Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
Maybe so! I want to do some research on this at the end of the year.

I have a feeling it's different for each team to be honest.

We may be the most puzzling of the three because I think our pitching coach mysteriously bottomed out. I don't think ours was talent related really. And I don't totally buy the we were reading our press clippings theory. Although maybe Foxhall did and the rest of the staff suffered and that affected the rest of the team. Although at the same time there was some evidence of potential pitching fallout before but I think Landon Sims and Will Bednar were just too good to screw up and they covered up a LOT. When they were injured or left then the damn broke. We severely underdeveloped Cade Smith, Parker Stinnett, Jackson Fristoe, KC Hunt, Eric Cerentola, and etc. It's worth noting that Auburn's team ERA is 10th in the SEC right now and 12th in SEC games at over 7.

Ole Miss was a case of basically being "that's baseball" Fresno State. They were the last team in and simply got hot and Dave Van Horn made some mind numbing WTF? decisions earning him the nickname the Mike Martin of the SEC. They lost a good bit of their team and had some injuries to their ace and then the bottom fell out on them.

LSU having watched them a good bit even last year I felt like they had two generational players in Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes basically doing the heavy lifting with Tommy White as a supporting guy who could pop a home run at any time. The rest of the team in and of itself was good but didn't really stand out to me that much- and I felt like the bullpen was a weakness even last year. Then Thatcher Hurd got hot for them at the right time otherwise they probably don't quite win it. In other words they sold their soul to get a generational pitcher and were unable to replace him with another generational pitcher because there wasn't one in the portal.
I think our situation was a combined effect of Foxhall just giving up/checking out or whatever you want to call it AND we basically missed out on the first year of the transfer portal. We were still playing in Omaha while other teams were pillaging all the overlooked talent out there. They got better and we didn't. All of that spilled into last season too.