Baseball thoughts again--LSU

I don't care if we go to Omaha this year or not, losing in the sec on a yearly basis just bothers me. I want an sec championship. We compete against LSU for recruits, attendance, etc, and it hurts every year to lose to them. It may I mean may sit well w me if we beat them in a super or CWS. What if we lost egg bowl for 8 years straight? See what I mean? Same thing. We need to recruit hitters and we have to some extent but Henderson can't hit for example. We need more national recruits like Gavin Collins.

not having players like Collins baffles the hell out of me. why in the hell we are continuing to accept this futility is beyond me. We deserve better. there is no excuse for not having better at MSU.

We are nowhere near the baseball program that they are. We aren't on the same level and that sucks. I've been kidding myself thinking that we are, but we aren't.

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

We are nowhere near the baseball program that they are. We aren't on the same level and that sucks. I've been kidding myself thinking that we are, but we aren't.

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Cluster 17s we have.

Here is the bottom line. We choose to recruit speed, defense, and pitching. It worked for us last year. It all came together at the right time and we had some timely hitting that took us to the National Championship.

This year, although we have better speed, we dropped in two of our 3 main categories, defense and pitching. We have had some good outings but we are kidding ourselves thinking that we have the same talent on the mound this year. Defense is even more baffling to me. Although our infield has played better than they did early, our outfielders are letting balls drop. I don't know if this is lack of talent, lack of practice and repetition, or a combination of the two. I will say that I have never seen outfielders playing for Cohen misjudge so many balls. Never remember seeing the number of balls drop behind our outfielders that have this year. Maybe they are being put in a poor position.

My biggest gripe is the same one I have had since Cohen got here, we are a poorly coached team at the plate. From our approach to our fundamentals, we are poorly coached in hitting. Look back at this series with LSU and watch the difference of how their guys approach an at bat and the fundamentals they have. Watch what the rebels do at the plate next weekend. This is an area that we have to get better at if we want to improve and be in every game.

We are a good team, even with the lack of hitting ability, and I still think we are in the hunt for winning the West. The West is pretty evenly matched this year, maybe more than I have ever seen.

No panic button yet. We drop 2 Super Bulldog Weekend and I will start looking for that button. Regardless, we have got to do something with this lineup and we need to be more aggressive at the plate. All but Rea. Rea is almost a guaranteed 0-2 count every time he steps in the box.

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Originally Posted by Bully13

not having players like Collins baffles the hell out of me. why in the hell we are continuing to accept this futility is beyond me. We deserve better. there is no excuse for not having better at MSU.

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Your right..we shouldn't accept this and fire the coach who just took us to a National Championship game.
Get a grip.

As I and a few others have said several times, our best talent by a good measure are true freshmen and high schoolers still. A big question is, why aren't we seeing more of the freshmen. I just assume that they have big enough holes in their games that Cohen isn't comfortable putting them out there yet.

The disheartening thing is seeing how many freshmen lsu is playing.

One glaring problem that we have is our scholarship situation compared to lsu. Louisiana puts out tons of talent in baseball and lsu can take everyone of them without spending a dime of their 11.8 or whatever scholarship number it is. That is a lot of scholarship money left to cherry pick out of staters. They also have a bad ass new ball park. Can we still win it all? Yes, but right now, we aren't ready. The world series run will make things a little easier b/c of the exposure it gave us. We just have to get over the hump in regards to numbers of talented players and that will take awhile to accumulate.

We were all excited preseason by the depth that we thought we had. The way I see it though, is that we don't have the kind of talent that can separate themselves definitively from the backups. In baseball, the studs will stand out no matter how good of a team you have. You can see it in Collins and hopefully Humphries and Swinarski are in the same mold. That is three players. I think the former fsu shortstop will make four. You see where i am going with this? We are still a little ways away.

I've never been a fan of Cohen's style. I've watched just about every game the last 3 years either in person, HSTV, or TV, and, frankly, it's mostly boring. Above all, I'm a State baseball fan, so I keep supporting. Cohen obviously made it work last year.

That said, it puts so much pressure on the defense and pitching staff to be perfect, but when you can't hit, it's all just a house of cards out in the wind. Sure, I can make a list about all the moves I can question Cohen about, but the bottom line is that the veteran players are sucking it up. If Detz and Rea were anywhere close to last year's numbers, we would be competing for a national seed right now. Then, you got the third year player in Britton who can't hit anything and a JR bullpen catcher getting most of the playing time. Pirtle is the only one that has showed up ready to play from day 1.

Who is the former FSU shortstop?

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Originally Posted by bulldogcountry1

I've never been a fan of Cohen's style. I've watched just about every game the last 3 years either in person, HSTV, or TV, and, frankly, it's mostly boring. Above all, I'm a State baseball fan, so I keep supporting. Cohen obviously made it work last year.

That said, it puts so much pressure on the defense and pitching staff to be perfect, but when you can't hit, it's all just a house of cards out in the wind. Sure, I can make a list about all the moves I can question Cohen about, but the bottom line is that the veteran players are sucking it up. If Detz and Rea were anywhere close to last year's numbers, we would be competing for a national seed right now. Then, you got the third year player in Britton who can't hit anything and a JR bullpen catcher getting most of the playing time. Pirtle is the only one that has showed up ready to play from day 1.

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I think Cohen's plan was to spend the majority of his scholarship money on pitchers and win with pitching in the early stages of rebuilding the program. When rebuilding, in my eyes, it will take longer to accumulate enough hitters to win games with offense as opposed to signing four or five stud pitchers that can basically win games almost by themselves with minimal run support.

We just have to give it time and probably a little more than even i thought it would take and I figured it would take awhile because of how tough the SEC is.

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Originally Posted by MsStateBaseball

Who is the former FSU shortstop?

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A juco shortstop that just committed. He started at ss as a freshman at fsu but got kicked off the team.

One thing I noticed today at the game is this team just doesn't seem as loose as last year's team. They seem tight. We have to start getting some clutch hitting from somewhere. Just today, we had the bases loaded twice and came up empty. Also, it doesn't help when your 3 hole hitter, and arguably your biggest power hitter, goes 0 for 10 with 6 K's on the weekend. I understand hitters going through slumps, but you can't go hitless in the biggest series of the year so far. We had the entire week off too to get ready and we could only muster up 5 runs the entire weekend.

My biggest thought is that the best weapon in the country was used for only 15 pitches on the weekend and did not relieve Hudson today when it was 1-0.

(Lindgren)

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

We are nowhere near the baseball program that they are. We aren't on the same level and that sucks. I've been kidding myself thinking that we are, but we aren't.

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BS. We are every bit as good as they are RIGHT NOW. We were awful this weekend.

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Originally Posted by MsStateBaseball

Who is the former FSU shortstop?

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John Holland.

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Originally Posted by bulldogcountry1

I've never been a fan of Cohen's style. I've watched just about every game the last 3 years either in person, HSTV, or TV, and, frankly, it's mostly boring. Above all, I'm a State baseball fan, so I keep supporting. Cohen obviously made it work last year.

That said, it puts so much pressure on the defense and pitching staff to be perfect, but when you can't hit, it's all just a house of cards out in the wind. Sure, I can make a list about all the moves I can question Cohen about, but the bottom line is that the veteran players are sucking it up. If Detz and Rea were anywhere close to last year's numbers, we would be competing for a national seed right now. Then, you got the third year player in Britton who can't hit anything and a JR bullpen catcher getting most of the playing time. Pirtle is the only one that has showed up ready to play from day 1.

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Last year we had the power dimension with Renfroe and Rea to go along with the small ball guys. I'm not going to say that's ideally what we want because truthfully ideally I'd like to see 4-5 power hitters in the lineup to go along with 4-5 speed guys. The catcher can be a guy that isn't exactly a strong hitter if he's really good behind the plate, but of course I'd like for him to be a good hitter as well.

But even with the two guys that had power, you see how much better Cohen's offense works- even though I wouldn't even consider that ideal.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

BS. We are every bit as good as they are RIGHT NOW. We were awful this weekend.

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Their team, coaching staff, and entire fan base would laugh at this statement. They owned our ass.......aGAIN.

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

We are nowhere near the baseball program that they are. We aren't on the same level and that sucks. I've been kidding myself thinking that we are, but we aren't.

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Calm down. They historically do have a better baseball program than we do. I realize we hit it big first and have a winning record against them, but they have the national titles. If you ask most people, they are the premier baseball program in the country.

But we are absolutely 'near' where they are. The last few years, we have been on the same level. That is a fact.

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Originally Posted by smootness

Calm down. They historically do have a better baseball program than we do. I realize we hit it big first and have a winning record against them, but they have the national titles. If you ask most people, they are the premier baseball program in the country.

But we are absolutely 'near' where they are. The last few years, we have been on the same level. That is a fact.

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I work with about 95% LSU fans. I react this way because I'm 17'n sick of it. I've grown to expect it but I can't accept it. They will beat the brakes off of us in football this year too. We'll be 4-0 with a lot of hype and then LSU will put it all together that week and play a perfect game. It's just the way it is. 17!!!!

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

We are nowhere near the baseball program that they are. We aren't on the same level and that sucks. I've been kidding myself thinking that we are, but we aren't.

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It only seems that way because we looked like hot doo doo soup against them this weekend.

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

Their team, coaching staff, and entire fan base would laugh at this statement. They owned our ass.......aGAIN.

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Championships aren't won or lost the first week in April.

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Originally Posted by engie

Championships aren't won or lost the first week in April.

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Correct, but it's still very frustrating.

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Originally Posted by DownwardDawg

Their team, coaching staff, and entire fan base would laugh at this statement. They owned our ass.......aGAIN.

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Prior to this weekend, we were 4-4 against them. Even with this weekend, it's 4-7 the past three years. I don't consider that owning.