Some Late Night Thoughts on Lemonis

[Todd4State]

I like this hire. And if Cohen hadn't run his mouth everyone else would too. I would like Cohen to own up to it rather than get the MSU spin of "well CWS experience meant assistants too". It would actually build some trust between MSU and the fans. I bet Cohen learned a valuable lesson from all of this.

Lemonis will be an improvement over Henderson. In game management sounds like it may be a concern. We'll have to see- I don't know how knowledgeable Indiana fans are about the game. But it sounds like he is a great recruiter- Henderson only landed one pitcher in our last class. Brad Bohannon was a major force behind Kentucky's recruiting- not Henderson. We need to be all hands on deck with our recruiting and we can't afford to be average in recruiting if we want a title. Gautreau is good as a recruiter. As others have said we need an elite pitching coach. If the NCAA adds another assistant we need someone with major scouting ties.

Our new coaches are going to inherit a team that is Omaha ready. And Lemonis is going to have a lot more resources than he had at Indiana. We have a new stadium that will be complete and hopefully we won't have anymore weird coaching situations. And despite all the weirdness we've been to Omaha, won the SEC, and been to three SR's in a row. Let's see what we can do with a normal situation. I think Lemonis will provide is with that stability and I don't think Henderson would have provided that for us based on his burned out comments from a couple of years ago. This will not be a rebuild. This will be show up day one and let's try to win now from day one.

I think Lemonis and Gautreau will be a good duo as far as hitting goes. Pitching has to get better. One guy with an ERA under 3 in two years and finsihing the regular season 11th in the SEC in pitching isn't going to cut it. It's very critical that we improve and add velocity and command with our pitchers. We can't rely on a couple of consistent pitchers and our offense to bail us out 20 times a year. One thing that impressed me about Lemonis was Indiana's defensive rankings. We need to improve there as well. We weren't bad but there is plenty of room for improvement. Our catchers were just embarrassing on defense. I'm surprised more teams didn't steal on us to be honest. Even my old ass would look like Rickey Henderson when our catcher is air mailing it to Jake every time someone steals. Much less the first round pick leadoff guy from Oregon State. Lemonis has an assistant at Indiana that sounds like he is pretty good with catchers. Hopefully he comes along. We also need to improve our baserunning as well a little bit. I thought we got better as the season went along there though. I like his offensive philosophy- pressure and power on offense. This year if we are being honest with ourselves we were a good hitting team with average to below average pitching and defense. If we improve from average to good we might take that final step next year especially if our hitters continue to improve as well. And if we hire Kyle Bunn as the pitching coach I'm good with that although if it's someone else reputable I'm good with that too.

One thing no one is talking about with this is Northern coaches have a good track record in the SEC. Paul Manieri and Dave Van Horn both came from teams in Big 10 territory and have both at least made it to the CWS finals- Van Horn may win it all this year but we'll see. I think with what we have at MSU Lemonis will have similar success. Both coaches ended up at schools with similar histories and resources as MSU as well.

Let's get behind Lemonis and go kick some ass.

And thanks Gary Henderson for keeping us afloat and having a memorable season. Good luck in your next endeavor. Hopefully that's in the MSU AD with a cushy job that pays well if you don't want to coach anymore.