Four things stand out to me about MSU baseball...

[goldenwavedawg]

1. Warrennolan.com has our strength of schedule at number 3 as of today. And yes, I realize playing in the SEC gives you a high SoS but 3rd with our own Bad News Bears is too tough a steak to chew.

2. We have lost our projected closer (Dixon) #1pitcher (Routt), 3rd baseman(Parks), CF ( Brownlee), possible 2B (Rawdow). I'm not sure how Pace figures in. Of course, none of these individually can't be overcome. However, in total almost half of our projected starters aren't able to play. No quality depth then becomes a factor. Hell, Bussey is less of a liability than Frost.

3. In baseball the number of years to rebuild really is number of recruiting classes. For instance, for a coach to turn it around in "two years" really should equal "two recruiting classes." Baseball commitments happen 12-14 months before the freshmen enter college. By in large a college coach can't significantly impact the recruiting for his first year. He has to play the cards that he was dealt.

4. Our JC recruiting is a failure to this point. No surprise Runey Davis went pro. Trey Johnson and Jaron Shepherd have been horrible disappointments. Jaron might should have grabbed the cash in retrospect. Those that called Trey the best all around layer on the team were obviously seeing a different person than I do . Dixon and Statz blew out arms. At least Corey Collins has s sub 5 ERA but that's in only 14 innings.

I thought we would see more improvement this year. We may very well see some by year end. I will allow our SoS could be masking some slight improvement.

Reluctantly, I have adjusted my expectations and now expect to see significant improvement in all phases of the game and in the record next year. By the end of next season we should be quite good.

Two years from now should be light years ahead of last year's and this year's team. If not, it's a coaching issue.

 

[Todd4State]

I do think that part of the problem is we're simply playing teams that are way better than us. We only have two losses vs teams that aren't ranked. So, we've beaten "who we're supposed to" for the most part- I still think we should have won at least two out of three vs SELU. That series is killing us. If we had won two out of three, we would be 18-14 right now instead of 16-16. I think that's big in terms of morale, especially with SBW coming up. But, it is what it is. Conversely, we have only beaten two ranked teams this year- Western Kentucky and South Carolina.

I agree about the injuries, I think Pace would have helped the bullpen out. I've never been high on Statz, and I don't think he will ever help us out very much. I have to wonder about the future of Brownlee with all of his injuries, which really go back to his high school days, I just wonder if he's just going to get tired of getting hurt all the time. I also wonder where Rawdow fits in short term with all of the middle infield guys that we're bringing in. But as far as this year, there is no doubt he would have been better than Frost offensively, and likely would have been at least as good defensively, if not better.

The scary thing about Trey Johnson is that the coaches were the ones that thought he might be our best all around player. But as always, it's buyer beware with JUCO's. I think Jaron has played a little bit better lately. I know he had a lot of trouble adjusting in the fall, and maybe he is just now starting to come around. If he can start hitting, he could be a major weapon for us.

 

[JacksonDevilDog]

that they are going to sign 2 more Juco bats for this upcoming recruiting class. They expect to get two more high school commitments (juniors) in the next month. I expect one of those to be Senquez Golson from Pascagoula. He also said that they are about to get two commitments from high school sophomores. He said that you should only take one of two sophomores, but you have to be 100% on scouting and evaluating them.