Pre season all american picks from SEC (D1 Baseball)
- Thread starter onewoof
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Not all of them. Still plenty of Cann recruits left. There’s even at least one Cohen recruit still here. Not an excuse, just a fact.
Time to see if Lemonis has grown a new sack because he was in total castration mode last year as far as I'm concerned. There's no excuse for last year's futility.
I don't know about no excuse. It really is amazing how basically nobody stepped up last year (at least from good to great; obviously Hines was a bright spot; Forsythe got better at the plate, and Mule got better). If that happens again, I can believe it's coaching. But really think it was a fluke occurrence of injuries to the pitching staff combined with not having anybody step up on offense. Offense wasn't bad, we just needed one more guy to step up and be the man.
STATE Baseball should NEVER suffer a season like last's.
Meh...It happens.
Alabama had a 4-9 season in football in 2003, beating UK, MSU, USM, and USF.
Duke was last in the ACC, going 2-14 in conference the year after competing for a national championship.
Lemonis gets a pass this year but a pass that includes at least an above 500 record. Next year is the key. Other schools are throwing cash at top talent. I hope we can do something to get recruits or we go back to the days of Polk when we had good baseball, make a regional but don't come close to sniffing a Natty. But doing so in a nice stadium with great fan support.
Huh? You forget about 1985, or maybe too young to have experienced it? CWS we were cruising vs Texas, Gene Morgan pitching a 1-hit shutout in the 5th when the infamous line drive hit his ankle and ruined him for the rest of the series. That, followed by a freak bad-bounce on what would have been a double-play inning-ender that led to a huge Texas rally put us in the loser's bracket where we faced eventual champion Miami. We had to pitch Brantley on just 3 days rest in the elimination game on a sweltering hot day. Still, had a 1-run lead with 2 outs in bottom of 9th, only to give up walk-off 2-run HR.
If Morgan had not been hit, we almost for sure win that Texas game and don't have to use Brantley until he had 5 days rest.
That one-out-away vs Miami would have put us in the CWS final anyway. It is widely believed our 1985 team was likely the best college baseball team ever. 4 future MLB stars and some damn good college players to boot. I'd say Polk had us sniffing and probably wins if not for crazy bad luck.
Also under Ron in 1979 we opened by beating the hell out of eventual champ Cal State-Fullerton. Lost to Texas, then once again an agonizing loss in extras to get eliminated.
1981 under Polk we were eliminated by 2 1-run losses, one of those to eventual champ ASU. Depending on your definition of "sniffing" we "sniffed at the very least once. If you think just getting to the CWS is sniffing, then Ron Polk took us there 7 times.
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It’s not even the first time it’s happened to MSU baseball in the past decade. Went from natty runner up in 2013 to not even hosting in 2014 to DFL in 2015.
Nobody can spend their way to perreniel contender status in college baseball. There’s way too much volitility with the draft and pitcher arm injuries.
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Yes, the 1985 MSU team was the most talent that ever stepped foot on Rosenblatt or TD Ameritrade turf. As we all know, though......the best team doesn't always win it for lots of reasons. A little luck helps sometimes in key moments.
I don't think this year will be like last years, but if it is, he has to go. I know comparing football to baseball isn't apples to oranges, but our baseball program is on a higher pedestal comparatively to Auburn in football. Auburn fired Chiz for two back-to-back suckfests after winning a title. State should hold it's baseball coach to the same standard. Fix the program or fix your resume.
How quickly we forget the complete ****-show that was 2015 MSU baseball which was immediately followed by our first regular season SEC Championship in a damned generation! Baseball rosters could be overhauled quickly before the NIL & The Transfer Portal. We will be fine this year.
Auburn certainly has been better off after running Chizik out of town***
Some of you will need some Xanax down the road for your baseball expectations.
1. Yes - we do have a rich baseball tradition.
2. Yes, we have one of the most incredible stadiums packed with the greatest fans evah!
Everyone... can now do the "Vandy" deal for scholarships, plus added incentives.
Tradition and History don't mean as much as more money available elsewhere to college players today. I have no idea where baseball will land when the NIL dust clears. I think it will swing back and forth for a while. When you add the portal, it will be crazy, and the current coaches will have to change their recruiting tactics trying to figure out a ever-changing recruiting game.
1. Yes - we do have a rich baseball tradition.
2. Yes, we have one of the most incredible stadiums packed with the greatest fans evah!
Everyone... can now do the "Vandy" deal for scholarships, plus added incentives.
Tradition and History don't mean as much as more money available elsewhere to college players today. I have no idea where baseball will land when the NIL dust clears. I think it will swing back and forth for a while. When you add the portal, it will be crazy, and the current coaches will have to change their recruiting tactics trying to figure out a ever-changing recruiting game.
And then lose at least half of those highly rated recruits that he has lined up over the next four classes? If you want to make sure we don’t have any down years, I suggest you set aside a million or so out of your budget for paying top players each season to come in thru the portal. That probably still won’t be enough to outbid lsu.
We are on national broadcasts 8 times
hailstate.com
Diamond Dawgs Set for Eight National Broadcasts - Mississippi State
The Southeastern Conference and ESPN have announced the television coverage for the 2023 baseball season, with Mississippi State slated for at least eight ap...
Probably not but rifling through coaches has not really worked either… I don’t believe chiz to Lemonis is an apples to apples comparison. Chiz rode arguably one of the best college footballs players ever to a flash in the pan national title. He coached poorly prior to newton and after newton. I don’t think the same can be said about Lemonis. Lemonis has proved himself to be a solid in game coach and his recruiting is very good.
I could make a similar argument for Lemonis. He benefitted from COVID, getting Rowdy and TA back, who otherwise would have been gone.
All you guys that want to argue about Lemonis. Get off it. He’s a good coach. Last year, Sims, Simmons, and Auger throw out and elbow.
It bothers me that knowing our greatest need is pitching and we signed hitters and few ‘high expectation’ pitchers. I watched most of the games last year. It was pitching that swamped the boat. Our offense couldn’t get the runs to cover the poor pitching.
It bothers me that knowing our greatest need is pitching and we signed hitters and few ‘high expectation’ pitchers. I watched most of the games last year. It was pitching that swamped the boat. Our offense couldn’t get the runs to cover the poor pitching.
Cigar boys have money; all I have is an education.
Our Starting infield can play-Hines, Larry, Lane, Alford, and Hancock can play ball. There are five guys who are studs who can play the outfield. Name the pitchers after Cade Smith that we know gets people out. TBA.
Our Starting infield can play-Hines, Larry, Lane, Alford, and Hancock can play ball. There are five guys who are studs who can play the outfield. Name the pitchers after Cade Smith that we know gets people out. TBA.
He got us to the CWS World Series a few times when baseball was largely relevant to fewer schools than today. He was a good coach with a nice, overall winning record, but not a great coach. Bianco won a Natty and doesn't have to say "but only if this had or hadn't happened in the opening game of the CWS 4 decades ago..." Again, Polk was a good coach who made baseball relevant at State. Dave van Horn is a good coach and he was closer than Polk to winning a Natty.
I may be alone in this but I continue to believe we are not firing Lemonis this year even if we suck again. I think Foxhall could very much be in trouble with a bad year. But I’m pretty confident Lemonis is our head coach in 2024 regardless.
I disagree. He will not survive another season like 2022. Not saying he has to get us into a super but he cannot finish dead last in the SEC again. We ended the year on an 11 game conference losing streak capped by getting humiliated in DNF by Vitello and his thug brigade. I am still on his side but he stunningly blew through every bit of the massive stockpile of goodwill he banked in 2021
We have had five head coaches take us to Omaha. We had four head coaches in a stretch of four years that resulted in 4 straight super regionals and two trips to the CWS. Highly unlikely that State will
We have had six head coaches take us to Omaha. In the last 50 years only one HC has failed to end a season in Nebraska and he coached just one full season. We went through four head coaches in four years that resulted in 4 straight super regionals and two trips to the CWS. Based on that I believe its highly unlikely that we would end up like Auburn after Chiz if Lemonis is canned. Also by the same token, it is highly unlikely that Lemonis repeats last year's feces fest.
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Yeah. But since 2007, we've finished dead last in the SEC 4 times and 11th (out of 12) once. That's 5 terrible seasons in 15 years. THAT can't happen.
I agree that's underperforming. But that includes the last two years of Polk II and the first 2 years of Cohen when he was fixing Polk's mess. Nobody thought that was acceptable. It got Polk semi-fired and people were losing patience with Cohen after his first two years.
But from 2011 forward, we have two last place finishes. One was Cohen getting too cute and overemphasizing small ball before getting screwed by ball changes. It's fair to criticize Cohen for that, but you have to take the bad with the good sometimes, and the good greatly outweighed the bad. One was last year, and I think it's fair to criticize Lemonis and staff for not being aggressive enough in the portal. In hindsight we had a bunch of good supporting players and needed to be more aggressive, but it's hard to recruit over most of the guys we had, and even then it only really screwed us because it was compounded by injuries.
Outside of those two years, we went go to 4 CWS (winning 1), three super regionals, and 2 regionals. The last place finishes were painful, but as long as last year proves to be flukish like Cohen's, that's a pretty strong 11 year stretch.
No doubt that only 1 of those is on Lemonis, and even there you might could spread some blame back to Cohen for the coaching carousel we were on for several years. But the simple fact is, we need to see some real improvement on the field this spring.
For sure. I don't know what the right bar is (my feeling is that we need to be at least a 2 seed this year), but we need to be better this year and hosting next year to feel like last year was a fluke and not concerning.
I have a theory. To simplify it, at the college baseball freshman level, you have two types of players:
- Athletes: These guys are like Hunter Renfroe, Slate Alford, Tanner Allen and Rowdy Jordan. They played multiple sports in high school, and they generally make big jumps from either their freshman to sophomore, or sophomore to junior years, once they start getting solid reps either in season or summer ball.
- Baseball Year-Rounders: These guys have been coached into oblivion and many times, are nearly maxed out at the high school/college freshman level. Many of them got held back, so they were also older. Think it terms of Texas football players (mostly QB and WR). Many many many reps in youth and high school baseball. They generally don't make the 'big' jumps as they older. They improve, sure, but not like the athletes do.
And obviously some can be both. And that's very simplified, as that spectrum is wide. So you have to figure out what you have in each individual player, as far as overall talent. And neither are necessarily bad.
To take it to 2022, I think we had a lot of the latter on our team. And sometimes, you just get to the point where your talent in maxed out.
I'm curious to see what Hines is going to do. The odds say he won't replicate 2022, but he's an athletic looking guy, maybe he can.
What's up with this "NEVER" fatalistic crap. You act like you didn't live through Polk 2 remnants. And then we had a year like that in 2014 between 2 very good runs. It happens. Chill out.
Injuries were the biggest factor between us being a decent team last year. I don't mean a natty contender, I mean being decent, which everyone would have been happy with.
It was bad luck, get over it. If it happens again this year, a head or two will roll.
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