Hopefully Lesson are Learned - Baseball Transfers at Select Schools

[The Federalist Engineer]

I scanned a few SEC teams for transfers and outcomes. Seems to me that MSU could have greatly upgraded many weak spots from the 2021 team but were not active and Machiavellian in the pursuit of dynasty. Yes, got Yeager, but we now see that much more was needed. Below, you will see that much more was possible.

Take a peak at the players that these programs collected from major D1 schools, SEC schools, and mid-majors.

I am not a professional scout or baseball coach, but even I could see that 7 of 16 roster pitchers were long-shots to contribute and 5 were potentially not even D1 players. Did we just keep players because they were roster players in the Championship? Or, did our coaches have roster restrictions that I am not aware of? Why did MSU buy a basket case from a remote JUCO in Oklahoma when players like Jacob Palish, Chase Dollander, Micah Dallas, and Nolan Crisp were floating in the portal.

Just the Kentucky transfers alone would have MSU hosting a regional. 3 decent pitchers. The Texas AM transfers would definitely have MSU hosting a regional.

Good news is that MSU can nuke the current pitching staff, keep the 4 studs and start again with decent confidence.

(Kentucky)
Daniel Harris - 2B - from Eastern Kentucky 322 hitter with 411 OBP
Darren Williams - RHP - from Eastern Kentucky 29 innings (31 K/10 BB), 0.93 ERA, 225 OBA
Tyler Guilfoil - RHP - from Lipscomb 42 innings (68K / 17 BB), 1.29 ERA, 144 OBA
Sean Harney - RHP - from UMASS 55 innings (57K / 16BB), 3.09 ERA, 244 OBA
LSU
Jacob Berry - 3B - All American from Arizona ? 378 with 15 HR and 46 RBI
Eric Reyzelman - RHP - 33 Innings (53 K/ 14 B) 190 OBA
Riley Cooper - LHP - 32 Innings (25 K/5 BB) 280 OBA
Tennessee
Chase Dollander - RHP - From Georgia Southern ? 56 Innings (84 K/8 BB), 10 Starts, 7-0 Record, 2.54 ERA, 172 OBA
Ethan Smith - RHP - From Vanderbilt ? Injured, but was a highly recruited HS, always ok for Vandy
Seth Halverson - RHP - From Missouri ? Injured, but was the Missouri Saturday Night starter
Texas A&M
Jack Moss - OF - from Arizona State ? 363 AVG, 421 OBP, 995 Fielding
Troy Claunch - C - from Oregon State ? 299 AVG, 371 OBP, steady starter
Xavier Lovette - RHP - from MState ? Sucked
Dylan Rock - OF - from UT San Antonio ? 333 AVG, 13 HR 43 RBI, Awesome
Jordan Thompson - OF - From Incarnate Word ? 250 Avg 1 HR 26 RBI, 380 OBP
Jacob Palisch - LHP - from Stanford ? Relief Ace ? 39 innings (47 K / 7 BB) 240 OBP
Micah Dallas - RHP - from Texas Tech ? Starter ? 62 innings (71 K/ 17 BB) not great, but what a recruit
Auburn
Sonny DiChiara - 1B - from Samford ? Mstate Reject! - 395 BA 16 HR All SEC!
Blake Rambusch - IF - from Grayson College ? 366 BA 4 HR 36 RBI
Brooks Carlson - IF - from Samford ? 316 BA 5 HR 23 RBI
Tommy Sheehan - LHP - from Notre Dame ? 26 Innings (22 K/ 19 BB) 211 OBA ? ok for Butch
Jake Wyandt - C - Presbyterian - OK Backup catcher
Tyler Drabnick - RHP - From Lipscomb - Not good, + 9 ERA in 9 innings of work
Josh Hall - IF - From Ole Miss - Ok backup MIF
South Carolina
Kevin Madden - 1B - From Virginia Tech - Ok starting first baseman, not great, 258 BA 6HR with 387 SLG, 313 Hitter for VT
Noah Hall - RHP - From Appalachian State ? Weekend Starter ? 73 Innings (74 K / 29 BB) 250 OBA, 4.40 ERA
Matt Hogan - OF - From Vandy - Not Good
Brandt Belk - OF - From Missouri - All American Kid - 342 Avg 6 HR and 38 RBI, 424 OBP (20 K/25 BB)

[TNDawg35]

We need a lot of pitching, a C, a 2B, a Honestly a whole outfield.

If we get Jett Williams, I would move either him or Forsythe to 2B. It would be hard to
Move Forsythe tho. Dude has really come on toward the end of the year. Was coming into today hitting like .291 and over .300 in SEC alone.

We just have to hit the portal hard for pitching.

Next year, I would open everything tho. I wanna see people play because they are better. Not cause they have been here 5 years. Hines should be at 1b, and Alford at 3b. Hancock should be the DH and hitting no higher than 5th. There is no way he should be in the 2 hole, but who the hell do we put there. We don’t have anyone else.

One main thing is we will prolly be looking for a hitting coach. Whoever comes in, can bring people with him like Johnson did at LSU. We should start treating the portal like OM did for football. Go out and upgrade whatever we can. Look at who is smashing or sitting people down and take them. So why if we cut someone. Lemonis is already shown he will do it. I heard today we told another commit to look elsewhere so that’s now 4 kids who Lemonis has said thanks but no thanks.

Im kinda starting to get them impression alot of kids that are committed/recent classes were Gotro commits and Lemonis wants to go a different way. I guess we will see…

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

It's a really big indictment on the coaching staff. We went out and got Walling (who never pitched here) and Sebert, a .240 hitter in JuCo... the fact we not only got guys like that, but out rights REJECTED a .395 1B like Sonny DiChiara means we either 1) Can't evaluate talent at all, or 2) don't really care about being good, but instead want to be loyal to people like Hancock.

There is not other option than 1) or 2). Studs were out there that would have made the team better, and we instead chose terrible non-contributors and rejected studs that wanted us. This post makes me reallly doubt Lemones going forward. He can manage talent, but he can't evaluate it for sh*t

[StarkVegasSteve]

It's a really big indictment on the coaching staff. We went out and got Walling (who never pitched here) and Sebert, a .240 hitter in JuCo... the fact we not only got guys like that, but out rights REJECTED a .395 1B like Sonny DiChiara means we either 1) Can't evaluate talent at all, or 2) don't really care about being good, but instead want to be loyal to people like Hancock.

There is not other option than 1) or 2). Studs were out there that would have made the team better, and we instead chose terrible non-contributors and rejected studs that wanted us. This post makes me reallly doubt Lemones going forward. He can manage talent, but he can't evaluate it for sh*t

I think he can evaluate it. I mean look at Dubrule and Yeager. They've been two great pickups in the transfer portal. And watching Davis throughout the year I think he could've been a .250-.270 hitter for us in center had we just rolled with him and not tried to flip flop every game. I think where we screwed up this year was we got too comfortable with what we had, believing that they would develop, and did not try to improve everywhere. DiChiara is probably the biggest indictment in that regard. Again, I believe that the coaches know that a season like this can never happen again. They're all making FAR too much money for it to happen. I think we get 6-8 out of the portal and are fighting to be a regional host next year. And if we're not.....well Lemonis might want to update his resume.

[StarkVegasSteve]

We need a lot of pitching, a C, a 2B, a Honestly a whole outfield.

If we get Jett Williams, I would move either him or Forsythe to 2B. It would be hard to
Move Forsythe tho. Dude has really come on toward the end of the year. Was coming into today hitting like .291 and over .300 in SEC alone.

We just have to hit the portal hard for pitching.

Next year, I would open everything tho. I wanna see people play because they are better. Not cause they have been here 5 years. Hines should be at 1b, and Alford at 3b. Hancock should be the DH and hitting no higher than 5th. There is no way he should be in the 2 hole, but who the hell do we put there. We don’t have anyone else.

One main thing is we will prolly be looking for a hitting coach. Whoever comes in, can bring people with him like Johnson did at LSU. We should start treating the portal like OM did for football. Go out and upgrade whatever we can. Look at who is smashing or sitting people down and take them. So why if we cut someone. Lemonis is already shown he will do it. I heard today we told another commit to look elsewhere so that’s now 4 kids who Lemonis has said thanks but no thanks.

Im kinda starting to get them impression alot of kids that are committed/recent classes were Gotro commits and Lemonis wants to go a different way. I guess we will see…

Getting Jett Williams would be the biggest recruiting coup in the history of MSU Athletics. We will have to go to the portal for middle infield help.

[somebodyshotmypaw]

Pitching is what we ultimately needed. But how do you project injuries to Landon Sims, Stone Simmons, etc.?

Because the roster is limited, each addition would mean a subtraction. The crazy thing is with hindsight being 20/20, we could have gotten a portal pitcher and cut Landon Sims since he didn't contribute this year. Then we could have all burned Lemonis's house down (hahahaha)

[Cooterpoot]

We can somewhat stop with the "injuries are the problem" talk. Yes, losing Sims was huge and moving Preston out of the pen was. But no one else we lost was proven. Stone wasn't good last year. Smith gives up tons of HRs. But our pen was bad no matter what, outside of Preston. At best it was thin. Recruiting has sucked! Evaluation is very questionable.
We've passed on good MS kids too. We've reached on a number of younger guys. If we don't hammer the portal. next year will be as bad, or worse than this year.

[The Federalist Engineer]

Pitching is what we ultimately needed. But how do you project injuries to Landon Sims, Stone Simmons, etc.?

Because the roster is limited, each addition would mean a subtraction. The crazy thing is with hindsight being 20/20, we could have gotten a portal pitcher and cut Landon Sims since he didn't contribute this year. Then we could have all burned Lemonis's house down (hahahaha)

Few thoughts:

(1) You can't predict Sims or Simmons specifically
(2) You could predict that 5 of 16 pitchers were not highly-likely to be good, they needed solid competition for a roster spot
(3) Most MSU teams, end up with just 1 of 3 original weekend guys still being the weekend guys. Even in the best MSU teams, in 2021 only Bednar was still performing by Omaha. Of the Arlington starters, only Harding was performing.
(4) You could look at the roster and see no-lefties with any track record of success
(5) You don't need the portal to give you a Sims or Bednar, you need JP France, Houston Harding, and Zach Neff

What would Nick Saban do as a baseball manager, post championship? He would be cutting the players that were not championship caliber and transferring-in the strengths of La Tech, South Alabama, Samford, and Missouri. Paranoid and relentless every year, plus being an elite HS recruiter.

[Todd4State]

As far as the portal goes I think we did Ok with position players except for maybe centerfield. Our offense has been Ok. Maybe getting a center fielder with some speed would have added some diversity to the lineup which could have put our offense over the top and made it better but still no major complaints. Seibert was a questionable take I agree there. Could have used a more OBP oriented player at that spot. DiChara being in the lineup means Hancock or Hines would be sitting. In hindsight I can see why we should have gotten DiChara but I completely understand why we didn't.

Now pitching we definitely should have hit the portal for that. Especially after Harding left. Auger was a good take from JUCO though. We probably should take 2-3 pitchers from the portal a year regardless. Even with Sims there was no guarantee that he would be able to start and there was the possibility that he was a closer only guy. Walling had pitched at Oregon State but like Sims had been a reliever only in college.

[Todd4State]

Few thoughts:

(1) You can't predict Sims or Simmons specifically
(2) You could predict that 5 of 16 pitchers were not highly-likely to be good, they needed solid competition for a roster spot
(3) Most MSU teams, end up with just 1 of 3 original weekend guys still being the weekend guys. Even in the best MSU teams, in 2021 only Bednar was still performing by Omaha. Of the Arlington starters, only Harding was performing.
(4) You could look at the roster and see no-lefties with any track record of success
(5) You don't need the portal to give you a Sims or Bednar, you need JP France, Houston Harding, and Zach Neff

What would Nick Saban do as a baseball manager, post championship? He would be cutting the players that were not championship caliber and transferring-in the strengths of La Tech, South Alabama, Samford, and Missouri. Paranoid and relentless every year, plus being an elite HS recruiter.

Great point about no proven LHP. Foxhall basically gambled that Tullar would emerge with a new arm angle and completely burned us.

At the end of the day JUCO is going to be less viable and we should rarely take players from there. The guys that were going to JUCO are now going to go to the South Alabama's and USM's because they know that if they emerge they can transfer to MSU or wherever at that point. That used to not be the case. And there are definitely at least five players in La Tech and USM's roster alone I would be very interested in if they go in the petal and all five will be in the Cape this summer.

[BrunswickDawg]

Few thoughts:

(1) You can't predict Sims or Simmons specifically
(2) You could predict that 5 of 16 pitchers were not highly-likely to be good, they needed solid competition for a roster spot
(3) Most MSU teams, end up with just 1 of 3 original weekend guys still being the weekend guys. Even in the best MSU teams, in 2021 only Bednar was still performing by Omaha. Of the Arlington starters, only Harding was performing.
(4) You could look at the roster and see no-lefties with any track record of success
(5) You don't need the portal to give you a Sims or Bednar, you need JP France, Houston Harding, and Zach Neff

What would Nick Saban do as a baseball manager, post championship? He would be cutting the players that were not championship caliber and transferring-in the strengths of La Tech, South Alabama, Samford, and Missouri. Paranoid and relentless every year, plus being an elite HS recruiter.

PITCHING PITCHING PITCHING. Injuries have played a part - but they always do. But, I think COVID restricted the development of our staff. First, we had a short season in '20 and essentially no summer ball. Then we had 24 pitchers last season due to the expanded roster. Yes, that gave us great depth that Lemonis and Foxhall managed very well and it bought us a CWS win. But, we had 14 pitchers who pitched under 20 innings, then hardly any of them played summer ball and those that did barely pitched. You need in game innings to develop and most of our staff hasn't pitched in 2 years prior to this one. Hopefully by missing the SEC we can ship some of these guys off to summer ball early and they can get ready for next year AND we hit the portal for some more experienced arms.

[Coach34]

The pitching is the biggest wtf???? to me.

You can see the thinking about not taking the 1B from Auburn. We had Hancock and brought Hines in. Now you can 2nd guess not bringing him in to challenge these 2- but it appears that was the thinking.
We did well with Yeag but really needed another MIF
We had James at 3B
We had Cumbest in LF
We had Clark in RF
We had Tanner at C

We missed on a CF transfer and adding another quality MIF

Pitching? It's mind-blowing the lack of foresight here. Even if we had kept Sims and Simmons healthy- having to depend on Tepper, PFS, Walling, Talley, and Tullar out of the pen was not the best of decisions. You can throw Fristoe in there with his inconsistency at the end of last year and bad summer. Terrible job here in the portal

[Leeshouldveflanked]

I?m thinking we go 7-10 players through the portal. There is no time to rebuild, you have to reload.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Injuries aren't the point- the point is got a non-factor in Walling when multiple other SEC schools were able to find pitching studs in the portal. We massively misvaluated a lot of the guys on roster, becasue man aren't SEC players. And who are the bats we added? A CF nobody thought could hit at an SEC level, and a .240 JuCo hitter.

Poor evaluations of the guys we have, poor evaluations and choices when it comes to the portal. We failed to realize we needed studs, and failed to get studs when we tried. I can't have faith in that moving forward. Sure hope I'm wrong though

[Todd4State]

Injuries aren't the point- the point is got a non-factor in Walling when multiple other SEC schools were able to find pitching studs in the portal. We massively misvaluated a lot of the guys on roster, becasue man aren't SEC players. And who are the bats we added? A CF nobody thought could hit at an SEC level, and a .240 JuCo hitter.

Poor evaluations of the guys we have, poor evaluations and choices when it comes to the portal. We failed to realize we needed studs, and failed to get studs when we tried. I can't have faith in that moving forward. Sure hope I'm wrong though

Umm RJ Yeager turned out pretty good.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Umm RJ Yeager turned out pretty good.

1/4 transfers are SEC caliber players. That's not good evaluation skills, especially when so many great players were in the portal other SEC teams nabbed. Why did we take Von Seibert?

[Leeshouldveflanked]

1/4 transfers are SEC caliber players. That's not good evaluation skills, especially when so many great players were in the portal other SEC teams nabbed. Why did we take Von Seibert?
25 percent success rate on Portal Evals is not good. Not to mention we passed on Dichiara.

[Pancho]

I am sure something can be done.

[The Federalist Engineer]

25 percent success rate on Portal Evals is not good. Not to mention we passed on Dichiara.

This is an unacceptable rate for another reason, MSU is the Defending National Champ

If anybody has the goodwill and market attention to pick and choose the best Portal Kids, it's the National Champs.

If you stink and your coach is on the hot seat, you take the Oklahoma JUCO head-cases, sight-unseen. Schlossnagle played Portal chess last summer while MSU attended parades.

[mparkerfd20]

You lost me at keeping the 4 stud pitchers we have. Please do tell who the hell you think is a stud pitcher on this team? If we had 4 this season we'd be hosting!

[AlSwearengen]

We need a near complete overhaul of the pitching staff. We know the core that should come back but we have some guys with really good stuff that shouldn’t take a roster spot going forward. If you can’t live on the corners with some type of movement or special spin, you can’t make it at this level. 95mph alone isn’t that special anymore.

[Quaoarsking]

Please tell me we didn't actually have DiChiara wanting to commit and told him no. That's the equivalent of Devonta Smith wanting to transfer here in 2020 and Leach telling him no.

[Todd4State]

1/4 transfers are SEC caliber players. That's not good evaluation skills, especially when so many great players were in the portal other SEC teams nabbed. Why did we take Von Seibert?

Why are you talking about JUCO players when we're talking about the portal?

Auger was a hit until he was hurt.
Seibert is just redundant more than anything
Davis has been good when they've played him a a has performed like he was expected to given his history.
Yeager leads the SEC in home runs. He was a huge hit
Corder is a Miss so far but has two years left to figure it out.

So our portal guys were hits. Not to mention Simmons was a hit until he got hurt.

[AlSwearengen]

Please tell me we didn't actually have DiChiara wanting to commit and told him no. That's the equivalent of Devonta Smith wanting to transfer here in 2020 and Leach telling him no.

In 2021 at Samford, he hit .273 with 18 hr’s. When you take into consideration that true freshman Hunter Hines has almost identical numbers, playing in the SEC, I can understand why we didn’t take him. I don’t think anyone expected him to make the type of jump that he made.

[Gutter Cobreh]

In 2021 at Samford, he hit .273 with 18 hr’s. When you take into consideration that true freshman Hunter Hines has almost identical numbers, playing in the SEC, I can understand why we didn’t take him. I don’t think anyone expected him to make the type of jump that he made.

Or expecting that the same level of production would have occurred here had he come... looking at stats on another team does not mean that someone would have produced equally in our roster...

How many wins would our SP's have if our bullpen wasn't complete shit???? Cade Smith got dicked more than anyone on the team!!!! He leads the team in ERA (when taking out the injured pitchers), yet we have 10 pitchers with an ERA over 4 and 8 over 5 (not count Forsythe in either w/ his 23 ERA)

[Quaoarsking]

In 2021 at Samford, he hit .273 with 18 hr’s. When you take into consideration that true freshman Hunter Hines has almost identical numbers, playing in the SEC, I can understand why we didn’t take him. I don’t think anyone expected him to make the type of jump that he made.

I can understand not expecting him to be a Golden Spikes finalist, but I just don't see how we can not let him have one of 35 roster spots.

[Coach34]

I can understand not expecting him to be a Golden Spikes finalist, but I just don't see how we can not let him have one of 35 roster spots.

Because we were loyal to Hancock and felt like Hines was going to earn a starting job once he got on campus. Yes it was a mistake but you can see their mindset. We have to get away from the "loyalty mindset". Bama doesnt have that shit in football. The best play and the pretenders move on

[Todd4State]

Because we were loyal to Hancock and felt like Hines was going to earn a starting job once he got on campus. Yes it was a mistake but you can see their mindset. We have to get away from the "loyalty mindset". Bama doesnt have that shit in football. The best play and the pretenders move on

The loyalty mindset was way worse with the pitching than first base. Or just flat out Dan Mullen-esque roster management. It doesn't take Joe Torre to figure out we had one LHP coming back and that was Cam Tullar who was pretty ineffective. We should have gotten 2-3 pitchers out of the portal in addition to Auger and Walling. And at least two of those pitchers from the portal should have been LHP. We could have easily made it work and attract pitchers because we lost our top three starters from last year- Bednar, MacLeoud, and Harding. There was never any guarantee that Sims could start even. For all we knew we may have had to move him back to closer. He ended up hurt which is a possibility with all pitchers. We never even really replaced Sims so we had a closer role open as well. It's mind blowing that our four coaches messed that up.

At least with first base we had Hancock who we knew could do the job and a first baseman that a lot of pro scouts liked in Hines who has put up similar numbers as DiChara in a ballpark that is much more difficult to hit home runs in.