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Menendez had injury issues and will still be rehabbing once the season starts. He is also draft eligible next year so there is a chance he would have been gone without playing at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Federalist Engineer
The Stanford guy is very wild and had an ERA that was really high. If he puts it all together he could be Stephen Steasburg 2.0. Odds are better that he is Eric Cerentola 2.0. And if it doesn't click for him in camp he wouldn't have made our rotation likely.
Part of the point of landing O'Connor WAS that he would bring HIS talent with him.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Federalist Engineer
That alone filled gaps and was baked in. We didn't get many portal arms because we also already had solid returners and recruits. You say it yourself - "all the talented sophomores". For all of the downside of Lemonis, he didn't leave the cupboard bare.
The important part is we 1) filled positions of need with more talent; 2) survived the draft about as well as we could; 3) have leapfrogged the program light years ahead in every aspect.
Winning at a high level, you would think, should help with recruiting higher level talent out of the portal. We have pretty much disappeared from the national discussion since winning the title and that isn?t good recipe for recruiting against lsu, ark, Tenn, etc. that have been winning. We also need to see some of our pitchers progress and become dominant, making Parker look like a top developer of talent. That and money is what players want to see.
Alright, I'll buy this explanation. Now time to win some football games.Quote:
Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg
The thing is after a couple of years of maybe going portal heavy to get things in place our primary source of players under O'Connor is going to come from the high school ranks after he gets his program completely in place. And that's not a bad thing because he is really good at player development and recruiting. And yes, we will use the portal to fill gaps and that's not going to change but I also do not expect us to go as portal heavy as LSU seems to do every year. But if our fans think we are going to live and die by the portal under O'Connor they are going to be disappointed.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlSwearengen
And I say maybe portal heavy because we added a lot of guys with multiple years like Nunnalee, Tomas Volinicus, William Kirk, and Ryder Woodson plus we also have guys like McPherson, Foster, and Stone that have two years left as well before becoming draft eligible. And by year two I fully expect guys like Jacob Parker, Jack Bauer, Parker Rhodes, and Peter Mershon to be contributors. Might have Dane Burns back as well depending on how he does this year. If those guys were our team this year we would be really young but we would also be really talented.
Very good post as usual. Lemonis wasn't up to our standard after 2021 but he was a good recruiter. The pitching that we have returning was a solid group to build around plus he left Ace Reese- after we had to fight to keep him but we did nonetheless. Plus some solid contributors like Chance and Stallman.Quote:
Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg
It's easy to forget that we were a regional team the past two years and a solid regional team. We didn't just scrape in. And honestly if we didn't fire Lemonis I'm not sure our season really turns out much differently. And that I think was part of the reason he was fired when he was because we have fans that would be upset that we fired a coach that got us to the postseason the past couple of years. Of course that also caused us to have fans that wanted us to make Parker the head coach. But we weathered those storms thankfully.
Man, I'm so ready for the 2026 season on the diamond to get here!Quote:
Originally Posted by Todd4State
As an aside to Todd’s post about freshmen being ready to contribute in year 2, I stumbled upon some video and snippets about a couple pitchers.
1st is the bad or worrisome, but not anything that we haven’t known and that is Bauer’s control. The snippet that I read said that he regularly threw as many balls as he did strikes in most of his outings. They did say that he progressed from the fall to the spring in that area, so that’s a little bit of good news. I’m going to learn from Cerantola and not count on anything positive until Bauer does it on the field in a real game multiple times.
2nd is the positive. I saw video of Rhodes and he had that over the top low arm delivery that Landon Sims had that allows him to get alot of spin on his fastball. He was throwing 94/95 but the ball had good ride and pop at the end, making it look 2 or 3 mph faster. In addition to the ride, it had arm side run. Nasty looking fastball. I only saw one breaking ball, but it looked pretty good. The video was a short one where he struck out 3 in the inning in a mlb draft combine game, so the hitters weren’t slouches. I can see why Rhodes was getting a lot of praise and I imagine he would have been a draft risk had he been 6’6” instead of 6’1”.
Bauer is getting a lot of hype because he can throw 103 but the reality is Rhodes is probably more likely to help us in the short term.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlSwearengen
FactQuote:
Originally Posted by Todd4State
Bauer will be spotty as a freshman. His Soph year is where we expect the impact.
Fortunately, with the quality staff we have- there is literally no pressure on him to perform. He is fighting for mound time- not facing pressure of being in high pressure sits
Also true. It's the fan base that will be raising hell for him to be in the mound. Until he craps the bed. But your point of the staff being deep is important. Tough to log innings.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach34
What do we know about William Kirk? Did he play somewhere during the summer?
Recovering from an injury. Should be ready for the fall. It was a knee injury so not arm related. He could be an absolute steal from the portal.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlSwearengen