State of MSU at the Midway Point of SEC play
If you look at the season as a whole we have improved but we are still not up to the MSU standard. Some people may say "well we should have fired Lemonis last year" but the reality is I am glad that we gave him every reasonable chance to fix the program. He can't say that- and more importantly future candidates for MSU baseball can't say that either. Support isn't just about fans although that is certainly part of it- it's also about the support from major boosters and the athletic department staff and being too quick to fire and not give chances to fix things can drive away potential candidates and make things worse. That's why my stance was to keep him for this year which I still think was the right decision for the overall long term health of the program but I always had the caveat that the expectation IF he came back was to get us to at least a SR. That has also never changed. And that's still possible. However, if you look at this team what they have done and their RPI and what's left the margin of error to even get into a regional is shrinking. And that is squarely on Lemonis. If we don't get into a regional I don't think he will be back next year. I'm thinking that if we do get into a regional it's going to be as a three seed somewhere probably with a difficult draw. The bottom line is this team isn't where it should be. And here's why I think that is.
1. Lemonis is not a very good leader. It feels like he wants or expects the players to lead themselves. That works with Jake Mangum and Tanner Allen. It doesn't work if you don't have people like that. And the coach has to lead and set the tone. Yes, there does need to be some leadership from the players but it really feels like there is none at that top and we're just hoping Johnny Long can lead us to a SR. These are 18-23 year old young men. There's probably a good reason why most generals and CEO's aren't that age.
2. Lemonis lacks attention to detail. We see this in the form of little things like our schedule being the last to be put out as fans. We also see it in the form of the baserunning circus every week. We see it in the form of the same people playing no matter how bad they're struggling. We see it in the form of bad defense last year. We see it in the form of lack of player development from year to year. The biggest indictment to me was still Johnny Long's interview after the Central Arkansas loss when he very carefully talked about how the team lacks focus for midweek games. I know he wasn't trying to call out Lemonis and was trying to send a message to his teammates but it had to make you wonder "what the hell was Lemonis doing then?" The infamous Augie Garrido videos that are the internet where he is chewing an absolutely new asshole into everyone on the team? At least one was after a midweek game that I think Texas WON. After we lost to UCA our guys probably signed some autographs and went to the Bin and picked up some college girls.
3. Lemonis is too hands off with his assistants which goes back to number one. Why was Foxhall allowed to do what he did? Why didn't he step in? And with Gautreau this year our approach is like a PG Travel Ball team. If Gautreau isn't going to tell Hines and Jordan to stop overswinging when they have two strikes- guess who needs to? Yes- Chris- YOU. We make zero offensive adjustments. And our SEC batting is actually better than OOC games because our approach is so horrendous and NO ONE does anything about it. Hines has probably cost himself at least 250K-500K because he refuses to adjust. Yes, you don't want to totally micromanage but sometimes the HEAD COACH has to step in and do something. We can't decide on a closer because Lemonis refuses to pitch a guy more than once on the weekend. It cost us Saturday. And what else does Tyson Hardin need to do to get a legit chance? He looked great on Friday. He only threw 12 pitches- he should have been available for Saturday for at least one inning. If anything he should have let Stevens pitch Friday in the 9th and Hardin the next night. And it's not like pitching these guys once a weekend is preventing Tommy John injuries with this staff.
4. Lemonis's in game feel is AWFUL. When I saw the starting lineup today I really thought someone was trolling. It's a big WTF? fest. We started a freshman who isn't a power hitter at DH with a batting average of .000. WHHHHHHYYYYY??? We put in LH pinch hitters to face LH pitchers. We put in LHP to face RH hitters. We let our submarine guy throw to LH hitters who usually tee off on submarine guys and then take him out when a RH hitter comes up- which are the hitters that submarine guys usually eat up. It's baseball 101 fails left and right and there is no common sense to any of it. Cohen did some crazy stuff but at least he could pretty much always back it up which is one reason why I liked him. Lemonis can't back his moves up though.
5. Lemonis's recruiting- actually pretty good! The problem is he is so bad in every other area no one gets developed and reaches their potential. If you want to blame the players you can- but you're off base. They have zero leadership and the leadership that is there expects them to figure everything out. Saban had five star recruits at every position and HE didn't treat his players like that. It's the same in baseball. But we're going to lose a lot of players next year- So what? No matter who the coach is we're going to hit the portal hard. We're not going to sit here and stand pat. Might as well hire someone that can identify and attract players.
MSU needs to get back to detail oriented baseball like we had under Polk and Cohen in all five phases of the game- pitching, defense, hitting for power, hitting for average and getting on base, and putting pressure on the other team with speed. And MSU fans need to decide if they want a team that plays with energy and passion or if they want a team that that plays like an Upward Rec League baseball team- but the fact of the matter is MSU baseball has always been better with players that played hard and played with energy and passion and pissed off the other team so that's the camp I'm in.
If I were in MSU's AD shoes the first two guys I call are Pollard and Haire after Vitello tells me no. Any one of those three can fix this mess and make everyone happy. We're close enough to making a regional that we're not a complete dumpster fire either plus we'll pay so we should be able to get someone good. Oh- and we don't have Cohen messing up the search either like he did the last two coaching searches.