The news today was surprising to me since I just figured that we would wait until the end of the year to fire Foxhall. He has been gone for awhile now really. I knew it. You knew it. Everyone knew it.
The question is how do we go from National Champs to that in two years? (Or less)
When we hired Foxhall he had a good reputation. I think he was at one time a really good coach. But what I think may have happened is he got caught up in analytics too much and got away from baseball fundamentals too much. The result was a lot of strike outs but also a lot of walks. And hits. Foxhall's style of high velocity and pitching up in the zone was great for some pitchers- like Landon Sims. And Will Bednar. But every pitcher is different. You can be successful as a pitcher a number of ways. Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, Dan Quisenberry, Mariano Rivera, and Phil Niekro were all great pitchers and all are or should be in the HOF. All were very different pitchers too. A pitching coach's job is to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each pitcher and tailer a plan of attack to take advantage of the pitcher's "stuff". That's the advantage of having a pitching lab. We can analyze a ton of things and with a good pitching coach figure out how to tailor a plan for each pitcher. Foxhall to me watching from the stands however, seemed to try to make every pitcher into the same guy. That's a recipe for disaster. We need a pitching coach that can work with a variety of styles. It's really really hard IMO to find a bunch of pitchers that have the same type of stuff and on top of that it's also unnecessary.
The other thing that Foxhall did that was really poor was in game management. This is what has killed us the past two years more than anything IMO. How many times has KC Hunt come into a game and thrown two innings of scoreless baseball and he looks good and then Foxhall tries to steal another inning out of him and next thing you know he has allowed 3-5 runs. That kind of stuff can't happen. How many times has Gartman been left in a game too long? I felt like he would try to save pitchers too much and you can not manage like that in baseball. You have to coach in the moment. You deal with tomorrow tomorrow. Thursday night against Tennessee- we're down 4-1 in like the fourth inning with a LOT of baseball left to play and we trot out Tyson Hardin one of our last guys in the pen. He gives up three runs. We lose the game 8-7. If we bring in Siary or someone like that we probably hold the other team down enough for us to rally.
Now Lemonis did do this to save his job. Absolutely. But he also did it in an effort to salvage the season and hopefully at least get a SECT bid. Will it work? I don't know. It could absolutely go either way. This team may rally and a new voice whomever that is and we might get hot. We also may tank and lose out the rest of the year. Lemonis should have done this way sooner than he did IMO. But what is done is done. If it works Lemonis may save his job. If it doesn't work- well it's the same difference as keeping Foxhall. So from his point of view Lemonis doesn't really have anything to lose at this point.
And I've seen some MSU fans mad at Lemonis because they think that this will automatically save his job. Well- these same fans were complaining that he should be fired for not making a change and now they're complaining because he made the change because it might help him to stay? It's hard to keep up with some of our fan's inconsistency. Well- if it makes those fans feel better I don't think this move necessarily saves Lemonis at all. He still has to win at least a few games. That will only be decided on the field. This is a gamble for Lemonis and it could save or cost him his job.
Who takes over in the meantime? I don't know. Lemonis says he has some sort of plan. It will be interesting. Cheesebrough takes over probably? It's anyone's guess at this point.
MSU deserves the best in baseball. And that's the type of pitching coach MSU should target. We pay well enough that we should get someone good. Will some guys transfer? Sure. But that happens every year. It's not like they were going to get better under Foxhall. Whoever we hire may be able to bring a few pitchers with him. So, it goes both ways.
No matter what happens the rest of the year this was a good day for Mississippi State baseball. This is the first step to moving in the right direction.
