Pitching Coach Candidates

[Cooterpoot]

What's the hold up on making it official? Is he the fall back guy incase we can't land our main target?

Pretty much. We're still on one other but that's not going anywhere IMO. Wish it would but Walton is a solid coach.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Wish it would but Walton is a solid coach.

"Solid"...hat's probably the most generous way to say it and still be fair. I'd say "average", and "mediocre" are also fair.

He's going to be a MASSIVE improvement over Fox. Absolutely. We'll probably be good enough to make a regional. But Walton won't built an above average staff, even if he's got years and years to do so.

Todd said we were going to offer a multi year fully guaranteed contract so the PC coach wouldn't worry about being fired after 1 year. But that was a week or to ago and the situation is always fluid. I've also heard we're talking "2nd highest paid PC" money which is a massive overpay if we get Walton. What are you hearing on the contract front?

[Todd4State]

It's 90% chance it's going to be Walton.

I agree. If it's not him it will be Nate Yeskie or Justin Parker from South Carolina.

[CaptainObvious]

I agree. If it's not him it will be Nate Yeskie or Justin Parker from South Carolina.

So our 2nd and 3rd choices are better than our first choice? Who is making the selection: Nell Cohen?

[Todd4State]

So our 2nd and 3rd choices are better than our first choice? Who is making the selection: Nell Cohen?

I didn't list them in order of Lemonis's preference. There's a reason why Walton hasn't been announced even though we could have done so already.

[The Federalist Engineer]

I agree. If it's not him it will be Nate Yeskie or Justin Parker from South Carolina.

Funny options...

A BMW, a Mercedes Benz, or a Ford Fiesta

[Todd4State]

Funny options...

A BMW, a Mercedes Benz, or a Ford Fiesta

I think we have three pretty good options.

I've dug into Oklahoma State's situation a little bit because I thought it was odd that an alum would leave there. Turns out there are a lot of rumors about Josh Holliday micromanaging the pitching staff which is why Walton wants out. And today their recruiting coordinator just resigned out of the blue. Which I thought was interesting.

Even if Walton gets us to an ERA of 5.00 whatever that is still a 2 run improvement which is massive compared to 7.01. We would get into a regional with that and probably host.

Good chance that Walton will bring in Oklahoma State's analytics guy who used to work for Team USA.

Another thing I do like about Walton is he was a successful head coach at Oral Roberts- which I think may be a good fit with Lemonis's coaching style.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

I think we have three pretty good options.

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.

I've dug into Oklahoma State's situation a little bit because I thought it was odd that an alum would leave there. Turns out there are a lot of rumors about Josh Holliday micromanaging the pitching staff which is why Walton wants out. And today their recruiting coordinator just resigned out of the blue. Which I thought was interesting.

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.

Even if Walton gets us to an ERA of 5.00 whatever that is still a 2 run improvement which is massive compared to 7.01. We would get into a regional with that and probably host

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?

Another thing I do like about Walton is he was a successful head coach at Oral Roberts- which I think may be a good fit with Lemonis's coaching style.

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?

[Cooterpoot]

Would Walton be my choice? No. But with a coach on the hot seat, we made the decision not to fire him and overpay an assistant. We screwed up keeping Lemonis. That's the bottom line. But AD and money guys did this. Let them pay for the buyouts. We basically will have the same staff even if we fire Lemonis next year. Good luck finding a good coach. Just weak leadership.

[Todd4State]

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.

[Todd4State]

Would Walton be my choice? No. But with a coach on the hot seat, we made the decision not to fire him and overpay an assistant. We screwed up keeping Lemonis. That's the bottom line. But AD and money guys did this. Let them pay for the buyouts. We basically will have the same staff even if we fire Lemonis next year. Good luck finding a good coach. Just weak leadership.

We're not going to fire Lemonis and force the next coach to keep the assistants.

Even Larry Templeton didn't expect that to happen with new coaches.

[Cooterpoot]

We're not going to fire Lemonis and force the next coach to keep the assistants.

Even Larry Templeton didn't expect that to happen with new coaches.

We've given assurances to Walton. He's not coming here to look for a job next year. But let me guess, we just need to make post season to keep Lemonis. We don't have the pitching or the lineup right now to do more than just make post season. Sad our fans are ok with that. I'm amazed so many people are getting Lemonis back. Longest losing streak in history. Two consecutive missed SEC tournaments with no post season. Last place. People still slobbing him. We've already lost recruits and are about to lose more.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

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.

https://www.elitedawgs.com/showthrea...inking-Georgia

You might be surprised. A lot of rumors that we have added contract details to offset any worries- multiple years guaranteed along with a top five salary is what we are rumored to be offering.

So to be clear, you're saying the situation has changed on that "multiple years guaranteed" part?

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

We've given assurances to Walton. He's not coming here to look for a job next year. But let me guess, we just need to make post season to keep Lemonis. We don't have the pitching or the lineup right now to do more than just make post season. Sad our fans are ok with that. I'm amazed so many people are getting Lemonis back. Longest losing streak in history. Two consecutive missed SEC tournaments with no post season. Last place. People still slobbing him. We've already lost recruits and are about to lose more.

Money men would rather save a buck today and let the program slide into more of a hole. On the one hand I can't blame people for not spending money on a college sport team, but on the other it's destroying the only sport we are nationally competitive in. And with a lot of SEC teams pouring money into the sport + our NIL situation it's not a given we'll crawl out of this hole post Lemo

[Todd4State]

https://www.elitedawgs.com/showthrea...inking-Georgia



So to be clear, you're saying the situation has changed on that "multiple years guaranteed" part?

No I'm not saying that has changed. I'm saying that we could still fire them and buy them out.

[Todd4State]

We've given assurances to Walton. He's not coming here to look for a job next year. But let me guess, we just need to make post season to keep Lemonis. We don't have the pitching or the lineup right now to do more than just make post season. Sad our fans are ok with that. I'm amazed so many people are getting Lemonis back. Longest losing streak in history. Two consecutive missed SEC tournaments with no post season. Last place. People still slobbing him. We've already lost recruits and are about to lose more.

I really think he can turn it around. If I'm wrong then we fire him. This isn't the lowest I've seen our program- that was 2008-2010. We recovered from that- and actually went beyond what this program had ever done before. It's not about "excusing" anything at least for me. It's about do I think he can fix it with certain changes. What's done is done. Now it's up to Lemonis to fix it. Either he will or he won't. The 2023 team is over and in the books. We'll have a new team and we'll see what they do. The offseason is just starting. We have to get a pitching coach. Then we'll see what we can get in the portal and see who we get through the draft. Our guys are starting summer baseball and Evan Siary, Logan Forsythe, and Conner Hujsack have started out well.

The biggest thing is they just have to get back to fundamentals. It's really as simple as just making plays and throwing strikes. I think we got too hung up on velocity and spin rate and other things and forgot that those things are only useful if you can throw the ball over the plate the vast majority of the time.

I don't know if "just making a regional" is good enough or not. Need some context with that. Are we a one seed that lost to a hot team? Are we a three seed that barely got in? If that is the case we could fire him.

[Todd4State]

Money men would rather save a buck today and let the program slide into more of a hole. On the one hand I can't blame people for not spending money on a college sport team, but on the other it's destroying the only sport we are nationally competitive in. And with a lot of SEC teams pouring money into the sport + our NIL situation it's not a given we'll crawl out of this hole post Lemo

So what coach could we have hired this offseason to replace Lemonis? Georgia is having to poach Wes Johnson after they whiffed on Justin Haire, Mizzou got the guy from Memphis, and Alabama might get the guy at Maryland. If their coach hasn't done enough to get the job himself.

Our NIL situation is pretty good when it comes to baseball.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

So what coach could we have hired this offseason to replace Lemonis? Georgia is having to poach Wes Johnson after they whiffed on Justin Haire, Mizzou got the guy from Memphis, and Alabama might get the guy at Maryland. If their coach hasn't done enough to get the job himself.

Our NIL situation is pretty good when it comes to baseball.

We are a better job than those 3. We could have gotten Haire for example. I'm also not sure who we'd get next year that we couldn't this year, seems like that excuse to keep Lemonis will always exist

But I'm not sure Butch Thompson wouldn't come. That'd be my top target. What he's done at a non baseball school is impressive. But maybe he wouldn't come here. Partly depends on if he's happy to have Cohen as his boss again

[Cooterpoot]

So what coach could we have hired this offseason to replace Lemonis? Georgia is having to poach Wes Johnson after they whiffed on Justin Haire, Mizzou got the guy from Memphis, and Alabama might get the guy at Maryland. If their coach hasn't done enough to get the job himself.

Our NIL situation is pretty good when it comes to baseball.

Like I said, amazing how our fans have accepted mediocrity in this program. The idea a team with our support, facilities, & NIL can't hire a great coach is 17ing laughable. Some people have been brainwashed. With P5 seeing more consolidation than ever, our job is a big ass job.

[ArrowDawg]

"Solid"...hat's probably the most generous way to say it and still be fair. I'd say "average", and "mediocre" are also fair.

He's going to be a MASSIVE improvement over Fox. Absolutely. We'll probably be good enough to make a regional. But Walton won't built an above average staff, even if he's got years and years to do so.

Todd said we were going to offer a multi year fully guaranteed contract so the PC coach wouldn't worry about being fired after 1 year. But that was a week or to ago and the situation is always fluid. I've also heard we're talking "2nd highest paid PC" money which is a massive overpay if we get Walton. What are you hearing on the contract front?

Personally, I think it's insanity of the highest order. It would have been better to clean house than to financially hamstring ourselves to a second-tier (or lower) PC who under no circumstance is guaranteed to help us turn things around to the level we expect and demand of MSU baseball.