Baseball Guys

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Originally Posted by Johnson85

Remind me who this is and how they are top three? Not arguing with you because I'm never deep into baseball and checked out completely last year, but I didn't think we had top three talent across any three or four players. And I would have assumed there would be three big spenders on NIL that would keep us out of the top three even if we improved a lot.

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Mershon SS/2B- hit .330 last year as a true freshman-starting the 2nd half of the season. OBP of .427...stole 12/13
Amani Larry- hit .297 with 7 HR's and 16 doubles. OBP of .451 with 34 BB's and 17 HBP's. Stole 19/21. Scored 59 runs
Hunter Hines- .299 career hitter with 38 career HR's- 22 as a Soph. Will be drafted Top 5 rounds-Projected Top 150 in the country. 34 XBH's last year for a .683 slugging (for context- Tanner Allen had 35 XBH's when we won the WS.)
Dakota Jordan- Projected 1st round pick who ended up hitting .307 after a slow start as freshman. 10 HR's, 9 doubles and a triple.

That right there is as good as anybody in the country and better than 95% of college baseball

One big problem is that the best talent wants to play in warm weather and the SEC conference. So everybody in the SEC gets better from the portal. So every SEC team is just so tough. For example, everyone thought MSU was terrible at 9-21 in the league. And Ole Miss was even worse at 6-24. Just terrible. Yet in nonconference games MSU went 18-5 and Ole Miss 19-5. So were we both terrible or just in a tough league? Missouri was 10-20 in the SEC and 20-3 in nonconference. So maybe the conference is the problem. For comparison Maryland was an awesome team in their conference, finishing 17-7. Yet they were only 20-12 in nonconference play. Cal State Fullerton was 20-10 in their conference and 11-12 in nonconference play. Michigan was 13-11 in their conference and 13-15 in nonconference play.

Having said all that, the pitching improvement (or not) will be the key for us. The lineup will be good enough.

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Originally Posted by somebodyshotmypaw

One big problem is that the best talent wants to play in warm weather and the SEC conference. So everybody in the SEC gets better from the portal. So every SEC team is just so tough. For example, everyone thought MSU was terrible at 9-21 in the league. And Ole Miss was even worse at 6-24. Just terrible. Yet in nonconference games MSU went 18-5 and Ole Miss 19-5. So were we both terrible or just in a tough league? Missouri was 10-20 in the SEC and 20-3 in nonconference. So maybe the conference is the problem. For comparison Maryland was an awesome team in their conference, finishing 17-7. Yet they were only 20-12 in nonconference play. Cal State Fullerton was 20-10 in their conference and 11-12 in nonconference play. Michigan was 13-11 in their conference and 13-15 in nonconference play.

Having said all that, the pitching improvement (or not) will be the key for us. The lineup will be good enough.

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SEC is just brutal

What series do we win here:

SEC Slate
LSU
@ TAMU
@ UF
UGA
@ OM
AU
@ Vandy
UAT
@ Ark
MU

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Originally Posted by sandjunky

What series do we win here:

SEC Slate
LSU
@ TAMU
@ UF
UGA
@ OM
AU
@ Vandy
UAT
@ Ark
MU

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Depends on pitching living up to the potential

It’s that simple

We very well may be quite good this year, but I am not sure some realize just how bad we were last year. We were actually lucky in wins and losses relative to our run differential. We were BAD.

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Originally Posted by smootness

We very well may be quite good this year, but I am not sure some realize just how bad we were last year. We were actually lucky in wins and losses relative to our run differential. We were BAD.

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That's true. I think part of the reason we didn't have a losing season was because Lemonis had our team playing hard even though we didn't have any pitching whatsoever.

And our bats were pretty good.

Which is why I'm optimistic.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

That's true. I think part of the reason we didn't have a losing season was because Lemonis had our team playing hard even though we didn't have any pitching whatsoever.

And our bats were pretty good.

Which is why I'm optimistic.

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Exactly- we are and should be good offensively. I'm not even worried about that. It's strictly down to the mound. Big Country having a big Fall excites me because He was always the wild card. Purdue's #1 can easily become our #3 on Sunday and give us some quality outings. Loo needs to show growth with his awesome potential. Loftin needs to grow up. Simmons and Auger will provide quality innings.

It's exciting to me to see how the pitching pans out. The O will be there

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Originally Posted by Coach34

Exactly- we are and should be good offensively. I'm not even worried about that. It's strictly down to the mound. Big Country having a big Fall excites me because He was always the wild card. Purdue's #1 can easily become our #3 on Sunday and give us some quality outings. Loo needs to show growth with his awesome potential. Loftin needs to grow up. Simmons and Auger will provide quality innings.

It's exciting to me to see how the pitching pans out. The O will be there

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A lot of our fans have forgotten about Auger and Simmons. Auger was up to 96 this fall. Simmons can close if no one else steps up. That takes pressure off of Dohm. And we have Cam Schuelke who is going to be really good out of the pen and give us something we haven't really had under Lemonis- someone that can attack hitters from different arm angles.

We need to add a little dog and toughness. It wouldn’t hurt to put a little gun powder in the whole team’s food.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

That's true. I think part of the reason we didn't have a losing season was because Lemonis had our team playing hard even though we didn't have any pitching whatsoever.

And our bats were pretty good.

Which is why I'm optimistic.

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We didnt have a losing season??

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Originally Posted by BuckyIsAB****

We didnt have a losing season??

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Won more than we lost, so yes.
SEC not so much.

I think we will be pretty decent but I think we blew our chance to move back into the top half of the SEC when we could not pull any elite players from the portal. We got several good support players from the portal but I don't think we got any true topline guys when there were several available both in the field and pitching wise. We are now mostly dependent on a number of existing players making a significant jump this year.

Just being decent in pitching gets MSU to Hoover. In 2023, the pitching was not just bad, its was catastrophe bad. Especially versus SEC competition.

I think the growth of Freshman pitchers and having an array of decent transfers will provide MSU with the 6 to 7 decent arms to win more ball games than last year.

Hitting has been SEC mediocre for years. But you have Hines and Jordan as big weapons. The rest is all potential and hypotheticals.

Defense has scrapped E5 at 3B and Foreskin is gone, so the bat and the defense can only be better in 2024. You have serious competition for infield spots, will keep everyone sharp.

Outcome for the Team, completely unknown. I suppose many 13th and 14th place SEC teams have made Supers and Omaha over the years. A winning SEC record will be a big outcome for 2023. Not saying the boys are not good, just acknowledging that all SEC have talent, blue chip recruits, 1st rounders, and huge potential. Also, this is baseball, we don't really know how much a leap the kids have made until we see them again.

I predict a regional on the road, because the schedule is brutal. Could see us in a super if we get a good draw but that's a big IF.
Pitching and defense will be improved.

We're gonna hit and score runs, defense should be much improved,as always it comes down to pitching. Got a lot of potential on the mound and our new PC is a good un. I expect us to be in a regional and if we get the right draw could be in a super as well.

Make a regional and that?s progress. If he doesn?t make a regional he?s done. I still have faith in him though. I think we get in as a 2 seed

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

That's true. I think part of the reason we didn't have a losing season was because Lemonis had our team playing hard even though we didn't have any pitching whatsoever.

And our bats were pretty good.

Which is why I'm optimistic.

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Great post. Some on here said the team quit, but I never saw that. The offense kept producing and the kids played hard, but we couldn't stop a lineup of 9 year olds with our pitching last year. We blew multiple big leads after the 6th inning. If we would've had just average pitching we would've had at least 35 wins. I haven't seen pitching as bad as that since 9 year old kid pitch. You know a bunch of strikeouts, a bunch of walks and hbps and home runs, that's how bad it was.

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Originally Posted by The Federalist Engineer

Hitting has been SEC mediocre for years. But you have Hines and Jordan as big weapons. The rest is all potential and hypotheticals

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You would have to include Larry as a big proven weapon- he had a really good year last year

You also have to be excited about Mershon and what he did the 2nd half of the season. He built his stats in SEC games basically.

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Originally Posted by Coach34

You would have to include Larry as a big proven weapon- he had a really good year last year

You also have to be excited about Mershon and what he did the 2nd half of the season. He built his stats in SEC games basically.

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Mershon also seemed to have that dirtbag attitude that we were missing.