And these pitchers could not have been rated highly if they could not throw strikes before they came here. Getting hammered for hits can possibly be attributed to them not being good enough for the step up in competition because their rating was based on lesser competition. But even then, having so many of them exhibiting these problems again suggests it is unlikely they were all vastly overated,

I'm no baseball expert, but this seems to me a logical theory.

Not gonna correct you. That post does make more sense than mine. Maybe it's an inability to improve the talent he recruits.

 

[Called3rdstrikedawg]

If we couldn’t replace Stansbury with someone better, the decision to fire him was a bad one. How is the next hire not part of the thought process of firing a coach?

We fired a coach for not winning enough and won much less. This is an objective fact, and people still defend it.

I disagreed at the time but said all that matters is wins and losses. If we had won more than we did under Stansbury, I would have said, “Wow, I was wrong. Glad Stricklin knows what he’s doing.”

The last 10 years was a lost decade for State basketball. Stricklin skipped town, but I expect the fans that were wrong to say, “Gee, I guess better than .500 in the SEC in the 2nd most important sport wasn’t so bad after all.”

Instead, the same people want to fire a coach that won our first CWS, has a 16-5 NCAA tournament record, and in three years has earned a top-8 seed twice, something we had done once in 20 years before he got here.

Who is going to do better than that?

And he did every bit of that sitting on a ball bucket while 4 of the best leaders we have ever had carried their hearts in there sleeves and fought tooth and nail willing this program to those CWS appearances. Oh… and they were all recruited by his predecessors. Hell, Gary Henderson led a team to Omaha built by previous coaches. We didn’t keep him!

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

Mike Bianco if our downfall continues and leads to OM becoming "the baseball school of choice" in Mississippi, with top recruits choosing them over us?

Bianco is cleaning up in recruiting right now.

 

[Podgy]

Ole Miss is among the elite in baseball now. A Natty does that, but Bianco has been recruiting well for some time. They likely have more money to throw at players and the stadium is fine. So is Oxford and the hotties for the players. We can survive a couple of awful years under Lemonis, but I didn't expect to see rebuilding years after winning it all. Or, are we regressing instead of rebuilding?

 

[8dog]

Bianco is cleaning up in recruiting right now.

OM has recruited well for 15 years. Nothing new. They just finally got over the hump. We are recruiting just fine moving forward. And likely always will.

Success of the two programs isnt mutually exclusive. Let’s just get our house in order. It’s clear Lem is in over his head.

 

[SouthFarmchicken]

It’s the first week of March. Nobody knows who is up or down yet. I can already tell we’re gonna take the field against Lipscomb next weekend and people are gonna see their 5-4 record and say they suck, blah blah blah….while disregarding that they took 2 of 3 against Notre Dame to open the year.

Just have to let it play out. We never had a schedule that set us up to only lose 1 or 2 nonconference games. We need to make a regional this year and we’ve ramped up the opposition significantly to keep the RPI where it needs to be for us to do that if we cam win 13-14 SEC games at minimum.

We should lose a best of three series against Lipscomb MAYBE once every 20 years.

 

[Shmuley]

OM has recruited well for 15 years. Nothing new. They just finally got over the hump. We are recruiting just fine moving forward. And likely always will.

Success of the two programs isnt mutually exclusive. Let’s just get our house in order. It’s clear Lem is in over his head.

Over his head. Repeat. Over his head.

Getting this next hire right is beyond critical.

 

[8dog]

Over his head. Repeat. Over his head.

Getting this next hire right is beyond critical.

Gonna be really hard to not take Burroughs. He has done great at La Tech.

 

[wrapit]

was that Lemonis job was safe this year. Anyone still feel that way now? It's early, and there's a chance he could get things on the right track this year, but if he doesn't, I don't see any way he can survive.

Top 10 Mississippi HS baseball players in Class of 2023

Mississippi’s 2023 high school baseball season is set to begin. As schools begin their quest for a state title, take a look at the top 10 prep prospects from the Magnolia State.

bvmsports.com

 

[Perd Hapley]

We should lose a best of three series against Lipscomb MAYBE once every 20 years.

I don’t think we should lose the series either, but they are another pretty solid non conference opponent all things considered. Sweep would be awesome, 2 of 3 would be still okay.

 

[The Cooterpoot]

If we couldn’t replace Stansbury with someone better, the decision to fire him was a bad one. How is the next hire not part of the thought process of firing a coach?

We fired a coach for not winning enough and won much less. This is an objective fact, and people still defend it.

I disagreed at the time but said all that matters is wins and losses. If we had won more than we did under Stansbury, I would have said, “Wow, I was wrong. Glad Stricklin knows what he’s doing.”

The last 10 years was a lost decade for State basketball. Stricklin skipped town, but I expect the fans that were wrong to say, “Gee, I guess better than .500 in the SEC in the 2nd most important sport wasn’t so bad after all.”

Instead, the same people want to fire a coach that won our first CWS, has a 16-5 NCAA tournament record, and in three years has earned a top-8 seed twice, something we had done once in 20 years before he got here.

Who is going to do better than that?

That falls on an AD who sucked at everything but marketing, and is on the hot seat at his new job now.

 

[BB30]

Our problem is relying too much on showcase recruiting. We aren’t watching guys in game situations. Like Dan Campbell said this week “you’ve got to watch the tape”. Players with talent can prepare for a showcase and look like gold. Players that know how to play show up on tape or in person in game play. Showcases don’t show how well someone locates the second and third time through the order. Showcases don’t show how well someone hits in pressure situation. How well they adjust during slumps etc. We are full of showcase guys and travel (who can afford it) ball all stars.

You are absolutely spot on in your assessment. We've gotten too analytical as well worrying too much about velo/spin rate and other numbers on a screen.

was talking to a kid I used to work with/coach that is a freshman at OM this year and I asked him what he thought was going on and he said the simplest way to put it is we are recruiting closers and are trying to make them starters. Basically taking high ceiling arms with no command of the zone and hoping they all pan out.

They have got to start signing some guys that know how to pitch. Don't care if the are only
87-90 with the fb or 88-92. If they can throw 3 pitches for strikes and command the FB they can get outs at the SEC level.

not saying they dont need to recruit any high ceiling guys because you have to have a couple of elite arms that pan out to have a shot at making a deep run, but most of your elite arms that are making it to college and aren't draft risks in the 1st-5th round are because they aren't polished enough. If you're relying on those types of guys to make up the majority of your pitching staff you better have someone that is a really solid developer of arms as your pitching coach. Even then, some of them aren't going to pan out. Cerantola is a prime example of a kid with elite stuff that didn't pan out for us. He had all of the tools to be an elite arm but he wasn't polished enough and needed more mound time to get comfortable and work the kinks out. That's why pro ball guys don't have a problem taking a kid like that because they can stick him in rookie ball and let him pitch until he figures it out and winning at that level isn't important, it's all about development. I played with guys while in the rays organization that I never would have thought would make it but they stuck with them and kept running guys out there bad outing after bad outing and now 2 of them are decent big league arms.

The problem in the college game is those types of arms are in high demand and require a lot of scholarship money to get them to campus. So you may have 1 elite arm that isn't contributing any meaningful innings and he's on a 70-80% scholarship. That means he's going to keep getting opportunities over that walk on that sits 88-90 but throws 3 pitches for strikes. With our juco system, the transfer portal and the quality highschool baseball we have in close proximity we should be able to find a couple of guys in each class that can throw strikes even if they don't have a 95+mph FB that just know how to pitch and get outs.

 

[Dawgbite]

Here's the problem. OM winning the natty last year cheapened ours. If a bunch of bow tie wearing inbreds from a fluff school can win one, it means anybody can luck up and win one. That puts the pressure on us to win a second or third and we're not handling the pressure well. Neither as a program, team, or fan base. It's not likely we are going to replace a national championship winning coach with something better but he certainly needs a fire lit under his ***.

 

[Perd Hapley]

Here's the problem. OM winning the natty last year cheapened ours. If a bunch of bow tie wearing inbreds from a fluff school can win one, it means anybody can luck up and win one. That puts the pressure on us to win a second or third and we're not handling the pressure well. Neither as a program, team, or fan base. It's not likely we are going to replace a national championship winning coach with something better but he certainly needs a fire lit under his ***.

It didn’t cheapen anything. Get out of here with that needledick horseshit.

 

[BB30]

Here's the problem. OM winning the natty last year cheapened ours. If a bunch of bow tie wearing inbreds from a fluff school can win one, it means anybody can luck up and win one. That puts the pressure on us to win a second or third and we're not handling the pressure well. Neither as a program, team, or fan base. It's not likely we are going to replace a national championship winning coach with something better but he certainly needs a fire lit under his ***.

That has virtually nothing to do with what is going on with our program right now. As much as some of y'all would like to tie every one of our woes back to ole miss that's just simply not realistic.

And you can say what you want about OM baseball but it's not going to change the reality that they have a solid program and a solid coach.

we've been taking baseball much more seriously than they have for a long time but since bianco got there they have been a top 10-15 program.

we simply rested on our laurels after winning the NC and slacked up and it's biting us right now. The program will inevitably bounce back. Might not be with the current coaching staff but they'll be back at some point in the near future.

 

[ronpolk]

Here's the problem. OM winning the natty last year cheapened ours. If a bunch of bow tie wearing inbreds from a fluff school can win one, it means anybody can luck up and win one. That puts the pressure on us to win a second or third and we're not handling the pressure well. Neither as a program, team, or fan base. It's not likely we are going to replace a national championship winning coach with something better but he certainly needs a fire lit under his ***.

It didn’t cheapen ours. Regardless of your feelings about OM, they are and have been a very good baseball program ever since Bianco came to town. Them winning a title does not cheapen ours anymore than Fresno state randomly winning one or coastal Carolina getting hot.

 

[pseudonym]

That falls on an AD who sucked at everything but marketing, and is on the hot seat at his new job now.

The vast majority of hires don’t work out. I love when fans want to fire a winning coach and assume replacing him with someone better is guaranteed, and then when it doesn’t work out say, “Yeah, but the AD sucked.”

Who did you think was going to make the next hire? That is part of the thought process of firing a coach. You can’t escape the wins and losses after making that decision. Scoreboard: We fired a winning coach and didn’t win for 10 years.

The fact that some State fans didn’t learn that lesson is amazing.

 

[Called3rdstrikedawg]

I don’t think we should lose the series either, but they are another pretty solid non conference opponent all things considered. Sweep would be awesome, 2 of 3 would be still okay.

2 out of 3 would be okay if State was 10-2 going into next weekend. Not okay at 7-5 currently.

 

[The Cooterpoot]

The vast majority of hires don’t work out. I love when fans want to fire a winning coach and assume replacing him with someone better is guaranteed, and then when it doesn’t work out say, “Yeah, but the AD sucked.”

Who did you think was going to make the next hire? That is part of the thought process of firing a coach. You can’t escape the wins and losses after making that decision. Scoreboard: We fired a winning coach and didn’t win for 10 years.

The fact that some State fans didn’t learn that lesson is amazing.

Loafers took the advice of someone he shouldn't have instead of listening to Adidas. He was stupid as 17. But firing Stans had to be done. How has Stans done since leaving? He was washed up.
Howland was better as good as Stans. Stan's was over as soon as divisions got eliminated and he couldn't win a division title. He never did squat in the NCAA. He got into recruiting trouble and lost control of his program.
You probably wanted to keep Croom for making the Liberty Bowl too didn't you? Moorhead was your guy I'm guessing. Nicki too. Lol

 

[Anon1664516582]

If the season completely goes off the rails, he'll sacrifice Foxhall for another year.

He won’t get another year if as bad as last year.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

Our problem is relying too much on showcase recruiting. We aren’t watching guys in game situations. Like Dan Campbell said this week “you’ve got to watch the tape”. Players with talent can prepare for a showcase and look like gold. Players that know how to play show up on tape or in person in game play. Showcases don’t show how well someone locates the second and third time through the order. Showcases don’t show how well someone hits in pressure situation. How well they adjust during slumps etc. We are full of showcase guys and travel (who can afford it) ball all stars.

You sure aren’t going to be able to go by High School stats or performance. There are many reasons college coaches don’t scout Mississippi High School games.
Brandon Woodruff couldn’t throw over 80 in High School because his catcher couldn’t catch his fast ball. Hunter Renfroe was rarely pitched to in High School. You have coaches yelling Add! Add! Add! to runners on base and squish the bug to batters. The elite players play in Perfect Game Tourneys, Triple A USSSA tourneys when they are 12 - 16 years old.

 

[thekimmer]

Stansbury was 92-68 in the SEC in his last 10 years. We went 72-108 in the SEC over the next 10 years.

Firing Stansbury was a mistake. Firing Lemonis would be 10x worse.

Not even close to the same thing. The prestige of MSU basketball vs MSU baseball is not in the same league. If Lemonis craps the bed again this season MSU baseball is prestigious enough to get a good coach to replace him. I hope it doesn't happen but if it does we would be fine.