My reasoning for my position change on Lemon

[Quaoarsking]

Whatever, I'm pretty much checked out on baseball for now. Looking much more forward to football and basketball season for the next school year. Ridiculous that after 3 straight trips to Omaha that our coaching staff let the program fall to this anemic level.

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.

[The Federalist Engineer]

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

[BuckyIsAB****]

If he stays its time to spend a lot less money on baseball, bc we arent serious about it

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

1. We don't know what will happen but at a minimum we will be very strong up the middle next year with Highfill, Mershon, Cupp, and Dakota Jordan. Teams that are typically good are strong up the middle. We know Hines is a 20 home run guy as well and Chance appears to be a quality player who should be better. Improving a team ERA of 7 is hardly unrealistic as well. Lemonis has hit pretty good in the portal on position players- Dubrule, Yeager, Larry, and Ledbetter to name a few.

2. I don't think most of our fans fathom how bad Foxhall was. If we can improve our team ERA to five which is still not very good but significantly better than this year then we will easily be in a regional. Foxhall was essentially Lemonis's Peter Sirmon. Which is a lot more relevant comparison compared to the Moorhead comps. If our rotation next year is Loo, Loftin, and Holcombe that would be three top 200 MLB draft prospects in our rotation alone. Our fans don't think someone average as a pitching coach even could do something with that? Not to mention Dohm coming back. And by the way- having a winning record with an ERA of 7 and setting a school record for walks by a mile is unheard of. And actually in a morbid way kind of impressive.

3. Hancock had not had any problems before this year. And it's not like Highfill didn't get better as the season went on. A lot of those stolen bases early on were on our pitchers not holding the runners on. So yeah- even that is on Foxhall. We made 65 errors as a team this year 28 of those were by two players alone. Seems like an easy fix- in fact Lane Forsythe won't be back from what I've heard. So there goes 15 right there. I haven't heard anything about Alford yet although there are rumors he will enter the portal. But at the same time I wouldn't be shocked if we bring him back and see if he can improve while bringing in a UTL type INF that profile at third if he can't figure it out. He may be a douchebag but he also got some of our biggest hits this year too. None of us are around the team but losing can turn people into assholes sometimes. Essentially he's our Roger Dorn.

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.

[Mjoelner34]

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

For me it's a 2 seed in a regional but I'm sure if we squeak into the SEC tourney as an 11 or 12, we'll have those saying we can't fire him because we couldn't get anybody to come here after we fired a coach who showed 'improvement '.

[Quaoarsking]

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.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

For me it's a 2 seed in a regional but I'm sure if we squeak into the SEC tourney as an 11 or 12, we'll have those saying we can't fire him because we couldn't get anybody to come here after we fired a coach who showed 'improvement '.

"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."

[msudawg1200]

"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."

Lemonis is the Head Man. The buck stops with him. I hope you are being sarcastic.

[PMDawg]

While I dont agree with some of the things Lemon does like screwing up Dakota Jordan the 1st half the season or not making Hugesak a 3rd baseman and cutting the cancer out of the team, or why we didnt have an SEC level SS- my biggest issues with the program centered around pitching. Pitching decisions, pitch-calling, pitching recruiting, not having guys heated and ready when we should. Those have been glaring issues since he and Fox got to town.

That has looked different since Fox was let go. The pitch-calling improved and was more FB friendly. We started challenging hitters at their hands more. Fewer instances of 6 or 7 straight breaking balls. Going to the pen quicker. Chewing a little ass on mound visits. Just looked better run the last 3 weeks.

We battled after the UPig series. We hustled- plays like Highfill hustling on the dropped flyball the other days. We took a series from LSU. We nearly took one from A&M.

We have to fix the pitching- period and this team will be back next season competing in the top 20 again. We have some good young talent with more coming in along with some injured guys returning. Need 4 quality guys from the portal and then a couple more for depth.

C- Highfill
1B- Hines
2B- Mershon
SS- Freshman or portal
3B- ??? (I'd work to put Hugesak here if he'll stay)
LF- ???? (Hugesak possibly here)
CF- Jordan
RF- ????

Fri- Simmons
Sat- Loo
Sun- Loftin or Holcombe
Midweek- Siary

Dohm
Auger
Tapper
Gartman (could return if not drafted)
No idea about Gibbs or Miller who didnt pitch this year
Forsythe
Freshman signee that surprises

Need a couple of impact guys out of the portal on the field and on the hill

Team could be pretty good with the right pieces added

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.

[The Federalist Engineer]

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.

[BrunswickDawg]

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.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Lemonis is the Head Man. The buck stops with him. I hope you are being sarcastic.

Oh I am. I'm saying that's what people will be saying next year to justify keeping Lemonis into '25. I am not saying those are my thoughts

[Coach34]

If we arent in the NCAA Tourney next year- nobody will be supporting Lemon returning.

[confucius say]

If we arent in the NCAA Tourney next year- nobody will be supporting Lemon returning.

Correct. And replacing him will be much more affordable

[confucius say]

Who is We?re?

You nor I know who has the pockets deep enough to pay a big chunk of a buyout and limit the financial damage to the program. Nobody has a right to tell someone what to spend their money on and if a few boosters choose Coach buyouts over NIL or BC, that is their prerogative. Don?t come back and say that is a poor decision. The money is not any of yours to earmark. Let?s see what happens in the next few of days.

Already been explored and tabled. Not happening. I'm not defending it, just telling you.

[civildawg]

If we arent in the NCAA Tourney next year- nobody will be supporting Lemon returning.

So just being in a regional is ok now? Man, how the mighty have fallen

[sandjunky]

So just being in a regional is ok now? Man, how the mighty have fallen

It?s the re-imaging of MSU baseball

[R2Dawg]

Whatever, I'm pretty much checked out on baseball for now. Looking much more forward to football and basketball season for the next school year. Ridiculous that after 3 straight trips to Omaha that our coaching staff let the program fall to this anemic level.

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?

[R2Dawg]

So just being in a regional is ok now? Man, how the mighty have fallen

Making a regional is the floor for me with the goal to make a super. Obviously the celling is winning a NC. That is a championship program type expectation that is realistic year in and year out

[R2Dawg]

If we arent in the NCAA Tourney next year- nobody will be supporting Lemon returning.

The straw in camel back will be broke if that don't happen.