Cws

[dawgs]

So, what are you saying? That us having freshmen in the lineup is a good thing because they get experience? Would it not be preferable to have a team full of upperclassmen rather than a team of roughly almost half underclassmen per you- "two freshmen, two sophomores" or whatever it was that you said- aren't having to go through growing pains?

You aren't understanding that in the area that we recruit, MOST of those players are extremely raw and are going to take two years to fully develop because of the travel team situation in our area. In other words- the reason I am against your development plan is because it would most likely mean that about half of our lineup would be still developing every single year- which is recipe for disaster in the SEC. It's not a coincidence that our last freshman that truly contributed at a high- oh I'm sorry, I'm taking you out of context now because I have some sort of an agenda- level was from California and then this year from Georgia.

The bottom line is we need to stack classes of 10-15 players every year and make sure every position is covered. And if we find Will Clark 2.0 in one of those classes- awesome. But we can not rely on that. And we should not count on that.

Here's OUR last team from Omaha:

C- Ammo- Sr.
1B- Rea- RS So.
2B- Pirtle- Jr.
3B- Detz/Frost- Jr./RS Sr.
SS- Frazier- Jr.
LF- Henderson- RS So.
CF- CT- Sr.
RF- Renfroe- Jr.
DH- Porter- Sr.

EVERY single player had been out of HS at least three years in the starting lineup. And the biggest exception on the pitching staff was Holder who was a sophomore and the best closer in the SEC at that time. The only other sophomore that contributed was Fitts- who was basically used for two innings to get the ball to Girodo.

Now, the way you are saying it should work might work for Vanderbilt maybe. But much like our football team, we need to be a developmental baseball program for us to be successful.

I'm saying the fact that we don't have freshmen ready and able to make positive contributions from get go is a problem. No I don't want 10 freshmen playing, but having 2 freshmen able to come in and play well means they should be able to be better as sophs and hopefully stud 1st round pick types as juniors. It's rarer for a guy to go from a weak contributor or not playing for 2 years to being a really good junior season player. Having some semblance of balance between the classes in your starting lineup prevents a lull when you lose a couple of stud juniors, because you have good sophs with 1-2 years of experience moving into those roles and some freshmen with a year of contributing ready to move up and be better as sophs, etc. and obviously a few guys that don't play will move into a starting role too, but it's nice when you have known and proven quantity at 4-6 positions going into the season instead of having to break in 7 new starters or something.