We can blame TJ and you can't really disagree; but the fact is if we hit the ball ANY the last 3 sec games, we're in a position to win the sec.
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Screw this putting Stovall at the nine. Why not bench Alexander and Poole and bat Lovelady at the nine, move Stovall up to the seven hole, put Bragg in the eight spot and have Macnamee and Vansau hitting sixth and seventh. That would shore up our lineup and make it at least servicable. Batting Lovelady Alexander and Poole together is a big reason why we have lost our last three SEC games. When one player has 30% of your strikeouts and three of those guys have half of your strikeouts, you have to fix the lineup right? If Cann does nothing and keeps the lineup as is, my prediction is we have a very short SEC tournament and post season.
Bragg was MIA.. don't even think he dressed .. he is obviously a *****
I have been telling everyone for months LA isn't a SEC caliber player.
This isn't on Cann.
It's obvious AD Cohen was spending more time getting groomed for the AD gig than he was recruiting position players..
Or maybe we can actually play the best players for a change. I mean I know it was Troy but we scored 10 runs on Tuesday doing that.
Bragg has been ill. That's part of the reason he hasn't been playing lately. Poole however should not play. RF is not an elite defensive position. The only way we could justify playing Poole would be if he was Hunter Renfroe good defensively and he's not.
We need more power somewhere in our lineup. And get Stovall up in the order...
Stovall 2B
Mangum CF
Rooker 1B
Gridley SS
Cody LF
Bragg 3B
Macnamee RF
Vansau DH
Lovelady C
Something like that. Look at what swapping Poole & LA for Macnamee & Bragg does to our lineup. We go from our run potential stopping in the 5 hole, to it never really stopping until Lovelady...and Josh has been the better of the 3 in the black hole
The buck stops with Cohen but I wonder how much of it was Mingione.
I think Butch recruited some quality pitchers- it's just that most of them have gotten hurt.
At any rate I ultimately think it was a breakdown in recruiting philosophy. Oh we lost Austin Riley to MLB? OK- let's get Tanner Poole from JUCO. People thought I went off the deep end when I complained about that philosophy two years ago but I don't think anyone will disagree with it or think I am "melting" now.
That's where I think/hope Cann will help us going forward- our recruiting problem has boiled down to losing too many guys to the draft, losing too many juniors to the draft, and not having a quality contingency plan in place when we lose a player to the draft.
I heard Ben McDonald talking about LSU tonight- Kramer Robertson, Cole Freeman, Deichman, Poche- ALL returned to LSU. What kind of team would they be right now without those guys? What kind of team would we be with Austin Sexton, Jack Kruger, Zac Houston, and maybe Nate Lowe? Cann is a big reason why those guys came back.
Lettuce on sps said Lange mouthed "f' you" to Cann after the 6th. Our swagger seems to be gone
Actually I hope some of our freshmen OF's beat out MacNamee and Vansau. No guarantee on that though- but the guys we have coming in have much higher ceilings. I think the Cape will do LA some good. I think Skelton frames pitches better than Lovelady already. We'll see how he does this summer and that will probably give us an indication on what kind of jumps we will see. My guess is Skelton will be around .250 next year and put up numbers similar to Lovelady this year.
My guess is about 4-6 recruits and then Rooker and that's probably about it other than Cody and Lovelady. I could see someone taking a flyer on Rigby and Bragg and I could see them leaving kind of like Paul Young and Vance Tatum did last year.
Most of the recruits that I think we will lose are JUCO guys- Pearson McMahan, Rey Rivieria, and Troy Bacon. I think we lose Quenton Holmes. I could see Anderson and Hutchinson being risks but I think there is a decent chance we get both.
Yeah- they're not bad players. Them starting is not out of the realm of possibility at all. Both of them need to work on their defense a little bit. But I think there's going to be a lot of competition out there. I think everyone will benefit from Cann in the fall and offseason next year. Jordan Anderson if we get him is an Under Armour AA guy and Tanner Allen is the guy that Manieri was pissed at Cann for "poaching". He's the kind of guy LSU typically gets that is able to contribute as a freshman. Owen Lovell could figure in the mix and possibly start as well.
Tanner Poole is really going to have to step it up this summer too.
Cann didn't put our class together aside from a couple of guys. I think getting guys into school is as much about identifying high end guys that actually really do want to go to school vs just sweet talking them into coming to school. That's actually where Cann's scouting ties come into play.
I don't expect to see changes with that until next year and then by 2019 we'll start seeing typical Cann classes in terms of both rating and retention. Right now I think Perfect Game has our next three classes rated in the top 10 already.