I mean something certainly changed around middle of last year. Big time. But for the first 3.5 years, recruiting, coaching, development, and culture were all happening at the same clip as they always did for every successful stretch of MSU baseball.
Recruiting - Lemonis staff brought in Bednar, Harding, Preston Johnson, Stone Simmons, and Scotty Dubrule who were all critical pieces of the natty team. RJ Yeager and Colton Ledbetter were great portal finds on these teams that of course aren’t so great.
Coaching - I mean, any critical blunders in the first 3 years anywhere?
Development - TA, Foscue, Westburg, Rowdey, Landon Sims, Kam James, and many others from the first few seasons all got better every year. Most of those only played significantly under the Lemonis staff. Even last year, RJ Yeager came in and put up significantly better numbers against SEC competition than he did against the teams in whatever the hell conference Mercer is in.
Culture - we won the national title in Year 3, after losing 2 MLB first round picks and a 2nd round pick who got 1st round money. That means we had great culture sustained for at least 3 seasons. That doesn’t happen by accident. Had he won it in Year 1 maybe you could argue we had culture issues the whole time. Not the case. The staff has obviously lost the team now and aren’t getting them back, so its fair to say this has been the biggest area of deterioration in years 4 and 5.
We all know what has to happen. This sucks. But the tenure was still generally great for MSU for obvious reasons.
