State of MSU at the Midway Point of SEC play

[Todd4State]

If you look at the season as a whole we have improved but we are still not up to the MSU standard. Some people may say "well we should have fired Lemonis last year" but the reality is I am glad that we gave him every reasonable chance to fix the program. He can't say that- and more importantly future candidates for MSU baseball can't say that either. Support isn't just about fans although that is certainly part of it- it's also about the support from major boosters and the athletic department staff and being too quick to fire and not give chances to fix things can drive away potential candidates and make things worse. That's why my stance was to keep him for this year which I still think was the right decision for the overall long term health of the program but I always had the caveat that the expectation IF he came back was to get us to at least a SR. That has also never changed. And that's still possible. However, if you look at this team what they have done and their RPI and what's left the margin of error to even get into a regional is shrinking. And that is squarely on Lemonis. If we don't get into a regional I don't think he will be back next year. I'm thinking that if we do get into a regional it's going to be as a three seed somewhere probably with a difficult draw. The bottom line is this team isn't where it should be. And here's why I think that is.

1. Lemonis is not a very good leader. It feels like he wants or expects the players to lead themselves. That works with Jake Mangum and Tanner Allen. It doesn't work if you don't have people like that. And the coach has to lead and set the tone. Yes, there does need to be some leadership from the players but it really feels like there is none at that top and we're just hoping Johnny Long can lead us to a SR. These are 18-23 year old young men. There's probably a good reason why most generals and CEO's aren't that age.

2. Lemonis lacks attention to detail. We see this in the form of little things like our schedule being the last to be put out as fans. We also see it in the form of the baserunning circus every week. We see it in the form of the same people playing no matter how bad they're struggling. We see it in the form of bad defense last year. We see it in the form of lack of player development from year to year. The biggest indictment to me was still Johnny Long's interview after the Central Arkansas loss when he very carefully talked about how the team lacks focus for midweek games. I know he wasn't trying to call out Lemonis and was trying to send a message to his teammates but it had to make you wonder "what the hell was Lemonis doing then?" The infamous Augie Garrido videos that are the internet where he is chewing an absolutely new asshole into everyone on the team? At least one was after a midweek game that I think Texas WON. After we lost to UCA our guys probably signed some autographs and went to the Bin and picked up some college girls.

3. Lemonis is too hands off with his assistants which goes back to number one. Why was Foxhall allowed to do what he did? Why didn't he step in? And with Gautreau this year our approach is like a PG Travel Ball team. If Gautreau isn't going to tell Hines and Jordan to stop overswinging when they have two strikes- guess who needs to? Yes- Chris- YOU. We make zero offensive adjustments. And our SEC batting is actually better than OOC games because our approach is so horrendous and NO ONE does anything about it. Hines has probably cost himself at least 250K-500K because he refuses to adjust. Yes, you don't want to totally micromanage but sometimes the HEAD COACH has to step in and do something. We can't decide on a closer because Lemonis refuses to pitch a guy more than once on the weekend. It cost us Saturday. And what else does Tyson Hardin need to do to get a legit chance? He looked great on Friday. He only threw 12 pitches- he should have been available for Saturday for at least one inning. If anything he should have let Stevens pitch Friday in the 9th and Hardin the next night. And it's not like pitching these guys once a weekend is preventing Tommy John injuries with this staff.

4. Lemonis's in game feel is AWFUL. When I saw the starting lineup today I really thought someone was trolling. It's a big WTF? fest. We started a freshman who isn't a power hitter at DH with a batting average of .000. WHHHHHHYYYYY??? We put in LH pinch hitters to face LH pitchers. We put in LHP to face RH hitters. We let our submarine guy throw to LH hitters who usually tee off on submarine guys and then take him out when a RH hitter comes up- which are the hitters that submarine guys usually eat up. It's baseball 101 fails left and right and there is no common sense to any of it. Cohen did some crazy stuff but at least he could pretty much always back it up which is one reason why I liked him. Lemonis can't back his moves up though.

5. Lemonis's recruiting- actually pretty good! The problem is he is so bad in every other area no one gets developed and reaches their potential. If you want to blame the players you can- but you're off base. They have zero leadership and the leadership that is there expects them to figure everything out. Saban had five star recruits at every position and HE didn't treat his players like that. It's the same in baseball. But we're going to lose a lot of players next year- So what? No matter who the coach is we're going to hit the portal hard. We're not going to sit here and stand pat. Might as well hire someone that can identify and attract players.

MSU needs to get back to detail oriented baseball like we had under Polk and Cohen in all five phases of the game- pitching, defense, hitting for power, hitting for average and getting on base, and putting pressure on the other team with speed. And MSU fans need to decide if they want a team that plays with energy and passion or if they want a team that that plays like an Upward Rec League baseball team- but the fact of the matter is MSU baseball has always been better with players that played hard and played with energy and passion and pissed off the other team so that's the camp I'm in.

If I were in MSU's AD shoes the first two guys I call are Pollard and Haire after Vitello tells me no. Any one of those three can fix this mess and make everyone happy. We're close enough to making a regional that we're not a complete dumpster fire either plus we'll pay so we should be able to get someone good. Oh- and we don't have Cohen messing up the search either like he did the last two coaching searches.

[Quaoarsking]

And another key point is that thanks to the NIL and Portal, the days of long rebuilds are over. Ignore anyone who dooms about how we're going to suck for another 2-3 years because of this.

Hire a good coach and line up the NIL dollars, and we should be hosting in 2025.

[Bdawg]

I don’t see much to argue against. This was the year for Lemon to do a 180 and right the ship. Looks like we made a 90 instead.

[dawgday166]

Lessee ... Long is batting .250 with 1 extra base hit (the HR) ALL YEAR. He only has 9 RBIs all year. He does a pretty good job at framing pitches and blocking wild pitches but can't throw anyone out at 2nd.
And this is the MSU Poster Child for "fire & passion"?? He's barely an SEC caliber player.
His fire & passion cost us the GA game last week.

His backup, Powell is batting .294 and has 3 less RBI while starting half the games Long has started. He's actually hitting .429 in conference on only 7 AB tho.

If Long is the leader of this team then we're in trouble ... in more ways than one.
And not sure where this love affair with him is coming from but ... whatever.

[TNDawg35]

I would fire Gotro tonight. Our hitting is horrible. I horrible. We make decent pitchers look great and have for several years. Like you stated, our approach is bad and there are no adjustments.

[ArrowDawg]

If you look at the season as a whole we have improved but we are still not up to the MSU standard. Some people may say "well we should have fired Lemonis last year" but the reality is I am glad that we gave him every reasonable chance to fix the program. He can't say that- and more importantly future candidates for MSU baseball can't say that either. Support isn't just about fans although that is certainly part of it- it's also about the support from major boosters and the athletic department staff and being too quick to fire and not give chances to fix things can drive away potential candidates and make things worse. That's why my stance was to keep him for this year which I still think was the right decision for the overall long term health of the program but I always had the caveat that the expectation IF he came back was to get us to at least a SR. That has also never changed. And that's still possible. However, if you look at this team what they have done and their RPI and what's left the margin of error to even get into a regional is shrinking. And that is squarely on Lemonis. If we don't get into a regional I don't think he will be back next year. I'm thinking that if we do get into a regional it's going to be as a three seed somewhere probably with a difficult draw. The bottom line is this team isn't where it should be. And here's why I think that is.

1. Lemonis is not a very good leader. It feels like he wants or expects the players to lead themselves. That works with Jake Mangum and Tanner Allen. It doesn't work if you don't have people like that. And the coach has to lead and set the tone. Yes, there does need to be some leadership from the players but it really feels like there is none at that top and we're just hoping Johnny Long can lead us to a SR. These are 18-23 year old young men. There's probably a good reason why most generals and CEO's aren't that age.

2. Lemonis lacks attention to detail. We see this in the form of little things like our schedule being the last to be put out as fans. We also see it in the form of the baserunning circus every week. We see it in the form of the same people playing no matter how bad they're struggling. We see it in the form of bad defense last year. We see it in the form of lack of player development from year to year. The biggest indictment to me was still Johnny Long's interview after the Central Arkansas loss when he very carefully talked about how the team lacks focus for midweek games. I know he wasn't trying to call out Lemonis and was trying to send a message to his teammates but it had to make you wonder "what the hell was Lemonis doing then?" The infamous Augie Garrido videos that are the internet where he is chewing an absolutely new asshole into everyone on the team? At least one was after a midweek game that I think Texas WON. After we lost to UCA our guys probably signed some autographs and went to the Bin and picked up some college girls.

3. Lemonis is too hands off with his assistants which goes back to number one. Why was Foxhall allowed to do what he did? Why didn't he step in? And with Gautreau this year our approach is like a PG Travel Ball team. If Gautreau isn't going to tell Hines and Jordan to stop overswinging when they have two strikes- guess who needs to? Yes- Chris- YOU. We make zero offensive adjustments. And our SEC batting is actually better than OOC games because our approach is so horrendous and NO ONE does anything about it. Hines has probably cost himself at least 250K-500K because he refuses to adjust. Yes, you don't want to totally micromanage but sometimes the HEAD COACH has to step in and do something. We can't decide on a closer because Lemonis refuses to pitch a guy more than once on the weekend. It cost us Saturday. And what else does Tyson Hardin need to do to get a legit chance? He looked great on Friday. He only threw 12 pitches- he should have been available for Saturday for at least one inning. If anything he should have let Stevens pitch Friday in the 9th and Hardin the next night. And it's not like pitching these guys once a weekend is preventing Tommy John injuries with this staff.

4. Lemonis's in game feel is AWFUL. When I saw the starting lineup today I really thought someone was trolling. It's a big WTF? fest. We started a freshman who isn't a power hitter at DH with a batting average of .000. WHHHHHHYYYYY??? We put in LH pinch hitters to face LH pitchers. We put in LHP to face RH hitters. We let our submarine guy throw to LH hitters who usually tee off on submarine guys and then take him out when a RH hitter comes up- which are the hitters that submarine guys usually eat up. It's baseball 101 fails left and right and there is no common sense to any of it. Cohen did some crazy stuff but at least he could pretty much always back it up which is one reason why I liked him. Lemonis can't back his moves up though.

5. Lemonis's recruiting- actually pretty good! The problem is he is so bad in every other area no one gets developed and reaches their potential. If you want to blame the players you can- but you're off base. They have zero leadership and the leadership that is there expects them to figure everything out. Saban had five star recruits at every position and HE didn't treat his players like that. It's the same in baseball. But we're going to lose a lot of players next year- So what? No matter who the coach is we're going to hit the portal hard. We're not going to sit here and stand pat. Might as well hire someone that can identify and attract players.

MSU needs to get back to detail oriented baseball like we had under Polk and Cohen in all five phases of the game- pitching, defense, hitting for power, hitting for average and getting on base, and putting pressure on the other team with speed. And MSU fans need to decide if they want a team that plays with energy and passion or if they want a team that that plays like an Upward Rec League baseball team- but the fact of the matter is MSU baseball has always been better with players that played hard and played with energy and passion and pissed off the other team so that's the camp I'm in.

If I were in MSU's AD shoes the first two guys I call are Pollard and Haire after Vitello tells me no. Any one of those three can fix this mess and make everyone happy. We're close enough to making a regional that we're not a complete dumpster fire either plus we'll pay so we should be able to get someone good. Oh- and we don't have Cohen messing up the search either like he did the last two coaching searches.

Nailed it.

[Todd4State]

Lessee ... Long is batting .250 with 1 extra base hit (the HR) ALL YEAR. He only has 9 RBIs all year. He does a pretty good job at framing pitches and blocking wild pitches but can't throw anyone out at 2nd.
And this is the MSU Poster Child for "fire & passion"?? He's barely an SEC caliber player.
His fire & passion cost us the GA game last week.

His backup, Powell is batting .294 and has 3 less RBI while starting half the games Long has started. He's actually hitting .429 in conference on only 7 AB tho.

If Long is the leader of this team then we're in trouble ... in more ways than one.
And not sure where this love affair with him is coming from but ... whatever.

The TEAM and Lemonis is saying he is the leader. And that's honestly fine. Even in MLB it's not always the stars that are the actual leaders of the team. His "actions" have been overblown. The only reason he got ejected against Georgia is because the SEC 17ed it up royally over what amounted to a push. The bat flip that he did happens every weekend and the pearl clutching Ole Miss fans have no problem with it when their players do it- which has gone on for years with that program. And the pearl clutching MSU fans had no problem with MacNamee celebrating as much or more than Long did.

How many games did Jake Mangum cost us when he hit his hand against the dugout wall against Kentucky and was out for a couple of weeks a few years ago? Our fans never had any problems with his emotion. If teams do not like us celebrating then they don't need to serve up bombs to our "barely a SEC player" catcher. Especially in a game where their starting pitcher was emotional on the mound the whole time- which I had no problem with either.

Johnny Long may not start on my team- but he can be on my team any and every time.

[Todd4State]

And another key point is that thanks to the NIL and Portal, the days of long rebuilds are over. Ignore anyone who dooms about how we're going to suck for another 2-3 years because of this.

Hire a good coach and line up the NIL dollars, and we should be hosting in 2025.

The caveat to losing a lot of players? That opens up NIL money to get new ones.

[basedog]

I have to say Todd, this is maybe your best take of a HC. I don't want to say too much about this but I do know this is true " Lemonis is not a very good leader. It feels like he wants or expects the players to lead themselves."

I am always wanted to see a Coach have success at Msu, but times in sports have changed dramatically. Win or be gone, HC's make good money now days, fans pay high prices with tickets and travel to watch their teams play.

Lastly, player development is a huge problem but so is decision making.

[BrunswickDawg]

Lessee ... Long is batting .250 with 1 extra base hit (the HR) ALL YEAR. He only has 9 RBIs all year. He does a pretty good job at framing pitches and blocking wild pitches but can't throw anyone out at 2nd.
And this is the MSU Poster Child for "fire & passion"?? He's barely an SEC caliber player.
His fire & passion cost us the GA game last week.

His backup, Powell is batting .294 and has 3 less RBI while starting half the games Long has started. He's actually hitting .429 in conference on only 7 AB tho.

If Long is the leader of this team then we're in trouble ... in more ways than one.
And not sure where this love affair with him is coming from but ... whatever.

This is where you have understand that our outside view is not reflective of what goes on with the team. Powell would likely have won the spot - but he's been dealing with a concussion. So it's hard to lead when you don't play and in the case of a concussion get held out of team activities.

Johnny Long is not a problem. As T4S says - we loved Mac's bat flips and fire so why are we clowning on Long? Well, it's because they lost. But I totally get what Long is trying to do. He's trying to motivate and engage the team and appears to be the only one doing it. I'm not going to dog him for that.

Todd's post is pretty spot on.

[msstate7]

No, that type of bat flip doesn't happen. At least be honest.

[msstate7]

This is where you have understand that our outside view is not reflective of what goes on with the team. Powell would likely have won the spot - but he's been dealing with a concussion. So it's hard to lead when you don't play and in the case of a concussion get held out of team activities.

Johnny Long is not a problem. As T4S says - we loved Mac's bat flips and fire so why are we clowning on Long? Well, it's because they lost. But I totally get what Long is trying to do. He's trying to motivate and engage the team and appears to be the only one doing it. I'm not going to dog him for that.

Todd's post is pretty spot on.

Had long made the tag and went along his way, we had a legit shot at winning the Georgia game. Had long just did a normal bat flip instead of carrying it to 1b and slinging it at their dug out, Bianco stays in the dug out and doesn't get his team fired up. Long's DA antics have possibly cost us 2 wins.

[gtowndawg]

I've said before I don't really follow baseball very much but reading through that, if true, it seems obvious we just need a new coach. Pretty simple.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Your entire post can be summed up into what BankerDog said yesterday, Lemonis is a AA manager but he is not coaching AA

[BrunswickDawg]

Had long made the tag and went along his way, we had a legit shot at winning the Georgia game. Had long just did a normal bat flip instead of carrying it to 1b and slinging it at their dug out, Bianco stays in the dug out and doesn't get his team fired up. Long's DA antics have possibly cost us 2 wins.

He didn't sling it out their dugout. Where the hell did you see that? I don't see him slinging it toward the OM dugout in this video

https://x.com/cjzero/status/1779366784543395982


It goes back to us losing. We win that game and its a legendary episode in a heated rivalry.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Todd I will disagree on 2 points:

1) I think we should have fired Lemo last year. The logic of "We needed to give him every chance possible to right the ship" sounds fine, but it also applies to football. Should we have given JoMo a year 3? Should we have given Arnett a year 2? I think if you have. A bad coach you rip the bandaid off immediately. Waste no more seasons under them.

2) recruiting. Like you can say his recruiting is good but this is year 6. What Fr do we have that can contribute? Not a one. Who's the best pitcher on our team Lemo got from HS? Loo? We have no 3rd starter or reliably middle reliever or closer. Our best 2 pitchers (when healthy) are Kahl and Dohm, both transfers. Hitting, who do we have in the lineup that's above SEC average in talent or potential? Jordan (HS), Hujsak (Tranfer), Hines (HS), Mershon (HS). The other 5 spots are not impressive from a pure talent or performance perspective. And we're starting 3 mediocre transfers (Koehler, Long, Larry) because Lemo can't fill those spots with talent. Overall the lineup is about 9th in the SEC as far as numbers go.

I'm not against Portal plays or somehow saying they don't count as far as giving Lemo props for bringing in talent. I'm saying you're supposed to use the Portal to bring in studs and sure, fill the odd hole. You're not supposed to use the Portal to bring in sub average SEC players to fill half the lineup because you can't recruit even mediocre guys from HS to fill those spots

[StarkVegasSteve]

He didn't sling it out their dugout. Where the hell did you see that? I don't see him slinging it toward the OM dugout in this video

https://x.com/cjzero/status/1779366784543395982


It goes back to us losing. We win that game and its a legendary episode in a heated rivalry.

It is the Tennessee stuff with a worse team. When Tennessee was doing all of their celebrating and antics their fans ate it up because they were winning. The minute Notre Dame beat them, it was a distraction and the reason they lost.

I do not mind the celebrating and acting like a bad ass, but when it negatively impacts your team by either: taking you out of the game or just pissing off the other team then it ultimately hurts. A great example of this, 2017 against Kentucky, Mangum gets an inside the park HR on Sunday of SBW and he get way to fired up, punches the wall, and breaks his hand. He struggled batting the rest of the year.

[PMDawg]

Had long made the tag and went along his way, we had a legit shot at winning the Georgia game. Had long just did a normal bat flip instead of carrying it to 1b and slinging it at their dug out, Bianco stays in the dug out and doesn't get his team fired up. Long's DA antics have possibly cost us 2 wins.

I agree with you, except for this - we never should have seen Long's AB in the 12th. We should have brought in Davis instead of Shuelke. We would've won the game 7-3. All these coaching blunders have cost us pretty much every SEC series we have lost.

[Santiago]

If you look at the season as a whole we have improved but we are still not up to the MSU standard. Some people may say "well we should have fired Lemonis last year" but the reality is I am glad that we gave him every reasonable chance to fix the program. He can't say that- and more importantly future candidates for MSU baseball can't say that either. Support isn't just about fans although that is certainly part of it- it's also about the support from major boosters and the athletic department staff and being too quick to fire and not give chances to fix things can drive away potential candidates and make things worse. That's why my stance was to keep him for this year which I still think was the right decision for the overall long term health of the program but I always had the caveat that the expectation IF he came back was to get us to at least a SR. That has also never changed. And that's still possible. However, if you look at this team what they have done and their RPI and what's left the margin of error to even get into a regional is shrinking. And that is squarely on Lemonis. If we don't get into a regional I don't think he will be back next year. I'm thinking that if we do get into a regional it's going to be as a three seed somewhere probably with a difficult draw. The bottom line is this team isn't where it should be. And here's why I think that is.

1. Lemonis is not a very good leader. It feels like he wants or expects the players to lead themselves. That works with Jake Mangum and Tanner Allen. It doesn't work if you don't have people like that. And the coach has to lead and set the tone. Yes, there does need to be some leadership from the players but it really feels like there is none at that top and we're just hoping Johnny Long can lead us to a SR. These are 18-23 year old young men. There's probably a good reason why most generals and CEO's aren't that age.

2. Lemonis lacks attention to detail. We see this in the form of little things like our schedule being the last to be put out as fans. We also see it in the form of the baserunning circus every week. We see it in the form of the same people playing no matter how bad they're struggling. We see it in the form of bad defense last year. We see it in the form of lack of player development from year to year. The biggest indictment to me was still Johnny Long's interview after the Central Arkansas loss when he very carefully talked about how the team lacks focus for midweek games. I know he wasn't trying to call out Lemonis and was trying to send a message to his teammates but it had to make you wonder "what the hell was Lemonis doing then?" The infamous Augie Garrido videos that are the internet where he is chewing an absolutely new asshole into everyone on the team? At least one was after a midweek game that I think Texas WON. After we lost to UCA our guys probably signed some autographs and went to the Bin and picked up some college girls.

3. Lemonis is too hands off with his assistants which goes back to number one. Why was Foxhall allowed to do what he did? Why didn't he step in? And with Gautreau this year our approach is like a PG Travel Ball team. If Gautreau isn't going to tell Hines and Jordan to stop overswinging when they have two strikes- guess who needs to? Yes- Chris- YOU. We make zero offensive adjustments. And our SEC batting is actually better than OOC games because our approach is so horrendous and NO ONE does anything about it. Hines has probably cost himself at least 250K-500K because he refuses to adjust. Yes, you don't want to totally micromanage but sometimes the HEAD COACH has to step in and do something. We can't decide on a closer because Lemonis refuses to pitch a guy more than once on the weekend. It cost us Saturday. And what else does Tyson Hardin need to do to get a legit chance? He looked great on Friday. He only threw 12 pitches- he should have been available for Saturday for at least one inning. If anything he should have let Stevens pitch Friday in the 9th and Hardin the next night. And it's not like pitching these guys once a weekend is preventing Tommy John injuries with this staff.

4. Lemonis's in game feel is AWFUL. When I saw the starting lineup today I really thought someone was trolling. It's a big WTF? fest. We started a freshman who isn't a power hitter at DH with a batting average of .000. WHHHHHHYYYYY??? We put in LH pinch hitters to face LH pitchers. We put in LHP to face RH hitters. We let our submarine guy throw to LH hitters who usually tee off on submarine guys and then take him out when a RH hitter comes up- which are the hitters that submarine guys usually eat up. It's baseball 101 fails left and right and there is no common sense to any of it. Cohen did some crazy stuff but at least he could pretty much always back it up which is one reason why I liked him. Lemonis can't back his moves up though.

5. Lemonis's recruiting- actually pretty good! The problem is he is so bad in every other area no one gets developed and reaches their potential. If you want to blame the players you can- but you're off base. They have zero leadership and the leadership that is there expects them to figure everything out. Saban had five star recruits at every position and HE didn't treat his players like that. It's the same in baseball. But we're going to lose a lot of players next year- So what? No matter who the coach is we're going to hit the portal hard. We're not going to sit here and stand pat. Might as well hire someone that can identify and attract players.

MSU needs to get back to detail oriented baseball like we had under Polk and Cohen in all five phases of the game- pitching, defense, hitting for power, hitting for average and getting on base, and putting pressure on the other team with speed. And MSU fans need to decide if they want a team that plays with energy and passion or if they want a team that that plays like an Upward Rec League baseball team- but the fact of the matter is MSU baseball has always been better with players that played hard and played with energy and passion and pissed off the other team so that's the camp I'm in.

If I were in MSU's AD shoes the first two guys I call are Pollard and Haire after Vitello tells me no. Any one of those three can fix this mess and make everyone happy. We're close enough to making a regional that we're not a complete dumpster fire either plus we'll pay so we should be able to get someone good. Oh- and we don't have Cohen messing up the search either like he did the last two coaching searches.

Isn't this what many of us were saying a few weeks ago, but we would be told we were unrealistic fans, and that "we are ranked and just looking for reasons"?
It was fools gold the past few weeks and some of us were already saying all this.

[FoggyBottom]

Had long made the tag and went along his way, we had a legit shot at winning the Georgia game. Had long just did a normal bat flip instead of carrying it to 1b and slinging it at their dug out, Bianco stays in the dug out and doesn't get his team fired up. Long's DA antics have possibly cost us 2 wins.

Exactly. From the moment Bianco got tossed, Ole Miss? entire team demeanor changed and they dominated play. They got a huge shot of confidence and that incident may well serve to save their season.