Quote Originally Posted by the_real_MSU_is_us View Post
As I've stated before, if you take Waltons last 7 years or so and average it out he's averaging the 5th best ERA out of the 9 teams in his conference. A quick glance at perfect games recruiting rankings shows OK State is consistently top 4 in that conference, meaning he's underpinning his talent level in addition to ultimately putting mediocre results on the field. I know baseball recruiting is very poorly covered but it seems unlikely the ranking would be so far off as to say Walton has been over performing his talent.



An annoying coach would explain his motive to leave, but it doesn't explain his on field staff production. Let me explain: Holliday and Walton have been together for 10 seasons. 7 seasons ago was Waltons best year, and he won the national assistant of the year. Since then, Waltons numbers have been worse than the 5/9 average finish. Am I supposed to believe that Walton did great and Holiday decided to meddle with the national assistant of the year (2016), and then Walton put up with it for 7 seasons? That makes no sense from either coaches perspective... why would you meddle with a PC that just had a fantastic year? And why would an assistant put up with a HC meddling in their staff for 7 years before deciding to leave?

Alternatively, I can believe that after Waltons mediocre staffs for 4-5 seasons (post 2016) Holliday began to meddle and that's making Walton want to leave, but that doesn't excuse the post 2016 sub par performances causing the meddling.

At the end of the day, they guy has been a pitching coach for a long time at a P5 school that recruits OK and he's consistently produced mediocre to sub average results.



8 SEC teams hosted this season. It's not that high of a bar for our conference. DO we want to be Bama and Auburn in baseball, or do we want to be Florida, Vanderbilt, and LSU and COMPETE at the top? What's our goal as a program? To make regionals or to win in Omaha?



Lemonis has been our HC for 5 seasons and the HC at Indiana for 4, and here you are talking about assistants with "head coaching experience" to help him out like he's Arnett and may need a guiding voice year 1 as he learns the HC ropes. And I don't disagree with your assessment; Lemonis DOES need a guiding voice because he's got no idea what he's doing. That's why he should have been fired.

NOW regarding Walton, I understand he's the guy we're hiring. My question is what is the contract details going to look like... can we fire him after 1 season if Lemo fails to turn it around so the new HC can bring in his own PC?
Who knows how long Holliday has been meddling? Also their ballpark is very hitter friendly. We don't have to dominate stats to reach our standard. In 2021 we finished sixth in the SEC in pitching. Nate Yeskie who people seem to agree is better than Walton had a worse staff ERA this year. And Wes Johnson's LSU staff was only half a run better with the best pitcher in the game throwing for them.

And no hosting isn't the "bar" for us but hosting gives us a better chance of getting there. And it also means we won around 17-18 SEC games and 40+ regular season games. And that's just minimums we're talking about here. Keep in mind we haven't lost a regional game in awhile in Starkville- since 2013 I believe. MSU has a huge postseason homefield advantage. To me, what happened at Oklahoma State is pretty irrelevant because you're picking out two years and at MSU we're going to be dealing with different pitchers and a different team.

I'm not saying that Lemonis needs a "guiding voice". Not sure how you got that out of that. My point was Lemonis is pretty hands off with the other coaches. Someone that is essentially the head coach of the pitching staff could be a good fit for us. It's more like Leach and Arnett. If Lemonis had no idea what he was doing he wouldn't have a National Title or taken us to Omaha twice and taken Indiana to a regional. He is heavily reliant on his assistants and if one of them fails him then you're going to get MSU 2022-2023. If they are good then you get MSU baseball 2019-2021.

I'm not sure why you're worried about firing anyone. We could fire anyone at any time. We could have fired Lemonis if we wanted to last year. The money was there- so that wasn't the issue. The issue was whether or not it was the best thing for MSU to do- and no it wasn't the best thing to do for MSU. There were other concerns as well about keeping recruiting classes intact and also what the coaching market would look like as well as the optics of firing a coach two years removed from a National Championship. And then with that the risk of not getting a good coach and the cost of having to make another change in a few years while we're wondering in the dark so to speak. So as far as the pitching coach goes even if it is a three year contract it's still going to have a buyout- it's just going to be a bit higher than normal so that we can maximize our chances of getting someone good. In other words yes, there is maybe a little more risk here but we're going to pay you more money. So either way MSU still comes out ahead. And no- it doesn't mean whoever our next coach is will be stuck with the pitching coach. MSU isn't going to hamstring themselves or a potential hire like that. We're not run by Larry Templeton anymore.