I may be wrong

And this is just my opinion and I?m not trying to make excuses. It looks like to me PJ and Cade have hit the wall. Both have been strike throwers but both are walking and hitting way too many batters.

I like every MSU baseball fan are so disappointed, no clutch hitting with men on base is about as bad as I?ve ever seen. I would love to see a different lineup moving forward but I have not a clue who could come in and do any better. One move I would do is start Alford at third, he needs to play for next year now. James should should start in CF.

Inconsistent is about all I can think of with our hitters. All I know is our coaches have to find some players which includes pitchers.

I now don?t see the regionals in site.

Our hitting numbers are generally better than last year minus Tanner Allen really. He was our clutch guy. Rowdy too some. But K's are up and that's the issue.
Pitching is really the struggle. Ks by our pitchers are way down. But injuries and a much weaker pen anyway are issues their.
I don't think the lineup matters much other than getting young guys as many ABs as possible.

Presto has been hit or miss. Pitched pretty well against Mississippi. He just needs to work the change more often in my opinion and get the ball on the black or the hands more.

Cade looks like he falls off a cliff around 80-85 pitches right now. But dont worry- Lemon gonna leave him in there 2-3 batters too long guaranteed

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Originally Posted by Coach34

But dont worry- Lemon gonna leave him in there 2-3 batters too long guaranteed

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That's definitely been the recipe the last few weeks.

Granted, his first inning he had sacks packed no outs, and managed to get out of it....

I certainly expect him to be great for us the next couple years, but he definitely took some lumps this year, as did everyone else.

This team was missing bits and pieces from the beginning and then we started losing pitchers to injury and that was that. I’m surprised we have done as well as we have to be honest.

As far as the pitching staff goes, we don’t have the arms to play things by the book. We have to leave starters in too long b/c the pen is so thin and inconsistent. It’s a mess.

Offensively, today summed up our team to a tee. In Pearl, in a huge park, we hit deep fly after deep fly to the wall. Today, with a hurricane blowing out, we turn into a line drive hitting team for the first time all year. I hate relying on home runs but today I was begging for solidly hit fly balls and we weren’t getting them.

We have no choice but to leave guys in. We have no pen to burn. We try to stretch everybody out of necessity. But that's bad recruiting too. No way we should be as bad, quality depth-wise as we are.
The hitting is all or nothing. We up our HR numbers but also do our Ks. OBP is even slightly better. We just have gaps in recruiting. Yeager is the ideal 2 or 3 hole but we have no leadoff. Clark has been struggling the most. We also lack speed on the bases. Our base running numbers are half what they were last year.

If you think this year is bad wait till next year.

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Originally Posted by Leeshouldveflanked

If you think this year is bad wait till next year.

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Many think this way, but it's way too early to throw the towel in. Let's wait and see who we bring in, portal is a big deal now days.

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Originally Posted by basedog

Many think this way, but it's way too early to throw the towel in. Let's wait and see who we bring in, portal is a big deal now days.

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Our best hope is to utilize the NIL to pick off a few guys that might not otherwise leave but may if we can give them enough $$$. Even said, that's a patch and not a fix. We should go after some guys from Dallas Baptist, Georgia Southern and Mercer (again). Hell, RJ is probably wishing he hadn't left. Mercer is 36-8 and no. 10 in the RPI. Think where they would be with RJ.

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Originally Posted by Saltydog

Mercer 36-8 and no. 10 in the RPI. Think where they would be with RJ.

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When I think about this I get pissed off even worse.

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Originally Posted by Saltydog

Our best hope is to utilize the NIL to pick off a few guys that might not otherwise leave but may if we can give them enough $$$. Even said, that's a patch and not a fix. We should go after some guys from Dallas Baptist, Georgia Southern and Mercer (again). Hell, RJ is probably wishing he hadn't left. Mercer is 36-8 and no. 10 in the RPI. Think where they would be with RJ.

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We have to patch for next year but I think after that we'll be fine. I think this is partially us paying for the three coaching changes in a row while also not quite getting the full recruiting benefit of winning a National Championship. Sort of like 2014-2015. The players we have now committed to Cann for the most part and a couple even committed to Cohen. We didn't get the full benefit of going to the 2013 Finals until 2016. This year would have been another good year had we not had so many key pitching injuries. It is what it is.

I'll add this though- we should go after some of USM and La Tech's players too. And I think we should also go after some players playing the SEC as well. La Tech has some tough hard nosed players and USM has at least one sophomore pitcher that we could use as well as one of their outfielders. The three players I have in mind are playing in the Cape this summer and the other is a top 200 MLB.com draft prospect.

I wish we could find a rubber armed pitcher or two that can throw 78 mph sinkers for strikes and hit spots. We have enough mid 90s pitchers that cant throw strikes and miss high

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Originally Posted by Leeshouldveflanked

I wish we could find a rubber armed pitcher or two that can throw 78 mph sinkers for strikes and hit spots. We have enough mid 90s pitchers that cant throw strikes and miss high

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Here's what I am seeing.

1. We're trying too hard to rest arms. Yes we've had some injuries. But the situation isn't so dire that we should be pitching our shortstop. We did our best to rest Fristoe and Pico and we ended up using Pico for 13 pitches and not using Fristoe at all. That's overthinking and mismanagement.

2. We need Foxhall to stop trying to find a multi inning guy and start thinking about pitching guys for 1 inning apiece. This will maximize our talent. We can do this between Hunt, Fristoe, Pico, Talley, and Tullar and Tepper. We should be able to get at least 2 innings a weekend from the first four guys and at least one from the last 2. Hunt can probably go a little longer if needed too. So that's 10 innings from that bullpen a weekend which leave 17 for the starters which is about 5-6 innings from them. Very doable with what we have.

3. We need to stop overextending our starters. It's going to burn them out. If they look off after three- pull them and pull them immediately. Stop trying to get 6 innings come hell or high water.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

Here's what I am seeing.

1. We're trying too hard to rest arms. Yes we've had some injuries. But the situation isn't so dire that we should be pitching our shortstop. We did our best to rest Fristoe and Pico and we ended up using Pico for 13 pitches and not using Fristoe at all. That's overthinking and mismanagement.

2. We need Foxhall to stop trying to find a multi inning guy and start thinking about pitching guys for 1 inning apiece. This will maximize our talent. We can do this between Hunt, Fristoe, Pico, Talley, and Tullar and Tepper. We should be able to get at least 2 innings a weekend from the first four guys and at least one from the last 2. Hunt can probably go a little longer if needed too. So that's 10 innings from that bullpen a weekend which leave 17 for the starters which is about 5-6 innings from them. Very doable with what we have.

3. We need to stop overextending our starters. It's going to burn them out. If they look off after three- pull them and pull them immediately. Stop trying to get 6 innings come hell or high water.

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1. If we don't try to rest arms at certain times we're not going to have any arms. We only have 5-6 guys that can give us innings out of the bullpen and one of them(Tullar) is a matchup guy.

2. We don't have the staff to go one inning a piece. We have to have guys like Tepper, Hunt, and Kohn go multiple innings.

3. See point 2. We have no choice but to at least get 6 so we don't burn the pen on a Friday.


Again maybe next year it's different, but at the current moment we're having to piece mill a bullpen together with guys who have little control and even less confidence. We have to ride our starters and we have to have a bullpen guy or two be multi inning guys to eat innings.

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Originally Posted by Saltydog

Our best hope is to utilize the NIL to pick off a few guys that might not otherwise leave but may if we can give them enough $$$. Even said, that's a patch and not a fix. We should go after some guys from Dallas Baptist, Georgia Southern and Mercer (again). Hell, RJ is probably wishing he hadn't left. Mercer is 36-8 and no. 10 in the RPI. Think where they would be with RJ.

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RJ Yeager is having an great season. His production is matching 1st round, stud horses like Dylan Crews and Jacob Berry.

RJ is up there with Nate Lowe and Jack Kruger as a great 1-year transfer for MSU

I agree with Todd concerning recruiting and coaching turnover. If you were watching the roster very closely, you could see the holes that were coming. The way we have handled the juco and portal situation might be up for debate, but whatever. I can see not wanting to bring in too many new faces and possibly losing the locker room. If mistakes were made there, hopefully we have learned from it.

On a related note, has anyone noticed how Louisville has trended over the last few years? A few years back, they were in Omaha pretty regularly and were at the top of the polls consistently. They have been absent from that top tier group lately. The optimist in me wants to give Lemonis some credit in that.

Yeager is the only transfer that panned out this round. We've got to be more efficient there.

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Originally Posted by Cooterpoot

Yeager is the only transfer that panned out this round. We've got to be more efficient there.

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Debrule worked out pretty well. But we certainly need to hit on more here-especially in the coming offseason

edited to add- (I missed seeing "this round")

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Originally Posted by Coach34

Debrule worked out pretty well. But we certainly need to hit on more here-especially in the coming offseason

edited to add- (I missed seeing "this round")

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I would add JP France and Zach Neff to the "worked out pretty well" list from years past.

Without those guys in 2018, the team does not go as far. They tossed a combined 107 competitive innings. They were both Friday/Saturday aces at other programs and Seniors when they got to Starkville.