I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

grasp the importance of, including our resident baseball Jesus. Our pitching is horrible.

We are at eleventh, and a long way from 10th with a team ERA of 6.39. Georgia has put together one of the worst staffs in the history of the SEC and has the 12th spot locked up. Any other year, that's where we would be. Last year, we were at 6.59.

Butch Thompson has to go. I looked at Thompson's numbers during his SEC stint. His pitching staffs' average ERA is 4.96, not including his two State staffs. That puts you in the bottom half of the SEC this year. If you factor in his staffs at State, the number is 5.30. At Auburn, coming off of a staff with an ERA of 3.89 (very good), his first staff was 5.15. His last staff there was at 4.86. I think that's important because those would be some guys he recruited and developed. His last staff at Georgia was 4.88. Cardinals pitcher Mitchell Boggs was never very good under him. There was lots of turnover on his Auburn staffs. Were people leaving? Injuries? I wish I knew the story on that.

Thompson is heralded as a good recruiter. So was Ed Orgeron. That didn't mean anything until he left. Our guys are not getting any better. Look at Bole the last two weekends. Look at Girodo. Stratton has not improved over the course of the year.

So Todd, with all due respect, we can gripe all day about our defense (which definitely adds to the problem), as well as our range. But until we get a pitching coach that is worth a damn in here, we are going to suck. I'd wager that if we led the league in fielding percentage, we might be 4-5 games better, record wise at the most. I'll be very disappointed if Thompson is around next year. I think Cohen basically turns over pitching to his PC. Our bats have come around and been average. Think about this. We've lost 11 straight games. Over those 11 games, we've averaged 6.55 runs per game. The lack of development of this staff is inexcusable. I think if Cohen leaves Thompson on board, that will seal Cohen's fate. We need a new pitching coach now.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

grasp the importance of, including our resident baseball Jesus. Our pitching is horrible.

We are at eleventh, and a long way from 10th with a team ERA of 6.39. Georgia has put together one of the worst staffs in the history of the SEC and has the 12th spot locked up. Any other year, that's where we would be. Last year, we were at 6.59.

Butch Thompson has to go. I looked at Thompson's numbers during his SEC stint. His pitching staffs' average ERA is 4.96, not including his two State staffs. That puts you in the bottom half of the SEC this year. If you factor in his staffs at State, the number is 5.30. At Auburn, coming off of a staff with an ERA of 3.89 (very good), his first staff was 5.15. His last staff there was at 4.86. I think that's important because those would be some guys he recruited and developed. His last staff at Georgia was 4.88. Cardinals pitcher Mitchell Boggs was never very good under him. There was lots of turnover on his Auburn staffs. Were people leaving? Injuries? I wish I knew the story on that.

Thompson is heralded as a good recruiter. So was Ed Orgeron. That didn't mean anything until he left. Our guys are not getting any better. Look at Bole the last two weekends. Look at Girodo. Stratton has not improved over the course of the year.

So Todd, with all due respect, we can gripe all day about our defense (which definitely adds to the problem), as well as our range. But until we get a pitching coach that is worth a damn in here, we are going to suck. I'd wager that if we led the league in fielding percentage, we might be 4-5 games better, record wise at the most. I'll be very disappointed if Thompson is around next year. I think Cohen basically turns over pitching to his PC. Our bats have come around and been average. Think about this. We've lost 11 straight games. Over those 11 games, we've averaged 6.55 runs per game. The lack of development of this staff is inexcusable. I think if Cohen leaves Thompson on board, that will seal Cohen's fate. We need a new pitching coach now.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

grasp the importance of, including our resident baseball Jesus. Our pitching is horrible.

We are at eleventh, and a long way from 10th with a team ERA of 6.39. Georgia has put together one of the worst staffs in the history of the SEC and has the 12th spot locked up. Any other year, that's where we would be. Last year, we were at 6.59.

Butch Thompson has to go. I looked at Thompson's numbers during his SEC stint. His pitching staffs' average ERA is 4.96, not including his two State staffs. That puts you in the bottom half of the SEC this year. If you factor in his staffs at State, the number is 5.30. At Auburn, coming off of a staff with an ERA of 3.89 (very good), his first staff was 5.15. His last staff there was at 4.86. I think that's important because those would be some guys he recruited and developed. His last staff at Georgia was 4.88. Cardinals pitcher Mitchell Boggs was never very good under him. There was lots of turnover on his Auburn staffs. Were people leaving? Injuries? I wish I knew the story on that.

Thompson is heralded as a good recruiter. So was Ed Orgeron. That didn't mean anything until he left. Our guys are not getting any better. Look at Bole the last two weekends. Look at Girodo. Stratton has not improved over the course of the year.

So Todd, with all due respect, we can gripe all day about our defense (which definitely adds to the problem), as well as our range. But until we get a pitching coach that is worth a damn in here, we are going to suck. I'd wager that if we led the league in fielding percentage, we might be 4-5 games better, record wise at the most. I'll be very disappointed if Thompson is around next year. I think Cohen basically turns over pitching to his PC. Our bats have come around and been average. Think about this. We've lost 11 straight games. Over those 11 games, we've averaged 6.55 runs per game. The lack of development of this staff is inexcusable. I think if Cohen leaves Thompson on board, that will seal Cohen's fate. We need a new pitching coach now.

 

[DAWG101]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Granted they had no where to go but up, but Thompson deserves some credit for that

 

[Irondawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Maybe Devin and Caleb are better but both have been pretty bad recently. Devin's stuff is too good to keep having as much trouble as he's having. He went into the year expected to be the closer or a weekend starter and he couldn't nail down one of those jobs.

Caleb looked great early this year but don't know if it's dead arm or what but he's been getting hit a lot harder lately.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Reed has been horrible the last few times he's pitched. He had a decent outing against Arkansas, and a couple of decent long relief outings this year, but if he's improved, he's gone from crap to bad.

And of our whole pitching staff, Devin Jones has been the biggest disappointment. He has given up more big hits and walks than anybody. He's apparently got all this potential and can't do squat with hit. Again, a sign of poor coaching.

Not to mention all these injuries. I don't know why Butch is not getting hammered over Routt's injury that is basically his fault. Let's take our best pitcher and 17 with his motion in the offseason. It results in him losing his movement on his fastball and getting pounded and then getting hurt. And Watson and Bracewell pitch for us and they are hurt. We'll conveniently not blame Butch for that either, even though they've been at State for the better part of 9 months.

 

[8dog]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

that's unbelievable. They hit .330 against us last year.

 

[maroonmania]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

scored double digits in 3 of our last 5 conference games AND LOST THEM ALL. That is just pure mind boggling. And in the other 2 we scored 6 and 8 runs so its not like we were shut down in those. Its just beyond unreal that our pitching staff and defense can be this horrible year after year now.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

....it's even more mind-boggling. We've lost 9 straight SEC games. In those 9 games, we've averaged <font size="5"><span style="font-weight: bold;">8 runs per game.</span></font>

I have absolutely seen enough of Thompson. 8 runs per game should win you 8 out of 9 at a minimum.

 

[cowbell9]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

...problem. And Im not saying we shouldnt have thrown them. We had to. However, rare;ly do you see a fresh pitcjher excel in his first year. This staff will end up being phenomenal. They are taking their lumps right now, but give them an offseason and another year and we will have one of the best pitching staffs in the SEC. Cohen is out looking for bats right now, as he should be. Building a championship team from nothing takes time. I hate losing, but brighter days are ahead boys

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

..as an SEC pitching coach. He had an offseason with Routt and look what happened. Florida's throwing some true freshman, and look how they're doing. I agree that we have potential, but Thompson does not have a track record for developing guys.

I'd give anything for Pat McMahon right now.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I've said that Routt was Butch's fault, but I've said that at least four times. I don't think anyone bitches about CC Watson and Ben Bracewell's injuries because those occured before they got to campus, so I don't know how that can be put on Butch.

Devin Jones has cut his ERA in half. Has been a disappointment- yes, but only because the coaches hyped him up so much.

Caleb Reed is in his first of a totally new delivery, and he has improved a LOT since last year. I think he will be even better once he refines his motion even more.

Also, it's hard to put a number on how many games we would have won had it not been poor defense, but the game on Sat. that we lost was as much because we had a three error inning as anything, and that was but one game. I disagree with your assessment about only 4-5 games though. Look at who the best defensive team in the SEC is, and look at their record on the season, and in all likelihood it's near the top. Pitching and defense win games. I'm not saying that hitting is not important, but you can manufacture on offense. You can not cover weaknesses on defense.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

....and they are 5 games over .500. The next team is Duke. They are 4 games over .500 and 7-17 in the conference. Ont he other hand, look at the top ERA teams. Texas - 38-7. Coastal Carolina - 39-6. Oregon - 30-14.

Defense makes a difference, but I'd say our poor pitching is 85-90% of the problem. You're just ignoring things Todd. Face it, Butch sucks. He rarely been good at anything other than recruiting for his 9 years in the Sec.

It would be one thing if he had a proven track record of improving staffs and players. He does not.

Our defense is terrible, don't get me wrong. And it does have an impact, but you are overstating it big time. It's like griping about receivers running poor routes when all of your wideouts are walkons, Henig is your quarterback, and McCorvey is your OC.

Edited to add: The story on Bracewell and Watson is high school. Why is that gospel? Were they ever hurt in high school? Thompson has had them in the Fall and Spring. I'm not saying it's on Thompson totally, but to pretend like these are definitely high school injuries that only pop up 9 months are leaving high school is a little bit naive.

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Does it really matter whether we're losing more games because of our defense or our pitching? The fact is our pitching is abysmal and inexcusable. Therefore, Thompson is a failure and needs to be sent packing.

 

[57stratdawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

There isn't one pitcher on our staff that can hold a 5 run lead. I know that seems like an unsupported claim, but its true. We've blown leads of 9 and 7 (in a 7 inning game against Bama) for sure, and no telling how many more leads of 3 to 5 this season.

Our staff is a joke from top to bottom. I think coming into this season with <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">some</span> </span>talent, and injuries have crippled us. But ultimately it's Thompson's job to make sure MSU pitching does well, and dammit he has failed.

We have been swept by Ole Miss, Alabama (where we blew leads in 7 inning games), Auburn (Blew a 9-0 lead right?), Florida, Southeastern <17>ing Lousisiana, Arkansas, and still have Vandy/LSU to get swept by. There is a real chance we WILL NOT WIN A GAME AGAINST THE WESTERN DIVISION THIS YEAR.

Embarrassing..

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

that is what was reported to me. If my sources are incorrect, so be it. But I trust them on this, and they're not all that wild about Butch either.

CC's velocity went down the moment he first threw a pitch when he stepped on campus. That was after he threw in some summer league in Alabama.

Ben has a biceps injury that was known about in high school, but the MD told him that they would watch it and treat it conservatively. He had a follow up appointment, and they're going to do surgery in the offseason.

Don't you think it would be kind of odd to call Butch out on Routt and not the others if it wasn't true?

Also, go back and look at his stats from Georgia to Auburn again- his staffs improved every year that he was there except for one. I looked it up last night.

 

[brantleyjones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

The improvement in ERA argument is going by the wayside, and we still have LSU to play. That series should look a lot like the AU series, unless LSU's pitching suddenly improves.

And Caleb Reed is 0-5. He didn't look awful yesterday, but he gave up a lot of runs. If he and Devin Jones are the argument that Butch is a good pitching coach, then Butch is in a lot of trouble.

Lane was a flashback to last year. 2 batters faced, 2 batters walked, 1 run walked in.

AU's pitching staff may be worse than ours. They don't have to bat against their lineup. Most of the guys that pitch on SEC weekends are Jr's and Sr's (ie. Thompson's recruits).

But, if he helped recruit Mummey, Fletcher, Fradejas, and Morris, we might out to keep him around for something.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Actually Texas is tied for second in the country at 979, Coastal Carolina in 67th which is not bad, but they also play in a MUCH weaker conference than the SEC- they can get away with more than we can- but they're still not bad. Oregon is 90th in the country, and not coincidentally has the most losses of those three teams you mentioned.

1 Creighton 39 22-17 1044 447 31 0.980
2 Duke 46 25-21 1227 488 36 0.979
3 Florida 42 31-11 1116 456 33 0.979
4 Oklahoma St. 44 26-18 1170 434 34 0.979
5 Texas 45 38-7 1230 515 38 0.979
6 Michigan St. 42 28-14 1117 457 35 0.978
7 Virginia 48 39-9 1289 457 39 0.978
8 Alabama 45 28-17 1195 442 38 0.977
9 Boston College 44 24-20 1147 479 38 0.977
10 Pittsburgh 42 31-11 1113 469 38 0.977
11 Arizona St. 43 38-5 1152 470 39 0.977
12 Liberty 44 32-12 1184 465 41 0.976


The table above shows the top 12 defensive teams in the country. The last number is their fielding percentage. The first number after the teams name is games played, the second number is wins, and the last number is losses. Notice that all have winning records and include the number one team in the country- Virginia in the top 10. Creighton is also 240th in the country in hitting, and Duke is 250th in the country in hitting out of 292 teams. I highly suspect that the reason that those two teams have winning records is BECAUSE of their defense. They have other issues.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I see a lot of people compare us to Oregon or LSU or whoever. I think a more accurate comparison might be to Auburn.

Had crappy recruiting for years, and the team went down.

Bring in a coach that has brought in some good classes, but isn't winning.

Might end up with another coaching staff in a year or so.

Hopefully the new coach will win with the old guys players like Pawlawski is doing now.

What say ye?

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

...In his last year at both georgia and auburn, his staff got worse from the previous year. Also, he took a team with an era of 3.9 and turned them into a team with an era of 5.15.

If McCorvey's offense improved over 5 years from 105th to 95th, would that mean we should've kept him?

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

That defense is important? I certainly wouldn't argue against that... and no one else who knows anything about baseball would, either.

That it's more important than pitching? When your team ERA is 6.39, the difference between fielding .950 and .980 is pretty unimportant. You're talking about making 3 plays out of 100 vs. not making them while your pitching staff is giving almost 1 earned run per inning.

With that said, fielding percentage is a pretty worthless stat anyway because it doesn't take into account balls you're not good enough to get to. It is a decent indicator of how fundamentally sound a ball club is, and we fail.

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

 

[brantleyjones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

If Cohen sticks with Thompson (which I think he will. Running him off now would be a sign of desperation.), and Thompson, Burroughs, et al recruit their asses off, but still don't get it together (Thompson really can't coach. Cohen really is too big of an a-hole for even his recruits to play for. Either and/or.)

Pawlowski is a good coach. I thought they should have hired him when they hired Slater. It does appear to be a situation where a better coach came in, took over the talent on hand, and turned things around. On the other hand, this team is almost<span style="font-weight: bold;"> all</span> juniors. I think Slater was on a short leash because they stuck with Renfroe for so long, and Baird had gotten to pick both of them, plus his teams looked pretty much just like Renfroe's. What if he, Thompson, and whomever (I don't remember), were just a little slow getting their recruiting act together, and this would have been their year?

Probably not, but maybe. I'm not going to be Butch Thompson's Coach34, but yeah, AU's team kind of destroys the pitching wins games theory. Their pitching is <span style="font-weight: bold;">AWFUL</span>, which is what really bothers me about Butch. Under Pawlowski, though, they field well, and even with 3 batters with at least 14 HR's, they still play small ball. In the 3rd game of the LSU series, with the score tied in the bottom of the 9th, a man on 3rd, and (I think) no outs, Manieri put 5 players in the infield to prevent the suicide squeeze, and Pawlowski had the batter (Fradejas?) bunt anyway. Blake Dean had trouble getting the ball out of his mitt, and AU won the game and the series.

We're not LSU. In spite of Smoke doing exactly what I expected him to with LSU's program (he was the worst 3rd base coach I'd ever seen under Skip), there were no Louis Colemans left for Cohen by Polk. And, defend The Jewel all you want, it's a lot easier to recruit to BR than to Starkville. Those 5 NC's in the '90's (plus one) probably count a little more than our 3rd place finish in 1985 with recruits too, not counting that they've outdrawn us for several years now.

AU's coaches didn't ever let the talent level drop as low as Polk did. They always had seriously good hitters on the team, but under Slater neither the pitching nor the fielding were very good. (Polk, even in sunset, was a better coach than either Renfroe or Slater.) I think that the drop off in talent level in the field under Polk is exaggerated (or, maybe more correctly, at the plate), but there's no way to exaggerate how bad off he left the pitching staff. AU won the series last year because they had a better pitching staff, by the barest of margins, and the same is true this year, even though we had two .200 hitters in the lineup for 2 games, and 3 for one. That says a lot, because AU's staff, as I said, has been AWFUL for 2 years. Ours has been worse.

I don't really follow NCAA baseball. I follow MSU, and the SEC, so I can't really comment on Oregon. Where did they get Horton from, CSF? If so, his resume is a little better than Cohen's. It's like TX hiring Augie Garrido.

I wanted Cohen. I just hope he didn't screw up by hiring Butch. Time will tell.

 

[Phil Wenneck.sixpack]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I'm not sold on these freshmen having all that much talent to begin with. Stratton and Bracewell are the only ones to show decent stuff fairly consistently at times. We have no clue what we're getting out of the rest. I'm tired of buying the freshmen excuse at this point. Yeah you struggle and have a lot to learn when you're first thrown in the fire but at some point it becomes, you can either pitch or you can't regardless of their age. They're being treated like they need someone to go to the mound and hold their hand while they pitch because they're freshmen. We're 50 games deep. If you can pitch and have the talent to back it up, it shouldstart to show by now.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

.....and you've backed yourself into a corner.

Average winning percentage of the top ten ERA teams - .7733

Average winning percentage of the top ten fielding percentage teams - .6605

And that's conventional baseball wisdom. You'd rather have good pitching than anything else. A team with good pitching and bad defense can be successful. A team with good defense and bad pitching cannot.

Edited to add: We are young. Everybody acknowledges that. But plenty of freshman have done better than we have. We have one guy on our team with an ERA under 4. And that's Matt Lane, who's thrown 11 innings. Either our players are not getting good coaching or they are not talented. Recruiting services rank our class in the top 15. So while they may not be great, they aren't totally devoid of talent. What does that leave? A pitching coach with zero track record for developing elite level pitchers or putting together good staffs.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

That defense is important? I certainly wouldn't argue against that... and no one else who knows anything about baseball would, either.

That it's more important than pitching? When your team ERA is 6.39, the difference between fielding .950 and .980 is pretty unimportant. You're talking about making 3 plays out of 100 vs. not making them while your pitching staff is giving almost 1 earned run per inning.

With that said, fielding percentage is a pretty worthless stat anyway because it doesn't take into account balls you're not good enough to get to. It is a decent indicator of how fundamentally sound a ball club is, and we fail.

that most of our team woes are due to the fact that we are a horrible team defensively and the fact that our pitching staff is really young. I believe that pitching AND defense are equally important. As you say, fielding percentage is a stat that does not take into account ball "that you're not good enough to get to"- and guess what stat those balls end up going under if the run scores? ERA. And even if the run doesn't score, it causes a cumilative effect in the form of forcing the pitchers to throw more pitches than they should, which can force a team to go to the bullpen sooner than it should, and it causes the pitcher to tire sooner. Fielding percentage is not a great stat, and it's why there are these other stats like UZR are coming more vogue, but as far as fielding it's about the best thing that we've got to use and go by.

My point is this- if you are going to blame someone for something, look at the entire picture and not just randomly sensationalize "because it's cool". I'm not saying that Butch is good and should not be fired. I'm saying that our pitching woes are due to more than having just a "bad pitching coach". I'm saying that if you are going to say that someone should be fired, at least make it something tangible like some of the players not liking his throwing program- which is indeed the case for some, or the most tangible thing that I've seen is that his staffs are consistently mediocore in the SEC- ERA's in the 4's for the entire staff. Also, if you're going to accuse someone of injuring a pitcher, and you know that it's not true- as in the case with CC Watson, and Ben Bracewell, I think the right thing to do is stand up for that person, because that's a pretty serious accusation.

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I don't know if there is a cool Fire Butch bandwagon, but I do know the team ERA is inexcusable, and, as the pitching coach, he is directly responsible for the success or failure of the staff. Our team ERA, which also isn't perfect, still shows pretty clearly that he is failing in his responsibility, and the age/ experience argument can't account for how bad he is failing.

Another note on fielding percentage: it is a pretty decent indicator of how fundamentally sound a club is. Fielding balls that you can get to comes down to mechanics. Our fielding percentage indicates that we are not fundamentally sound. I put that on the coaching staff. To put it another way: players good enough to play college ball should be able to make routine plays more than 95% of the time. If not, there is a problem with coaching. It should be a foregone conclusion that a D-1 college player is skilled enough to make routine plays that often. When that doesn't happen, I blame the coaching staff.

In other words, I'm pretty disgusted with the staff in general.

 

[jackstefano]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Not that it makes any difference, but I completely agree with you on this. Anyone who looks at this year's results can come to only one conclusion -- your team is in a regional with even average pitching.

 

[War Machine Dawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

that most of our team woes are due to the fact that we are a horrible team defensively and the fact that our pitching staff is really young. I believe that pitching AND defense are equally important. <span style="font-weight: bold;">As you say, fielding percentage is a stat that does not take into account ball "that you're not good enough to get to"- and guess what stat those balls end up going under if the run scores? ERA.</span> And even if the run doesn't score, it causes a cumilative effect in the form of forcing the pitchers to throw more pitches than they should, which can force a team to go to the bullpen sooner than it should, and it causes the pitcher to tire sooner. Fielding percentage is not a great stat, and it's why there are these other stats like UZR are coming more vogue, but as far as fielding it's about the best thing that we've got to use and go by.

My point is this- if you are going to blame someone for something, look at the entire picture and not just randomly sensationalize "because it's cool". <span style="font-weight: bold;">I'm not saying that Butch is good and should not be fired.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">I'm saying that our pitching woes are due to more than having just a "bad pitching coach".</span> I'm saying that if you are going to say that someone should be fired, at least make it something tangible like some of the players not liking his throwing program- which is indeed the case for some, or the most tangible thing that I've seen is that his staffs are consistently mediocore in the SEC- ERA's in the 4's for the entire staff. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Also, if you're going to accuse someone of injuring a pitcher, and you know that it's not true- as in the case with CC Watson, and Ben Bracewell, I think the right thing to do is stand up for that person, because that's a pretty serious accusation.</span>

+1

/Can't be said any better

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

.....and you've backed yourself into a corner.

Average winning percentage of the top ten ERA teams - .7733

Average winning percentage of the top ten fielding percentage teams - .6605

And that's conventional baseball wisdom. You'd rather have good pitching than anything else. A team with good pitching and bad defense can be successful. A team with good defense and bad pitching cannot.

Edited to add: We are young. Everybody acknowledges that. But plenty of freshman have done better than we have. We have one guy on our team with an ERA under 4. And that's Matt Lane, who's thrown 11 innings. Either our players are not getting good coaching or they are not talented. Recruiting services rank our class in the top 15. So while they may not be great, they aren't totally devoid of talent. What does that leave? A pitching coach with zero track record for developing elite level pitchers or putting together good staffs.

Have defenses that are all in the top third of the country. The lowest being Oregon at 90. (292 teams)

Duke and Creighton also have offenses that are ranked in the lower 1/3 of all of baseball. Duke has a pitching staff that has an ERA that ranks 156, and Creighton's pitching staff is at 56. And yet, those teams still have winning records despite having deficiencies in two major areas. Why? Because they don't beat themselves. My point is if you have a bad staff, and even a bad offense, you can still manage to get a winning record if you play good defense. Not that you will be an awesome team if you play good defense alone. Like I said, you have to put all three together to be a Championship type team- pitching, defense, and hitting.


Our problem as far as the pitchers being young is that we have SO MANY of them that we are counting on NOW. Yes, there are freshmen that come in and perform, but they are normally midweek, bullpen, type guys. Or if they are weekend guys, it's usually as the Sunday starter. We're asking guys to be the Sat., Sun, closer, and take on major roles in the bullpen. People talk about Maholm- he was a special, special type talent. I wish he were with a different MLB team because I think he could be an All-Star, but I digress. There aren't many guys like that out there period. Of course, if Butch hadn't messed with Routt, then we wouldn't have to put Bole in as a Sunday guy and that would help some. But on top of our guys being young, we're hurting them even more by not fielding the ball behind them when they do make a pitch to get an out. If you don't think that kind of stuff affects a pitcher, you're flat out wrong. Heck, sometimes errors affect MLB pitchers much less a college freshmen.

Again, my point to all of this is look at the entire picture of the situation before you go out and say "Fire so and so because they suck". I'm not saying that Butch is or isn't good, or should or should not be fired. Some of this is his fault, and some of it is not. The fact that we can't play defense or have six-seven freshmen that are significant pitchers becasue we have to throw them to the wolves because we have no on better are things that are not his fault. If they don't develop or get better, then yes that would be his fault.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I don't know if there is a cool Fire Butch bandwagon, but I do know the team ERA is inexcusable, and, as the pitching coach, he is directly responsible for the success or failure of the staff. Our team ERA, which also isn't perfect, still shows pretty clearly that he is failing in his responsibility, and the age/ experience argument can't account for how bad he is failing.

Another note on fielding percentage: it is a pretty decent indicator of how fundamentally sound a club is. Fielding balls that you can get to comes down to mechanics. Our fielding percentage indicates that we are not fundamentally sound. I put that on the coaching staff. To put it another way: players good enough to play college ball should be able to make routine plays more than 95% of the time. If not, there is a problem with coaching. It should be a foregone conclusion that a D-1 college player is skilled enough to make routine plays that often. When that doesn't happen, I blame the coaching staff.

In other words, I'm pretty disgusted with the staff in general.

I wonder why the previous coaching staff didn't bring in guys that could make those plays. I would accuse the current coaching staff a little more for this except for the fact that the same players couldn't make the same plays for a totally different staff. Most of the JUCO guys except for Vickerson field pretty well- Jaron, Ogden save for the Ole Miss series, Wes Thigpen, and even Frost is better than Jet Butler as a senior- are guys that Cohen brought in. Explain to me why these players can play defense and the seniors can't? Why is Cohen supposed to teach these guys fundamentals that they should have learned in Little League?

And again, I agree that Thompson is failing to a degree, but it is also compunded by other things that we could do better that he has nothing to do with. The whole team is failing, and you have to put that on the entire coaching staff.

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

I wonder why the previous coaching staff didn't bring in guys that could make those plays. I would accuse the current coaching staff a little more for this except for the fact that the same players couldn't make the same plays for a totally different staff. Most of the JUCO guys except for Vickerson field pretty well- Jaron, Ogden save for the Ole Miss series, Wes Thigpen, and even Frost is better than Jet Butler as a senior- are guys that Cohen brought in. Explain to me why these players can play defense and the seniors can't? <span style="font-weight: bold;">Why is Cohen supposed to teach these guys fundamentals that they should have learned in Little League? </span><br style="font-weight: bold;">
And again, I agree that Thompson is failing to a degree, but it is also compunded by other things that we could do better that he has nothing to do with. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The whole team is failing, and you have to put that on the entire coaching staff.</span>

Because he's the coach, and that's his job? It doesn't matter who recruited them. He's the coach now.

I agree that the entire coaching staff is responsible for this cluster<17>. I'm all for giving a coach time to turn things around, but there are certain things that just shouldn't happen from Day 1 if the coach is competent. Not being able to make a routine play in baseball is one of those things, because talent level is much less of a factor compared to the importance of, say, sound mechanics or mental toughness. It's sort of in the same boat as conditioning or "relentless effort". If the football team shows up in Week 1 in terrible shape and cramping up in the 2nd half, you don't blame the players for not being talented enough to play for 4 quarters. You blame the coaches for not having them ready.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

....I've just shown you statistically that ERA is a much better correlation to wins than fielding percentage. If you don't want to accept that, you are being stubborn. You can't compare apples to apples and say that defense is more important or anywhere near AS important as pitching. Sure bad defense adds to ERA in a tangential way, but it's not the main culprit of our horrible season. The main culprit of our season is our poor performance on the mound. Period. We walk too many guys and we give up too many hits.

And as far as Butch goes, you don't know for sure what has caused these guys arm injuries. I'm not saying that Butch is responsible. I'm only saying that to completely trust that both of these injuries occurred in high school and Butch had nothing to do with it is just not being objective at all. Those players themselves probably don't even know that for sure.

 

[War Machine Dawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

You're right, Todd isn't being objective. If you give up 4-5 extra earned runs over the course of a weekend because your D can't get to balls most other teams can, how is that the pitching coach's fault? If a guy throws at a certain velocity in HS, but his velocity isn't the same on the first day he gets to campus, that's called a pre-existing injury. When that same pitcher has to be shutdown for arm injury, it's probably a safe bet the pre-existing injury was the reason. How is that the pitching coach's fault? When the staff and pitcher are told "Kid, there's a biceps injury. We'll try to treat it conservatively and let you pitch." When the existing injury doesn't respond, how is that the coach's fault? Downtown Dumbass is officially back.

 

[DowntownDawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

....

If you give up 4-5 extra earned runs over the course of a weekend
because your D can't get to balls most other teams can

Go ahead and prove that, SPD. Is that the seeing eye test you are applying?

When that same pitcher has to be shutdown for arm injury, it's probably a
safe bet the pre-existing injury was the reason. How is that the
pitching coach's fault? When the staff and pitcher are told "Kid,
there's a biceps injury. We'll try to treat it conservatively and let
you pitch." When the existing injury doesn't respond, how is that the
coach's fault?

Glad to know you were sitting in the meeting with the doctor.

 

[SanfordRJones]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

All these numbers are from ncaa.com, which doesn't appear to have been updated since this weekend.

Fielding percentage:
Creighton is #1 at .980. Florida A&M is dead last at .914. Assuming there are roughly 50 plate appearances per team per game (a little more than 4 times through the order), the difference between #1 and #292 is 3 errors per game (a little over 6 errors per 100 comes out to 3 errors per 50 PA, which I'm assuming is about the number of PA in a 9-inning game). In other words, FAMU adds a defensive inning per game compared to Creighton. We are #216 at .955. That's a difference of 2.5 percentage points between #1 and #216, which is a little over 1 error per game.

Pitching:
UVA is #1 at 3.58. Chicago St. is #292 at 12.73 (ouch). That's a difference of about 9 runs per game. We are at 5.94 (#149), a difference of about 2.4 runs per game.

So, would you rather give up a difference of 3 extra outs per game, or 9 extra runs? Would you rather give up 2.4 extra runs or 1 extra error?

This isn't rocket science.

 

[War Machine Dawg]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

That the range of Butler, Vickerson, Duffy, et. al is as good as that of their counterparts at other SEC schools? Because if you do, you obviously don't watch much baseball. And is it such a stretch to think that we're giving up at least 1 extra earned run per game due to piss poor range of our D? I really don't think it's a stretch to say we're giving up 3-5 extra runs over the course of a weekend because there are balls we just can't get to. It might not make a difference in the W-L column, but giving up 3-5 less earned runs every weekend makes ERA look better. Still not good, but better. No one is saying Butch is doing a stellar job. But continue making it sound like we are and ignoring the other factors outside of Butch's control to fit your agenda.

 

[bill brasky.sixpack]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

3-5 runs over a weekend because of our lack of range, that is just in know way true, and an absurd statement. Our pitching sucks there is no other way to look at it. Yeah our defense is shoddy, but if we have a good defense, our ERA would probably still be about same, but we would have more wins more than likely just by eliminating the massive amounts of earned runs we have given up

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

If I suck at baseball, but am offered a scholarship by John Cohen nonetheless and I suck at baseball while Cohen is there and he gets fired and MSU hires Joe Torre and I still suck at baseball when he is the coach, it's Joe Torre's fault that I suck because he couldn't teach me baseball fundamentals?

Why isn't it that some people just suck?

I would agree with you 100% that it is the coaches except for the fact that these guys sucked before Cohen, and I have a feeling that they will suck after they leave MSU should some organization be foolish enough to sign them on after they graduate.

Was it Dan Mullen's fault that Tyson Lee sucked last year to?

My point is why were we recruiting guys that couldn't play defense? None of these seniors were known to be good defenders in high school. It's not like they were solid glovemen and then they get to MSU and all of a sudden they're scared of ground balls.

 

[Todd4State]

I think there is something on the baseball front that many on this board don't quite.....

Maybe because you don't WANT to get it.

Let me spell it out for you.

Duke sucks at pitching and hitting.

Duke is good at defense.

Duke has a winning record barely despite sucking at hitting and pitching BECAUSE of their defense. They would have a losing record if thier defense sucked.

You are acting like I said that defense alone would win us a championship or drop our team ERA by four runs or something. I've always said what? Pitching and defense win in baseball. Believe me- I know how important pitching is. You can look at our last few teams and see that. You are also totally glossing over the fact that our defense is rated in the 200's. Bad defense- yes, I'm sorry, AND a young pitching staff is a bad recipe- I don't care how you look at it. Bottom line- errors lead to runs. That's a fact. Is our pitching great? No. But when you have a bad defense and you are extending innings, you are not helping them, and despite what you want to believe, that's not Butch Thompson's fault unless he coaches defense and I'm not aware of it.

You are also totally glossing over the fact that the teams that you mentioned all have team defenses that are at worst in top of half of the nation. Imagine that! And tell me, how does that prove you right? Because teams that pitch well have good defenses behind them? Hmmm....that sounds famliar.

As far the injuries- OK, explain to me how Ben Bracewell went TO A DOCTOR in HIGH SCHOOL and found out the injury before he threw a pitch for Butch isn't objective? How does it get any less objective? And if the players don't know for sure themsleves as you say, how do you know that it was definately Butch then? And then you accuse me of not being objective? Seriously?