THAT is how you respond...

[CadaverDawg]

I know you know baseball because you've told us.

Haha, this made me laugh.

[engie]

See, you're unable to see what he's saying and admit it's true and right. That's when you resort to talking about our ranking and record.

Engie, nobody is saying Cohen sucks or that he hasn't gotten us to our current position. Quit changing the subject...we're talking about THIS game. Game 2 of THIS series. Nobody is saying "fire Cohen". So don't spin it into that. Stay on topic

People are totally losing their minds about one loss that they blame on the coach. When did they last spend so much time and effort praising his(exact same) decisions that turn to gold?

There's no balance to it. That is my actual problem. It's all negative all the time. All freak outs all the time. The positive is ignored.

It's not even actual baseball discussion anymore. It's a shitshow about who can bitch the most.

People freak out about him bunting in a lay up game in the midweek. I post that it's the perfect time to work on bunting guys that normally wouldn't and would probably translate to helping us. Gavin Collins lays one down for a hit the following weekend. I bump the thread. The thread gets locked within 5 minutes without explanation. No one wants to talk about it when it works and they had just looked like a donkey. They just want all that to go away quietly.

My bottom line is the positive GREATLY outweighs the negative this year. So, yeah -- maybe he cost us that game. You can certainly argue it and make a compelling case. So what? He has won us more than he's lost us this season -- and not just barely. The team is outplaying their talent level. This team is outplaying the talent level of ANY MSU baseball team of the last(at least) 19 years. And I stopped at that number because I remember the 97 team being the real deal, but do not remember the exact extent of it. Just remember it being the 94 class all grown up and what should have been the final Polk swan song. Literally the best team entering May in the minds of all the people around the country responsible for polls since before I was even seriously thinking about actually driving a vehicle. And 90+% of the posts and thoughts on the matter are negative and bitching about how big of idiot he is. It does not compute.

[maroonmania]

Hump was unavailable due to arm soreness. People are Will Jamesing/Trey Portering on that one. We didn't ask too much from the other guys other than strikes to one batter. Billingsley, Brown, Houston were exhausted. Hump was unavailable. And Blake Smith was the one that capped the shitshow. Was trying Small and Young questionable? Sure. Because it didn't work. You can say you knew it would fail on the front end -- and to be honest I didn't have a lot of confidence either -- but NONE of the guys you listed have been consistently decent relievers. We're still searching for that.

So, was Cohen an idiot in the Governor's Cup? Same types of pitching moves and decisions. With a bunch of unknown or shaky guys in high pressure situations. But the guys did their jobs in the game, get the first shut out in the 37 years of the series, and no one says a peep about the coaching decisions. It seems like it's only a conversation when it fails.

If Hump was not available then the only real screwup on Cohen's part was panicking a little and pulling Sexton in the 4th inning. Maybe he got enamored with Billingsley from this past Tuesday night but it seems to be a different deal for these guys to have the pressure of pitching on the SEC weekend. I mean Cyr has been great in midweek as well and he had no clue where the strike zone was today. In fact, knowing we couldn't use Humphreys should have made the decision to stick with Sexton longer that much more obvious. And honestly our offense was the biggest issue today. I mean we scored only 2 runs in each of the 2 games in the "regulation innings" and the 3rd run we scored in the 9th inning of the first game we did without a hit. If our pitching had not done as well as it did we could have easily been swept today. Its just that one 9th inning where it was unbelievable that THAT many different guys on college scholarships can't throw a freakin' strike. And how did Paul Young survive making the roster on this team? He is really useless for any meaningful situation and we could have cut him and kept Luke Reynolds and been much better off. I mean if we get one more infielder hurt at this point then we are going to be up a really messy creek.

[engie]

Again he makes some decisions that are inexcusable.

If they are "inexcusable" -- then you want him fired. Period. Otherwise they are not inexcusable.

Why can't we avoid those that even the average baseball person knows is stupid. We got a guy loose in the third just because we want a guy that can spin it in the game if we get the chance? You agree with that shit? Take out our 1b? I know you know baseball because you've told us. I can't believe you would think that's remotely a good call.

I don't remember calling it a good call.

I got another one...what happens if Lowe gets hurt in the 5th and has to come out...what do we do then?

I dunno. A baseball idiot would probably put the guy there that played quite a few games there while Rea was out last year. But we'd be up shit creek without a 1B for sure*

[I seen it dawg]

People are totally losing their minds about one loss that they blame on the coach. When did they last spend so much time and effort praising his(exact same) decisions that turn to gold?

There's no balance to it. That is my actual problem. It's all negative all the time. All freak outs all the time. The positive is ignored.

It's not even actual baseball discussion anymore. It's a shitshow about who can bitch the most.

People freak out about him bunting in a lay up game in the midweek. I post that it's the perfect time to work on bunting guys that normally wouldn't and would probably translate to helping us. Gavin Collins lays one down for a hit the following weekend. I bump the thread. The thread gets locked within 5 minutes without explanation. No one wants to talk about it when it works and they had just looked like a donkey. They just want all that to go away quietly.

My bottom line is the positive GREATLY outweighs the negative this year. So, yeah -- maybe he cost us that game. You can certainly argue it and make a compelling case. So what? He has won us more than he's lost us this season -- and not just barely. The team is outplaying their talent level. This team is outplaying the talent level of ANY MSU baseball team of the last(at least) 19 years. And I stopped at that number because I remember the 97 team being the real deal, but do not remember the exact extent of it. Just remember it being the 94 class all grown up and what should have been the final Polk swan song. Literally the best team entering May in the minds of all the people around the country responsible for polls since before I was even seriously thinking about actually driving a vehicle. And 90+% of the posts and thoughts on the matter are negative and bitching about how big of idiot he is. It does not compute.

The move that cost the game was little league. Why do it. Cut those moves out. That's the argument.

[engie]

Stop making little league coaching moves once a week, and you might get more big league praise. It ain't that difficult to comprehend.

Oh, and just bc engie says he gets no praise, doesn't make it true. Cohen gets praise when he makes good calls, and criticism when he makes bad ones. Ever thought maybe YOU are the one that is only capable of focusing on the criticisms he gets? Hmm.

Naturally it's just me. Of course. You are just a singing his praises all over the place. You knew this would be a host team competing for the SEC West and a National Seed all along. You have been singing his praises. How dare I consider otherwise.

Maybe I'm just tired of defending the guy that has us in the midst of the best season any of us clearly remember -- that many of you were ready to run off 2 months ago. And prettymuch 7 innings ago.

[CadaverDawg]

My bottom line is the positive GREATLY outweighs the negative this year. So, yeah -- maybe he cost us that game. You can certainly argue it and make a compelling case.

Then maybe instead of commenting in a "Game thread" today, and discussing "today's" games....you should just come back and chat after the season. You jumped in with your bullshit during a GAME THREAD today where people discuss today's games. You just admitted that we are all right, so if you want to just high five about the ranking, create a thread and do it. As for us, we want to discuss today's games...and like you said, Cohen blew it today...so why are you here bitching, again?

Truth is, you're only bringing up the record & ranking because we're all correct in our frustrations with Cohen. Now you want to spin it into, "I just think the good outweighs the bad, & we're #5, & no MSU team has been this good in years, etc", but the thing is, nobody is arguing or debating that, and nobody has said The good doesn't outweigh the bad or any of that shit. We all know that. Doesn't mean we can't criticize him when he screws up, or that we can only discuss the good stuff he does. If you can't handle people calling stupid moves "stupid moves", then don't participate.

[I seen it dawg]

Better yet Engie you are exactly like Cohen. You know more than anybody else on baseball. **** it I'll bite..give me this team and you the same and I beat your ass 8 out of 10 times . At least it's not as bad as your boy will James who I beat 10 out of 10.

[CadaverDawg]

Naturally it's just me. Of course. You are just a singing his praises all over the place. You knew this would be a host team competing for the SEC West and a National Seed all along. How dare I consider otherwise. Should probably be the #1 team in the country if he wasn't such an idiot. You're right.

Changing the subject. Putting words in people's mouth. Again.

Just pointing it out.

It's ok to admit you're wrong every now & then, eng. May be surprised at the response.

[messageboardsuperhero]

People are totally losing their minds about one loss that they blame on the coach. When did they last spend so much time and effort praising his(exact same) decisions that turn to gold?

There's no balance to it. That is my actual problem. It's all negative all the time. All freak outs all the time. The positive is ignored.

It's not even actual baseball discussion anymore. It's a shitshow about who can bitch the most.

People freak out about him bunting in a lay up game in the midweek. I post that it's the perfect time to work on bunting guys that normally wouldn't and would probably translate to helping us. Gavin Collins lays one down for a hit the following weekend. I bump the thread. The thread gets locked within 5 minutes without explanation. No one wants to talk about it when it works and they had just looked like a donkey. They just want all that to go away quietly.

My bottom line is the positive GREATLY outweighs the negative this year. So, yeah -- maybe he cost us that game. You can certainly argue it and make a compelling case. So what? He has won us more than he's lost us this season -- and not just barely. The team is outplaying their talent level. This team is outplaying the talent level of ANY MSU baseball team of the last(at least) 19 years. And I stopped at that number because I remember the 97 team being the real deal, but do not remember the exact extent of it. Just remember it being the 94 class all grown up and what should have been the final Polk swan song. Literally the best team entering May in the minds of all the people around the country responsible for polls since before I was even seriously thinking about actually driving a vehicle. And 90+% of the posts and thoughts on the matter are negative and bitching about how big of idiot he is. It does not compute.

Funny how these people disappeared in the second inning when Cohen called the hit and run that kept us out of the double play and allowed us to score the second (and what would prove to be game-winning) run... I figured to get some positive feedback from this post in the game thread, but I guess not:

Give him credit- Cohen pulled all the right strings in that second inning.

Also, I must have missed the praise when Cohen called the hit and run in the ninth inning of Thursday's game that started the rally... Or the Robson bunt in the ninth inning of game one today that forced an error and allowed us to take the lead in the first place?

If you're going to criticize him for bad calls (which taking Sexton out was obviously), then you also have to give him credit when things go right.

[engie]

The move that cost the game was little league. Why do it. Cut those moves out. That's the argument.

So your suggestion is to just do it by the book. Correct?

Ok.

In doing that -- over the course of a season does that team win at/above/or below their talent level?

By asking him to coach chalk -- in this season specifically -- on the subject you have already agreed on(that this team is winning above it's talent level overall) -- you are actually asking him to win less. You want to look at a single specific situation but that's not what a season is. A season is what the sum of the single situations add up to. It's prettymuch like a lib seeing a single situation and figuring out how to fix it -- while ignoring the net effect that act of "fixing" caused.

You can say the move was stupid. Maybe it was. Maybe it cost us a game. But we are still dealing with a constant talent level here. It's still a balance. You don't get to "correct the dumb coaching and therefore play that much more above your actual talent level". The scale doesn't tilt like that. The act of cutting out these "dumb" coaching moves that everyone is freaking out about also cuts out all of the unorthodox ones he makes that turn to gold. Literally the only difference between the two is the execution of the player in the situation they are exposed to. And his methods have resulted in a net positive on the season this year.

Look -- I know you know baseball. Ok. But we already fundamentally disagreed on the way the team can and should be built personality-wise -- especially a John Cohen coached team -- and I don't see any way we are going to agree on this part either.

[engie]

Funny how these people disappeared in the second inning when Cohen called the hit and run that kept us out of the double play and allowed us to score the second (and what would prove to be game-winning) run... I figured to get some positive feedback from this post in the game thread, but I guess not:



Also, I must have missed the praise when Cohen called the hit and run in the ninth inning of Thursday's game that started the rally... Or the Robson bunt in the ninth inning of game one today that forced an error and allowed us to take the lead in the first place?

If you're going to criticize him for bad calls (which taking Sexton out was obviously), then you also have to give him credit when things go right.

Exactly my point. Along with the idea that alot more of those decisions are going right this year than are going wrong.

[engie]

Better yet Engie you are exactly like Cohen. You know more than anybody else on baseball. **** it I'll bite..give me this team and you the same and I beat your ass 8 out of 10 times . At least it's not as bad as your boy will James who I beat 10 out of 10.

Lay off the bottle. You are a legend in your own mind that hasn't done jack shit other than misjudge this team from the very beginning.

[engie]

Changing the subject. Putting words in people's mouth. Again.

Just pointing it out.

It's ok to admit you're wrong every now & then, eng. May be surprised at the response.

What was I wrong about again?

[Todd4State]

Billingsley has 1 pitch, and never should have come in bc Sexton shouldn't have been pulled. Plus, you just talked Blake Smith and how many pitches he threw last game...but Bullingsley threw a bunch Wednesday. And again, you bring in a guy that they Know throws 1 pitch well, to face a guy that is hitting a buck fifty? Why? i don't dislike Billingsley, he just shouldn't have been brought in there.

And again, it was about the crucial spot we were in. You don't **** around with experiments in that spot. You just don't.

Ummm....it's Saturday. Billingsley last pitched on Tuesday. He has had more than adequate time to recover. Yes Billingsley has one pitch- but per Cohen the scouting report said to throw Hanie a guy with spin. We did and Billingsley left the ball up.

And Cohen touched on why he took Sexton out saying that in a double header the fifth inning is like the seventh inning. I don't necessarily agree with him about taking Sexton out but at least there is some reasoning behind his madness. The thing I disagree with you the most about is Billingsley being an "experiment". He's not. You're acting like he is some random walk on that he just threw out there. That just isn't the case.

This is one of those things where if it works out no one says anything. And even then Billingsley didn't cost us the game because we got the lead later and our other guys blew it. Including at least one of the guys you said we should have thrown.

[Todd4State]

And to add I looked it up and Billingsley has appeared in 11 games this year. That's one more than Pilkington. Including three SEC games not including the Governor's Cup.

[Schultzy]

I watched the first game of the double header and Sexton was visibly pissed about getting yanked, it looked like he was chewing mini-me out right there on the mound.

But we walked 10 in that game because of incompetent umpiring, very inconsistent and he squeezed the zone big time. You could see the frustration on our pitchers faces and the tv announcers made reference to it as well.

[I seen it dawg]

So your suggestion is to just do it by the book. Correct?

Ok.

In doing that -- over the course of a season does that team win at/above/or below their talent level?

By asking him to coach chalk -- in this season specifically -- on the subject you have already agreed on(that this team is winning above it's talent level overall) -- you are actually asking him to win less. You want to look at a single specific situation but that's not what a season is. A season is what the sum of the single situations add up to. It's prettymuch like a lib seeing a single situation and figuring out how to fix it -- while ignoring the net effect that act of "fixing" caused.

You can say the move was stupid. Maybe it was. Maybe it cost us a game. But we are still dealing with a constant talent level here. It's still a balance. You don't get to "correct the dumb coaching and therefore play that much more above your actual talent level". The scale doesn't tilt like that. The act of cutting out these "dumb" coaching moves that everyone is freaking out about also cuts out all of the unorthodox ones he makes that turn to gold. Literally the only difference between the two is the execution of the player in the situation they are exposed to. And his methods have resulted in a net positive on the season this year.

Look -- I know you know baseball. Ok. But we already fundamentally disagreed on the way the team can and should be built personality-wise -- especially a John Cohen coached team -- and I don't see any way we are going to agree on this part either.

Thru all the vitriole and essays you still aren't getting what I've been saying bc I guess you are incapable. I've said he gets credit for the good decisions and I'm not bashing him for for the ones that don't work. Not all of them do that's baseball. I'm screaming about the so obviously stupid ones that no little league coach would do that why do we have to do them. Just to be unorthodox? Well that's stupid. Hitting Gordon, taking out Sexton those are stupid so don't do it. Those are the going for it on 4th and 28 in 2nd quarter on your own 10 bc it might work 1/100 times. I'm not ripping him for calling or not calling a hit and run which you want to run your entire genius narrative from.

You won't get it so I'm done. You know way more about it than everybody else anyway.

[I seen it dawg]

Lay off the bottle. You are a legend in your own mind that hasn't done jack shit other than misjudge this team from the very beginning.

No legend here. Not in the bottle either. I also haven't judged this team yet bc the season isn't over. For being such a great and the best baseball mind on the board you have an extremely obtuse view. Which in baseball makes you just arrogant which means you aren't as hotshit about the game as you think you are. But I know you played so I'll give you a little more credit than blackout, but not much. You're the other end of the spectrum from that posters mentality. You know enough to think you know it all.

[engie]

Thru all the vitriole and essays you still aren't getting what I've been saying bc I guess you are incapable. I've said he gets credit for the good decisions and I'm not bashing him for for the ones that don't work. Not all of them do that's baseball. I'm screaming about the so obviously stupid ones that no little league coach would do that why do we have to do them. Just to be unorthodox? Well that's stupid. Hitting Gordon, taking out Sexton those are stupid so don't do it. Those are the going for it on 4th and 28 in 2nd quarter on your own 10 bc it might work 1/100 times. I'm not ripping him for calling or not calling a hit and run which you want to run your entire genius narrative from.

You won't get it so I'm done. You know way more about it than everybody else anyway.

I "get" it. It's just bullshit. It's a handful of you thinking that "he's just being unorthodox for the sake of it -- we understand baseball better than him -- he's a moron". That's what YOU don't get. He's not making moves to try and lose games just to be able to say at the end of the day that he didn't do it by the book. He's making moves to try and win games. The motivation aspect of the moves is important even if you still think they are stupid. And rather than spending your time here telling everyone how big of idiot he is -- listening to an occasional post game press conference would show that he's generally got pretty good answers for the reasons he makes his moves even when people disagree with them. You disagree with the moves(but only when they don't work). I get it. I still think Cody Brown should be our every day right fielder too -- and Reid Humphreys is a .240 hitter that should never get an AB against a RHP**. Another viewpoint that Cohen has caught everliving hell from you about for well over half a season -- that has been completely abandoned and forgotten now that stats are bearing out that he's been right all along.

Another football example that isn't even close to the same thing -- but fine. When Gordon becomes this year's Porter as a pinch hitter in the stretch run with a couple of big hits for us when we need a ball mashed(you already forgot about the games he's won us in the role THIS YEAR in the role) -- you can ignore it -- lock it without comment -- and move on to the next topic for meltdown. I already know you will.