My two cents on the hitting
Yeah, I doubt we do better on the hill this year, but we'll be very good. Offensively, we still have a lot to prove. I'm not down on this team at all. I'm more excited about MSU baseball than I've been since we rehired Polk. If we finish as the 13th best team in the country that will be a tremendous season for us. We'd likely host our first regional in a decade. And I'm not saying we can't do better than 13th. Just that we still have to show it on the field. And offensively, we haven't. Even in Cohen's first 3 years, although they were a good bit better than last year.
Cohen in year one- Polk's guys.
Year two- Polk's guys and JUCO guys.
Year three- JUCO guys, some freshmen, and a couple of Polk's guys.
Year four- Cohen's guys as sophomores and with injuries.
Learning to hit is a process. I know you and everyone else knows how hard it is to hit- being successful 30% of the time is considered good. It's even more difficult when you have inexperience and you are facing pitchers that throw in the high 80's, low 90's with movement and can throw breaking pitches for strikes and can locate. These guys don't see that in high school in any state and it's a big adjustment. Add in some injuries, and it makes it more difficult. However, that said- with experience normally comes more success. And yes- there are exceptions to both. You have guys like Jeffrey Rea that come in able to hit and you have guys that sometimes get worse for whatever reason. But normally- players get better.
The first four sentences, I mentioned that because this is the first group of players that are Cohen's players that were recruited from high school hat are also now upper classmen. Polk's guys had some power and some of them hit pretty well- but they lacked speed and that hamstrung us a little bit. Sort of like Dan with a drop back passing QB. JUCO guys- we did pretty well, but they are JUCO for a reason. It's hard to build a SEC team out of JUCO players and be a really good hitting or pitching team as the case may be. We did about as well as you could reasonably expect. Last year, we were a young team offensively and I expected us to have stretches where we struggled, and others where we showed promise. What I didn't expect was us to be decimated injuries and that totally changed our approach. We are actually very fortunate guys like Norris and Rea were able to play as much as they did. I saw a game where Norris was out there and he could barely walk. I've got to give him some props for that.
Also- we lost Lane Burroughs as a hitting coach. Yes, Cohen is really the hitting coach, but while Lane was a very good recruiter, he was not a great coach. I know a lot of people may not like the hiring of Mingione, but he may be a better coach as far as assisting Cohen- and that may help us out as well. We will see. We'll also see what Jake Wells brings to the table. I have been pretty impressed with Mingione as a recruiter thus far, though.
And as far as Vandy and LSU- Vandy recently lost their pitching coach Derek Johnson, to the Cubs a month or two ago. They also lost their hitting coach to Oklahoma State as their head coach. That is going to affect them. LSU fans are already kind of skeptical of Manieri right now after the Stony Brook debacle. There's a lot of pressure around that program at the moment. We'll see how that affects them this year. Arkansas is in good shape.
