Any ideas?
Alford 3B
Forsythe SS
Hines 1B/DH
Bane/Portal C
Siebert DH/1B
2nd Portal or signee
LF Cumbest? Corder or Downs,
CF Portal/ or Signee,
RF Clark? Downs or Corder or Signee
P C Smith
No guarantee either Clark or Cumbest comes back.
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Any ideas?
Alford 3B
Forsythe SS
Hines 1B/DH
Bane/Portal C
Siebert DH/1B
2nd Portal or signee
LF Cumbest? Corder or Downs,
CF Portal/ or Signee,
RF Clark? Downs or Corder or Signee
P C Smith
No guarantee either Clark or Cumbest comes back.
Catcher is a question
Hines at 1B...thats a given
2B? wtf knows
SS? Probably Foreskin again.
3B? Alford looks to be the guy right now
LF? Siebert or wtf knows. Cumbest will be drafted and leave almost assuredly
CF? wtf knows
RF? Clark is a wildcard. Where he is drafted and what they offer will determine it. I hope he returns for another season to work on consistency. Downs needs to grow up
DH? Ugh
Portal will be big for us. We have to have a couple of impact players or we will be worse next year.
Forsythe is hitting damn near .300. He is our damn shortstop you coffee selling ****…
Coach, can you expound a little on Downs needing to grow up?
Nothing big- Alford and Downs are rookies and they just have to grow up. They have to be ready to roll next year and play.
Going to be a lot of transfers
C-Portal/Highfill
1B-Hines
2B-Portal/Downs
SS-Forsythe
3B-Portal/Alford
LF-Portal/Chance
CF-Portal
RF-Portal/Clark
The only two positions that need to be safe are Forsythe and Hines, and if you found an impact 1B Hines can DH. We need to leave no stone unturned. These next 3 weeks we need to find out if guys like Corder, Alford, Meche, Siebert, and Downs belong at this level. Otherwise they need to find a new home next year. We probably need AT MINIMUM 4 portal position players and 3 portal pitchers. I've said for a few weeks we honestly might need 12 guys from the portal. 7 position players and 5 pitchers.
How tf are we the defending champs, with a coach we hired as a "recruiter", and can't fill out at least a serviceable lineup card for next year? This feels like an issue. Yes we need to hit the portal, but we ought to let guys like Alford, Meche, Downs, etc play A LOT the rest of the way. Those guys should be starting bc the season is over.
I suspect they will look something like a Sunbelt League team.
Who the hell are the pitchers going to be?
The pitching is a way bigger issue than the field lineup.
Losing: Sims, P Johnson, Hunt, B Smith
Recovery: Stinnett, Auger, Simmons
Grads: Tullar and Talley
Known SEC level roster players: Cade, Pico
SEC Wildcards: Fristoe, Tepper, Walker, Walling?
It's like 2015 again for pitching, to make 2016 better there was the miracle transformation of Dakota Hudson and Zac Houston. Plus 2 big transfers Rigby and Blake Smith. Plus the great but TJ ravaged HS recruiting class.
Maybe we emulate the mustard buzzard recruiting playbook. Go after actual baseball players and not travel league pampered babies. Just a thought. My dad and 1st cousin both played there and they?ve had competitive teams through the years, recruiting hard nosed, never highly recruited kids.
Let me put it into perspective. Brad Cumbest would most likely be playing baseball at Southern Miss had he not been recruited to State for football. He was a raw high school kid in south Mississippi. There are tons of them in the area. USM would have recruited him for baseball. I could go field a competitive major conference team in 4 years by recruiting south Mississippi. The real baseball players are there. Their numbers and stats may not show it but there are tons of raw guys that just need a little coaching to release that potential.
I agree. The good news is this staff has done a solid job finding players in the portal like Dubrule and Yeager.
I could see Fristoe and Tepper making a jump. I could see Tullar being better. He's getting used to his arm slot. Reminds me a little bit of Girodo. We'll see how they look this summer. We need to get Colby Holcombe to school and we should get Stone Simmons back by SEC play next year.
Very similar situation honestly. Back then Nate Lowe and Jack Kruger were the equivalent of players from the portal today. I think what we're seeing is us paying the piper for the Cann/Henderson/Lemonis switch. Most of our current players were recruited by Cann and they are graduating/moving out. Which means Lemonis's first class will just be getting to school in the next year or two.
Which is why I cringe when I see someone say we should go away from recruiting Mississippi so hard. I think we do pretty well in Mississippi overall. But I do think we need to make more of an emphasis on getting tough hardnosed OBP guys again like Rowdey and TA. Both were from Alabama interestingly enough. Although Mangum was from Mississippi. At the same time we need to keep recruiting power hitters like we have to give the lineup the balance we need. I know we're getting three recruits from that way in our current class- Hollis Porter, Logan Forsythe, and Max Miller. Miller is really underrated when people talk about Mississippi baseball. Porter and Forsythe are both pretty athletic.
Cumbest has played a lot. We recruited him in baseball too. Hell, there was some talk of him going later round draft at one point. You guys sit back and watch USM get smoked come regional time. Hell they lost to UAB this week. Beating State and OM this year is nothing. This staff hasn't recruited and developed. I tried to tell everybody what was happening with Foxhall last year. But nobody could see past the guys other coaches brought in. And if y'all think other schools aren't signing travel ball kids, well damn, I can't help you.
You have to recruit nationally to win big here. Bednar, Sims, TA, Rowdy were our studs last year. None from MS. Just like Clark, Palmeiro etc. etc. weren't either. The top players are generally from out of state. FL used to be big for us.
We need to go to every Friday night G5 pitcher that doesn't get drafted or graduate, and get them to transfer here. We need arms.
I'm confident we'll get some good hitters out of the portal, but like football, you just never know. We struck gold with Yeager. They might not all be like that.
It's a weird situation to be in for sure. Makes you scratch your head at our recruiting because if we're the national power we claim to be, we shouldn't have this many holes to fill. Gotta do a better job at evaluating players and we have to cool off on the Jucos. Don't mean to call the kids out like this, but Brayland Skinner, Tanner Leggett, Von Seibert, Cam Tullar, Matt Corder are not SEC caliber players. The occasional Juco player (like Preston Johnson) is fine, but you can't rely on them like we have. Get kids to school and fill in the rest with the portal. That needs to be our MO.
We don't have time for raw guys who need to be developed. We need IMPACT players NOW. The time to do that was 2019-2021 and it became increasingly difficult when coaches couldn't evaluate for over a year. I said it last year and it was biggest fear this year, Rowdey Jordan and Tanner Allen covered up multiple issues. Not only were they the table setters at the top of the lineup, but they also took up two outfield spots that we have gotten no consistent production out of since they left. On top of both of those things, they were the links to Cannizarro and the swagger he had as well as the toughness of the 2018 team. Swagger and Toughness combined is what we are missing. We have plenty of one and none of the other. I'll let everyone figure out which one that is.