Not just our coaching staff if the Lemonis Era extends to 2024. Our AD and boosters are in on damaging the program as well. It's sad to see this happen to us.
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What is the minimum threshold for Lemonis next year?
For me:
A. 13th-14th place in April 2024 = Fired with Gotro Interim
B. 13th-14th place after 30 games = Fired
C. Hoover no Regional = Fired
D. Regional no advancement = Fired
E. Regional Hosted no advancement = borderline
F. Super regional = Retained
G. National Seed regardless of outcome = Retained
If he stays its time to spend a lot less money on baseball, bc we arent serious about it
This is getting very wordy so I'll just pick a few highlights to address.
1) Fox is Lemonis' Peter Sirmon: and Mullen fired him after 1 season. If he had kept Sirmon into '17 for another 5-7 season Mullen would have been fired.
2) you can't pretend the bad defense is going to go away. We have no 3B, Chance may start for us and he's not known for defense, and Mershon hasn't proven he can play defense better than Forsythe. You also mention Alford maybe coming back as of he's not God awful defensively
3) on Hancock, he "hadn't had any problems before this year" because he hadn't caught before this year to have problems lol. Are you suggesting his arm magically got weaker this past off-season?
4) on the rotation-you can talk about how highly these guys are thought of in MLB circles, the fact is they have to go from "can't go an inning of relief in SEC play" to "SEC starter" in 1 off-season. That's extremely rare. Dohm coming back is great but his SEC ERA was what? He also needs to take a step to become a stud.
If we make the bad decision to bring Lemonis back for 2024, the only way he should get 2025 is if we host or barely miss hosting. Just making Hoover or just making a Regional isn't good enough for a program of our stature.
"Yeah we were bad for the 3rd year in a row, BUT the team is built around Fr and So and he's got a highly rated class coming in. Do you want Highfill to transfer and the class to fall apart?
Also you can't really blame Lemonis for this season. I mean our pitching staff went from dead last to 10th which is actually a pretty impressive coaching job considering how bare the cupboards were after Foxhall left. Gotta give Lemonis and the PC time to build a staff, they can't work miracles in 1 offseason."
Disagree. I told my wife Nixon was giving up that 3-run HR to lose the game. Called it before the AB started. Starting every batter off with 2-0 or 2-1, the passed ball, hitters making good contact...it was just too obvious. If I could see it from home, the coach should be able to see it from his bucket. Nixon wasn't the right call that day, and it was obvious. If we keep him, we're looking for a new coach next year. We probably miss the postseason again next year too.
4) Pitching
The Horrors:
(1) 10.62 Runs per SEC game (6.84 Average, Bama 4.96). That's with 6 or 7 run-rule games keeping things less bad. Last in the SEC
(2) 11.45 Hits per SEC game (9.32 Average, Bama 7.67). Last in the SEC
(3) 9.54 Earned Runs per SEC game (6.18 Average, Bama 4.62). Last in the SEC
(4) 2.63 HRs per SEC game (1.69 Average, Bama 1.49). Last in the SEC
(5) Left-Handed Hitters hit .323 vs MSU pitching (266 Average, Bama 207). Tied for Last in the SEC with Ole Miss.
(6) Lead-off Hitter On-Base % .443 vs MSU pitching (381 Average, Bama 373). Last in the SEC.
(7) 2-Out Hitting 302 vs MSU pitching (246 average, Bama 221). Last in the SEC.
(8) Walks, last in the SEC. We all knew that one. 6.91 to 4.97 Average (Bama 3.82)
The bright side:
Jason Jackson that's the Alabama PC. Without the glamour transfers or the 2nd best recruiting class, he had the best SEC game only pitching staff. If this dude does not get the Bama job. He is a free agent, I guess. He is also their recruiting coordinator.
I'd say the bright side was we somehow finished 27-26 with those pitching stats while also being #48 in RPI and #7 in Strength of Schedule (according to Warren Nolen). When you look at your stats I would have thought our record would be a whole lot worse.
To put that in perspective, our 2015 last in the SEC team went 24-30 (8-22), and in SEC play gave up 6 runs a game; 10.2 hits a game; 5.45 Earned runs a game; .8 HR a game; and 6.6 walks a game.
If we arent in the NCAA Tourney next year- nobody will be supporting Lemon returning.
This is the most madening thing to me. 3 straight trips to Omaha - never done by anyone in college baseball and we follow that up with two straight goose eggs. That is a fireable offense by itself.
I'm on the fense but lean towards giving one more year. We've already hit bottom - well OM technically bottom but they have a more recent Omaha visit and NC than us so we are there. It can't get much worse. Do you feel lucky?