Todd4State's thoughts- Make MSU Baseball Great Again

[KB21]

Actually, baseball classes are ranked at signing and then ranked again in September/October when they see who actually made it to campus. The collegiate baseball recruiting rankings tend to come out in October.

[BrunswickDawg]

I might be misremembering but didn't Cohen do some of this to level the playing field when he got here? It seems like Polk had more of an agenda so we kind of suffered for it. My cousin got a lot of scholarship money to go to UAB because my uncle and aunt looked for it. They figured out there is a lot of scholarship money that isn't used because people just don't know to apply for it.

I'm pretty sure Cohen did - but there is still a limited amount of money to go around. The more those funds grow, the better it is for the university as a whole. The side effect is more money for "walk-ons" on academic scholarships that cover a larger piece of the pie.

[HSVDawg]

I once again counter your argument with "how is Ole Miss doing it so consistently under the same set of rules"? Don''t sit there and tell me it's not possible or it's too hard to do, when I witness it yearly happening with our instate rival.

You put our program in Regionals 14 of the next 16 years like OM has been doing...we'll win a National Title or multiple. And they'll do it too...at this rate before us, bc they are a model of consistency whereas we're a lightning in a bottle crapshoot yearly that is dependent on Jucos as to how good or bad we'll be. We CAN and SHOULD go to Regionals every single year...but it's going to take a better approach in order to achieve it. Gotta work smarter and harder, like Todd said in the OP

Ole Miss really hasn't been all that more consistent than we have since we stabilized in 2011 after the Polk II disaster. The only difference between the programs since that time are that they didn't sign a turd recruiting class in 2014, which was the sole reason behind our 2015 struggles and much of our struggles this year. They also didn't have their roster decimated by 7 Tommy John surgeries. That's what I don't get about these comparisons to the consistency of Ole Miss. People say OM has been to 16 straight regionals or whatever and insinuate we have been off that path of consistency for some time when it is really been just the past 2 or 3 years. And what happened before 2011 is all ancient history that was entirely attributed to Polk II, so there is no need to rehash all that yet again.

At the end if the day though, I do certainly agree that we need to go to the regionals every year....once we stabilize the program. We were very stable from 2011-2014, then hit a rough patch caused by one really bad class. I think once Cann gets a couple of recruiting classes under his belt we can certainly expect that again.

[HSVDawg]

You set up a mother f'ing scholarship fund to cover the differences in the lottery scholarships. It's not f'ing hard.

Sounds easy enough. I'm sure no one at the NCAA (nor Bracky) will notice that we have a dedicated academic scholarship fund that is only given to baseball players. The NCAA tightly monitors any disbersements of academic funding to athletes. The only way you can get away with it is to set up a trust scholarship similar to what Vandy has that gives out "leadership scholarships" based on extracurricular participation. And even with those, you have to set out a whole hell of a lot of money because you have to give it out to all students (not just baseball players). There are things that can be done to close the gap somewhat, but they have to be done carefully and they have to be all-inclusive of all students.

[Todd4State]

Todd - acceptance is the first stage of admitting you have a problem.....

I'm going to play asshole in this thread. Other than attendance/atmosphere, why do people think we should be some sort of dominant baseball power? I swear, we are as bad as the guys in Oxford pining for 1960. The fact is we have a very good history, but we never have been in the same league as the top powers over the years. We have never had a decade long run of making the NCAA post season. In the past 45 years, we have not won back to back SEC titles, or back to back SEC Tourneys. In the past 45 years, we have been to the NCAA post season 30 times, but have only made it to Omaha 9 times. That is one trip to Omaha every 5 years. That is not a team with some birthright place in NCAA lore. It is a solid baseball program that can put together a solid post season with a group of seasoned vets every few years. Our baseball program is the pride of the school because it is the only program with any type of consistent winning and national profile throughout our history. So, there is no FIX for returning MSU Baseball to some sort of mythical dominance. It never existed.

If we continue to make that mythical past our goal, our baseball program will suffer the same fate as the OM football team - consistent turnover because expectations are never met, shortcuts taken to return to glory without building a solid foundation (you can argue Cohen did this last year), and a continually angry fanbase.

There is a HUGE difference between MSU baseball and Ole Miss football.

1. We've actually legitimately played for a NC and have done so within the last five years.

2. We've won the SEC within the last five years.

3. We didn't have to cheat excessively to do it.

My point is maybe we've never had some "sort of mythical dominance" because we aren't or haven't totally utilized the resources that we have. We should look at the resources that we have and utilize them better- because whether you think we are or are not a baseball superpower and I think we all agree that losing seasons are totally unacceptable. When we have two in three years- there needs to be a long look taken at the program. And yes, I'm assuming we have a losing season this year. I hope I'm wrong. And here's some perspective on our CWS appearances compared to the rest of the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_World_Series

As you can see we're easily top 20 historically- and probably better than that because we're more relevant than a couple of those teams- namely Northern Colorado. Also scroll down to "Most CWS appearances without a title."

I'm past the admitting/acceptance phase- I'm at the what do we do to fix it stage? Last year on this board it was pretty well established that we should be at least a two seed in a regional every year. I think that's more than reasonable for what we have at MSU. I think others have had some good things to add to this discussion- and the thing I agree with the most is MSU needs to pay more attention to baseball than it does. Yes, I know we're building a new stadium. I think Cohen can help the baseball program out immensely as an AD- it would be nice if he acts as a GM figure for us. We need him to help Cann find scholarship money legally. We need our baseball friends- the former players namely the big leaguers and ex-big leaguers and then people like Roy Oswalt and Marcus Thames that are MSU fans but didn't play for us, and not to mention MLB scouts that are MSU alums and coaches to help get the best players to MSU. We need friendly local pressure on recruits to attend MSU before going pro. What I mean by that is we need our fans to stop saying "Golly gee you should go ahead and take that pro ball money, I don't blame you"- but at the same time we don't need to go all South Panola/Oxford and threaten them and their families within an inch of their lives either. Tell recruits that we want them to come to MSU and help us win a NC and then after that they will make more money after we make them into the next Hunter Renfroe. That happens at LSU. And if they still go pro- then wish them well. And don't get me started on the people that don't think that we deserve a good baseball stadium because the team is having a bad year. Cadaver took care of that for me today anyway.

I actually think Cann is the right kind of coach for us- has pro ties, has LSU ties, is young and is very energetic. I think the biggest thing is he needs his own staff and especially his own pitching coach. I think we probably need a new S&C guy. We especially need to look at recruiting- we should not have to rely on JUCO's as much as we do and JUCO's or not classes like 2014 which is killing us now are totally unacceptable by any MSU standard high or low. I hope I see those changes made in the offseason.

I think the new stadium will signify a new era of MSU baseball- and one that I am optimistic will be even better than we have ever seen in our lives. I'm at the point now where I want a total reboot of MSU baseball even though I've certainly enjoyed all the good times and make no mistake about that. I just want us to take it to the next level.

[The Federalist Engineer]

Give me the cliff notes.

(1) we haven't recruited high school talent for perennial success
(2) we get too many HS commitments from players that will never play college baseball
(2b) we seem to be caught by surprise by elite players signing pro-contracts
(3) we have been depending too much on last second JUCO signings to replace graduates and draftees
(4) we have been fortunate to find players like Pirtle, Lowe, Kruger, Detz, and Rigby to fill key roles

Finally
(5) if we want to be great, recruit and develop good HS players and stop raiding Northwest CC and Hinds CC for instant starters. Elite teams don't need to do that.

Sorry if I messed up what you said Todd

[Todd4State]

(1) we haven't recruited high school talent for perennial success
(2) we get too many HS commitments from players that will never play college baseball
(2b) we seem to be caught by surprise by elite players signing pro-contracts
(3) we have been depending too much on last second JUCO signings to replace graduates and draftees
(4) we have been fortunate to find players like Pirtle, Lowe, Kruger, Detz, and Rigby to fill key roles

Finally
(5) if we want to be great, recruit and develop good HS players and stop raiding Northwest CC and Hinds CC for instant starters. Elite teams don't need to do that.

Sorry if I messed up what you said Todd

I think you did a good job Cliff.

[NewDawg]

I'm going to do something a little bit different because I think everyone knows how I feel and I don't want to regurgitate that again. We have problems and I can rationalize why they are happening or at least give me opinion on that. That just means that what is happening is explainable. That, however doesn't mean it's acceptable. The bottom line is that what is going on with MSU baseball is unacceptable- and we know what the problems are. Everyone associated with MSU baseball should be pissed off right now.

Sure, we don't have lottery scholarships. That just means we don't have everything. We have a lot of things that most programs would kill for- things that even some of the lottery schools don't have. I could vent I suppose- but there's been enough of that on here. I want to talk about how to fix it. I want to talk about having a losing season maybe every 20 years instead of every other year. You can put down our program and say "it's not 1985 anymore"- but the fact is we deserve and should have better. We have shown that we can be a consistent winner throughout the years and have done some pretty good things even recently.

So how do we fix it?

I'm going to steal a line from Hugh Freeze- we got to recruit better players. I won't say that to the team's face like Freeze did though. Like Kenny Powers once said to his Mexican League team- "Right now- you suck; but don't get all defensive on me, I suck right now too." That's probably how my speech to our team would go too if I said it to their face.

Anyway- we have to change how we recruit hitters. Cohen did a good job of getting elite hitters to commit to us. He did a horrible job of getting them past the draft. Even worse was how he tried to make up for their loss. The only way to overcome that is to evaluate player's signability better. There are more and more really good players that want to go to college first. As I've said- we're not always going to get everyone we sign past the draft. Cann was not able to get everyone at LSU. That's the nature of the business- but we have to have a better idea of WHO is going to go and then make an informed decision on how to replace that player. I remember the class a couple of years ago- there was an interview with Cohen about how many guys we would get into school out of that class, and he said he felt like there was a chance we would get all of them in. We didn't- we lost Fenter, Riley, and Pickett out of that group. And I would say that most players do know whether they are going to go pro or not before the draft even happens. We HAVE TO do a better job with that.

Who do we replace those players with? Well, nowadays baseball recruiting is changing. We're seeing more and more guys flip. There are also players that simply develop later and that shows up their senior year. When you are trying to evaluate high school players, you have to remember that they develop at different rates and some will be obviously good in junior high- like Bryce Harper and some it won't be until their junior or senior year in high school like Hunter Renfroe. Those are the two avenues that I think we should use the most when replacing players. And if a guy decides to go to school because he didn't like where he was drafted or whatever- so what? Now we have two really good players. Let the coaches figure out the scholarship situation.

At the end of the recruiting cycle we need to make sure that pretty much every position is filled so that when our players are juniors they won't be young. And that needs to happen for every single class going forward. We need 11-14 commitments- 2-6 pitchers, a catcher, four infielders including a first baseman, and three outfielders. I know that's over the limit of 35- we have to process out as we need to. The ultimate goal is to get a junior laden class every year.

On the JUCO's- they have value. We saw that last year with Lowe and Kruger. The problem is we over-rely on them for key positions and as we see what happens when they don't pan out. It can get pretty ugly. But the thing about it is- we really don't need to rely on the JUCO's so much. We're one of the top programs in the country in the SEC. We should be able to attract really good high school talent and don't really need to rely on the JUCO's as much as we are. I hope Cann goes away from this- some of our classes are almost 50% JUCO guys. That's not good. JUCO's are good for sidearm/submarine guys like Rigby, catch and throw guys like Lovelady- but the others we should take very selectively. I take a JUCO it needs to be someone with D-I/power 5 experience like Lowe and Kruger, or someone that was drafted out of high school and went JUCO, or see above- an arm angle guy or a catch and throw guy. And that's it. By the time the JUCO's guys figure it out, we've really only gotten one good year out of them if that.

As far as the pitching goes- first and foremost, Cann and Cohen need to take a very long look as to why we have had so many arm injuries. The solution at this point is to patiently wait on everyone to get better. But no one else in the country has as many- again it's unacceptable for the standards that are MSU baseball and even worse we're talking about players getting hurt. We need to look not only at our pitching program but also take a long look at our S&C program. If we need to make changes with the S&C aspect of our staff we by all means need to do so. IF it's true that our S&C guy wasn't on the same page as our last pitching coach and guys have gotten injured because of it- he needs to be fired. To me- and remember my career is in rehab so I have some knowledge here even though sports rehab isn't my background- that's absolutely negligent. Let's go find the very best S&C coach for baseball out there and hire him.

Also as far as pitching goes I think Cann needs to get his own pitching coach that is HIS own guy. Right now Gary Henderson is essentially a guy trying to rehab his career and get through some things. We need a pitching coach that is just as impressive as Cann is that is upbeat and can recruit and has a MLB background like Cann. Pitching is SO key in this conference. If you don't have it, you're screwed.

What can make me feel better about this season right now? Nothing really. I do hope that they let me detonate the grandstand at Dudy-Noble this May though. That would probably be a good way to get out some pent up frustration. Or maybe they'll just let all of us at EliteDawgs have a hammer. I bet we could take down the grandstand in an hour as a group. Or even better- maybe someone from the athletic dept. could read this and actually put my ideas into action.

Great read. I agree. We grow up loving MSU Baseball. We ask these kids to come here and commit to being part of that great Hail State family. Competing for out of state kids is hard and I will tell you why. Out of state kids have to earn academic scholarship to qualify for out of state tuition waiver. So all academic money goes to out of state tuition portion. If they don't get baseball money it's a hefty price tag still to bear. If they don't have the grades and are not on academic have have some financial decisions to make if they don't get much baseball scholarship money. So that's one problem already. Now we have uncertainty again about coaching. Nothing scares a recruit more than thinking the coach that he has built the relationship with is leaving. As discouraged as everyone is right now I assure you no one is more discouraged than the pitchers that are hurt now and no coach that recruited them is still here. Add to that five of them could have signed in the draft out of high school and turned it down because they wanted to be part of MSU Baseball. It may be a mess right now but it can be turned around quickly and we should expect that. The players that are invested and committed deserve that.

[3rdGen]

I think you did a good job Cliff.

ISWYDT
And I chuckled.

[Todd4State]

Great read. I agree. We grow up loving MSU Baseball. We ask these kids to come here and commit to being part of that great Hail State family. Competing for out of state kids is hard and I will tell you why. Out of state kids have to earn academic scholarship to qualify for out of state tuition waiver. So all academic money goes to out of state tuition portion. If they don't get baseball money it's a hefty price tag still to bear. If they don't have the grades and are not on academic have have some financial decisions to make if they don't get much baseball scholarship money. So that's one problem already. Now we have uncertainty again about coaching. Nothing scares a recruit more than thinking the coach that he has built the relationship with is leaving. As discouraged as everyone is right now I assure you no one is more discouraged than the pitchers that are hurt now and no coach that recruited them is still here. Add to that five of them could have signed in the draft out of high school and turned it down because they wanted to be part of MSU Baseball. It may be a mess right now but it can be turned around quickly and we should expect that. The players that are invested and committed deserve that.

Thank you! And I heard something interesting on the WBC tonight about pitchers in MLB and I think it coorelates with Tommy John and the year round pitching- 60% of American born pitchers are from "The North" where they can't play year round baseball. I know Vanderbilt has had a lot of success getting pitchers from up there in places like Massachusetts. Maybe we should start doing the same at least a little bit.

[AusTexDawg]

Thank you! And I heard something interesting on the WBC tonight about pitchers in MLB and I think it coorelates with Tommy John and the year round pitching- 60% of American born pitchers are from "The North" where they can't play year round baseball. I know Vanderbilt has had a lot of success getting pitchers from up there in places like Massachusetts.

Those Yankees might encounter some serious culture shock when they get here, possibly more than Raffy experienced***