Let's just get this out of the way- yes Lemonis should be fired and I don't think there is any turning it around at this point. His team is not playing baseball with the respect it deserves and it's absolutely sad to see because we at MSU are one of if not the standard bearer for SEC baseball. Absolutely ugly- guys fighting in the dugouts, having trouble with pop ups, giving away AB's, walks, etc.

My guess as to what happened most likely is I think it's two fold really.

1. We treated our players like pros instead of like college players. And you can't do that. Shouldn't expect a college kid to be mature enough or have the time to act like a pro. Sure there are a few alpha male super competitive types like Mangum and Ethan Small that can get away with it which is why both are about to be MLB players. College players need work on fundamentals constantly at all facets of the game. And they need to be made to do it. Part of their player development is teaching them how to be professional while they're here.

2. We relied way too much on analytics and it's led to fubar baseball. It got us away from our identity of blue collar hard working play the game harder than you baseball. We don't attack the strike zone. We allow opponents to show us up. We take poor selfish AB's at times. Our fundamentals suck.

Now that is out of the way how do we fix it?

1. You bring in Justin Haire. His style of play is the identity that fits MSU baseball. When Polk 2 got burned out and turned our program soft we fixed it by bringing in Cohen. Haire built Campbell along with Greg Goff with a blue collar mentality. His program is producing MLB players like Cedric Mullins and Zach Neto.

2. You hire the best pitching coach we can get. We can not be where we want to be without an elite pitching coach.

3. We need to recruit personality and character fit better like we did under Cohen. More Adam Frazier, Jake Mangum, and Tanner Allen and less Slade Alford.

At the end of the day Lemonis was not a good fit for MSU despite the National Championship. I think he is in over his head and is too lazy to succeed over the long run. I will never give him credit for the National Championship. That should go to John Cohen who built that team and program which Lemonis destroyed. I will never ever respect Chris Lemonis for what he did to our program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCo5SXXYq0w&t=1005s


Justin Haire Interview starts at 16:47