Expectations for baseball season.....

[Goat Holder]

Going to go ahead and throw this out there. In my MSU sports fan life I've seen this situation probably 20 times. And seeing how we have message boards, social media, etc. to spew out ignorant opinions, I'm going to try and temper everyone's expectations of what to expect of this year's baseball team. No doubt many of the casual fans likely expect a national title. Might better reel that back a little. We were a Top 16 team last year who got some clutch hits and almost won it all. I'd expect about the same this year. We've got a pretty good 2 year increment trend going on now: 2009/10 rebuilding, 2011/12 regional team, 2013/14 regional host team. Not to mention, we're at the hardest level to break out of right now. I really don't think we'll be in the mix for a true national seed until 2016. We are good this year, and we certainly CAN win it all, but I wouldn't expect that at this point. Then we lose a big nucleus in 2015, but replace them with serious talent. Then in 2016 we're a solid title contender, at least preseason wise.

I think our season goes a lot like this (think the 96 basketball season): We'll do some good things but nothing outstanding in the early season, and drop some games we shouldn't. SEC season will start and we'll win some games but we will have a serious mid-season struggle. And most of it will be mental. We'll start to get it together near the end and win our way into another host spot.

Now, how hot/seasoned/clutch/battle-tested/etc. we are at that point, determines how far we go in the postseason. And that is determined by when we mentally 'click' during that mid-season downtown that most assuredly will happen because it's happened repeatedly during our history. Plus it's the nature of sports. Not to mention all of our success is centered upon Woodruff (who is good but not completely proven) and Lindgren, who's mental toughness, well, let's be nice and say it's a work in progress.

39-17, 18-12 SEC is about right.