Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
Having seen how things have played out here is what I think essentially happened with Lemonis.

We got him from Indiana which has ZERO expectations in baseball. He has a winning season there he's great. No one is paying attention. Make a regional and the 100 fans that do care are ecstatic. When does basketball season start? Also, he had Kyle Bunn has his pitching coach so he didn't have Foxhall there.

He gets the MSU job. And really you can't ask for a better situation. Veteran team coming off of an Omaha appearance with a couple of wins in the CWS with several future first round picks on the roster in addition to guys like Mangum, TA, MacNamee. In other words- screwing it up would be impressive. So, the team wins and keeps on rolling. But the "bad" thing about that is I think it may have lulled Lemonis into a false sense of security. I don't think he realized the level of detail that fans demand at MSU and things that were happening at times were overlooked because TA would win the game in the 9th or Landon Sims would come in for a struggling pitcher and put the fire out and then strike out the side in the 9th.

Then the MSU icons left for the pros and Foxhall fell off of a cliff at the same time. Lemonis got on the hot seat, but I think he has gradually learned about what the expectations that fans have here are. The first big move he made was firing Foxhall midseason and then getting Parker. He also corrected the defense and while yes, the improved pitching is part of that a lot of it is a new emphasis on that. But we now see issues with baserunning and our hitting approach for most of the year has been poor until the past three weeks.

Now that he is almost definitely coming back for 2025 I'm going to be curious to see if Lemonis will take the lessons that he has learned the past few years and become an even better coach.
You can add disconnect with the players. Work ethics lacking. Good thoughts Todd, it's called plain laziness. But things are getting better and we still need some improvements.

Btw, the weekend series should tell us how we really stack up in the coming weeks. I'm thinking it should be close games, I do think the first two will and the third may be iffy.
Just win!