Next year's potential lineup

[ShotgunDawg]

The whole SEC west will be top 15 other than bama and msu

With the lineup posted here, we're a national title contender. Not bottom 2 in the SEC.

We will have had the 2nd best portal haul of the year behind LSU & that's only if Little and Carter Young are good

[Homedawg]

With the lineup posted here, we're a national title contender. Not bottom 2 in the SEC.

We will have had the 2nd best portal haul of the year behind LSU & that's only if Little and Carter Young are good

I wouldn't have taken either of the two. Now, they may work out. But the limitations we have money wise, no chance.

[TNDawg35]

I wouldn't have taken either of the two. Now, they may work out. But the limitations we have money wise, no chance.

One has regressed badly and one is a head case cause he didn’t get his way… I wouldn’t have taken either. Their Creighton pitcher may not even make it to campus, yet D1 baseball is already picking them to win it all next year…

[ShotgunDawg]

Here?s the thing about baseball.

Unlike football, in baseball you don?t have to be the best team. You just have to be ?good enough?.

Ole Miss wasn?t close to the best team this year, but they were good enough.

This portal haul, especially if we land Skenes, makes us plenty good enough to make a run

[Todd4State]

We were pretty close to that in '16, but only had 21 wins. But, we have to remember they play in the East - and the East winner has an advantage playing at least 3 so-so to bad programs in UK, Missouri, and USC. Plus Florida and Vandy were not their typical juggernauts this year and UGA was a different team every weekend. I think in the West they are probably closer to a 20 win team than 25.

That's a good point. I would like to see us win 25 SEC games a year even in the West because I'm greedy though. Competition be damned!

I think the recipe is get to 16-18 wins in SEC, schedule wins in the mid week so that you can build depth, and qualify for Hoover. Get out of Hoover as fast as possible if you know you will host a Regional. You want to be Top 16 when the Regionals are announced if possible. 37 wins will usually get MSU a host spot. Schedule accordingly based on your SEC slate. If you know you have Vandy and Florida on you schedule, limit the damage early season opponents can cause to your RPI but definitely schedule series you can win.

In 2 years, non-conference scheduling is going to require winnable games when Okla and UTex join.

It's a quandry because our fans enjoy playing good brand named baseball teams and take pride in that. And then combine that with our fans not understanding RPI. I'm sure I'll get some disagreements- but we actually tend to overschedule sometimes at least a little bit. We want to play in prestigious preseason tournaments and play people like Oregon State and then at Tulane and then Texas Tech in Biloxi. And then when our RPI is bad because we've lost all of those series our fans blame a random loss to Northern Kentucky for tanking our entire RPI. And that's not how it works. As far as RPI goes you're better off playing an easy OOC schedule and winning those games than you are playing a killer schedule and losing half of them. We may be better off backing off a little bit and maybe playing in a tournament or a home and home against Texas Tech rather than both in the same season.

Clark better start hitting better than .250 or he will find his butt riding the bench.

He was hitting better in the Cape for average. I'm optimistic at this point.

With the lineup posted here, we're a national title contender. Not bottom 2 in the SEC.

We will have had the 2nd best portal haul of the year behind LSU & that's only if Little and Carter Young are good

I agree. And I don't think Tommy Tanks was a fit for us really. We need to finish it off with Kelly and Skenes.

I wouldn't have taken either of the two. Now, they may work out. But the limitations we have money wise, no chance.

I wouldn't either. I'm not sure that Young could beat out Forsythe at this point. He would have to improve his average by a good bit and then I'm not sure that he's better defensively than Forsythe either. Not to where the 2-5 home runs justify bringing him in. I don't think Little fits our culture to be honest with you. Especially with Lemonis trying to re-establish it.

[Catfish]

With the lineup posted here, we're a national title contender. Not bottom 2 in the SEC.

We will have had the 2nd best portal haul of the year behind LSU & that's only if Little and Carter Young are good

Good post and welcome back.