Thoughts on the new baseball staff
I like the hire of Chris Lemonis. He's not Jim Schlossnagle- but I don't get any bad vibes from him and even Jim Schlossnagle had to start somewhere. Hopefully we have found the next elite head coach. He's known for recruiting- and I think that's the one thing that if I had to point to as the main reason why we don't have a National Championship- we just haven't been able to recruit at the level that LSU in the 90's, and now Florida and Vanderbilt are recruiting. Players win championships period. Coaches guide them but a great coach with bad players is still going to have a losing team. The one thing we do have is a lot of resources- and now we have a coach who is a great recruiter who can utilize them to their fullest extent.
Foxhall is a good hire as well. He has SEC experience and has done a great job of developing undrafted pitchers into draft picks. If we can improve our pitching over the offseason- and we have a lot of talent to work with in Small, Keegan James, Ginn, McQuary, Self, and hopefully Carter Stewart- we may be able to take the final steps to a National Title in the next few years. It's hard to win a National Championship when your guys are giving up 12 runs to Oregon State and are just not competitive in general. I think we are going to improve quite a bit in 2019 as a pitching staff.
We know what Gautreau is all about. When the Cann stuff first happened I initially wanted a complete staff overhaul- but Gautreau was so impressive I realized as the season went on that it would be foolish to get rid of him. He did wonders with a lineup that was about half freshmen every night. With Mangum and MacNamee leading the way we should be even better offensively as I expect guys like Westburg, Foscue, Allen, Rowdey, and Hatcher to improve over the summer and offseason. Ginn could be an immediate impact bat as well. And then we got Gunner Halter through the draft and he should help us out as well.
Kyle Cheesebrough is another great recruiter who is also going to coach the catchers. This is a long time coming and another big weakness for us last year and beyond. Oregon State turned things around on us in a hurry by running at will on us. If we can shore up our defense behind the plate it is going to help immensely- especially when we play a West Coast team that is going to try to steal bases and try to put pressure on us. A good catcher helps the pitching staff out so much because it gives pitchers the confidence to throw breaking balls when they want to without the fear of the ball getting to the backstop.
All in all- we've improved ourselves and are already an Omaha caliber team. And by the time next year rolls around we are going to have the new stadium 100% complete. I'm looking forward to seeing us dogpile in Omaha in the near future.
