Polk Should Retire

[statemba]

I think it is safe to say that Ron Polk needs to go ahead and retire after this year. He should have retired after the Omaha trip and went out on a good note. Now, his lack of recruiting is going to show its ugly head this year. We don't have many pro prospects on this year's squad and that is because Polk is too busy worrying about the NCAA to get out there and recruit the top talent to MSU like he did in his younger days.

It is time for a tireless recruiter such as Dan McDonnell to take over the MSU baseball program and run with it before Polk completely kills the program. I think having Bianco do so well year after year in baseball will force Greg Byrne to have a serious sit down with Polk. MSU should be doing the same thing as Ole Miss in baseball and that is hosting regionals and super regionals. Instead, we are shaping up like we may have our worst season in years.

Look at who Polk has recruited to Starkville. How many guys off this year's team will even get drafted? Polk redshirts people for no reason. If they are any good at all they will be gone after their Jr year so there is no need to redshirt people. Polk does this because he is not recruiting the caliber of talent needed to win big time year after year. He hopes he can have one big year with a bunch of seniors.

I say right now that MSU will be lucky to go .500 overall this year. There is no dominant pitcher on the staff. Pigott does the best but outside of him we have nobody in the rotation to shut you down. It is going to be a long long long season in Starkville this year.

Polk please do the right thing and retire. Let a younger coach take over and recruit is tail off for the next 2 years to get some talent in here that can win championships.

 

[Todd4State]

I think that part of the problem is we really don't lack all that much talent. Conner Powers, Brandon Turner, and Aaron Weatherford are pretty good pro prospects. Tyler Moore, Jason Nappi, and Forrest Moore have looked decent with the exception of tonight for Moore. Cody Freeman probably will be a good player for us as well, and then we have some guys like Russ Sneed, Jet Butler, Justin Pigott, John Lalor and Grant Hougue who are solid college players. The thing that is really disheartening is guys like Chad Crosswhite, Tyler Whitney, and Ricky Bowen who should be better but aren't. However, they have shown that they can get the job done in the past. Our pitching should be better, especially with Josh Johnson leaving. So, to me the problem isn't so much talent as it is coaching. There's been some kind of a disconnect there. Part of it to is that last year Polk would do some things on the bases from time to time and even occassionally bunt, whereas this year the attitude seems to be, OK we made it to Omaha last year, I'm safe, I'm going to do it the way I want, by damn.

So, I do agree that Polk should go, but I don't think that it's necessarily a talent issue. A lot of the guys named above helped us get to Omaha last year.</p>

 

[Paper Dog]

Yes, nine months ago the baseball program was at the College World Series

Sounds like a dead program to me

You are right Todd, the talent level is high - several very good, young players -- that's why there were 10 professional scouts at the Air Force series - those scouts were not there to see Air Force

Meawhile, Tyler Whitney is medically red-shirting this season - so he can't be blame for any of this mess

 

[Phil Wenneck.sixpack]

where's the leadership on this team? Polk can be blamed for a certain amount of things but at some point, some kind of team leadership needs to have a long talk with the rest of the team to wake them up. You'd think that would have happened after the N. Florida series but I guess not. If we've got guys playing at State that aren't embarrassed by losing to N. Florida twice, Air Force, and now Ark. Little Rock, then something's bad wrong. I realize sometimes it takes several games to find the best 9 to put out there (and by the way Polk, if I never see Goforth bat again, it won't be soon enough) but this is ridiculous. Aside from Pigott and Weatherford, I see absolutely no one that I trust to go through an SEC lineup with any kind of success. Honestly, maybe I should say a Div. I lineup in general.

 

[STATEgrad04]

I dont think those scouts were there to watch their "prospects" lose to AF either.

 

[Todd4State]

My bad, I didn't know about Whitney. I just knew that he didn't do well against North Florida. I'll certainly give him a pass.

 

[jackbaddawg]

house of a team