College Baseball 2024

[Dawg83]

How we feeling? What an interesting year this has the potential to be. USM with a new head coach, State with a coach on the hot seat, and Ole Miss coming off the worst year of the Bianco era.

 

Opening weekend is just a few days away. USM hosts Marist, State host Air Force, Ole Miss is at Hawaii.

 

Gotta be honest, I have less of a clue about this season than I ever have. Feel like a wide range of outcomes are on the table for all three in-state teams.

[maroontide06]

Just pull for The River LOL!  They are #3 in the country and have only lost one game so far.

 

I feel like the X factor for State will be Justin Parker.  If he can get the pitchers to do better and throw strikes, then it will cool off Lemonis' derrière.  If it turns out to be a flop, then you're just gonna have to blow the thing up and start over.  I honestly feel like State will have improvement though, but I just don't know how much.  Will they even make the SEC tournament and the NCAA tournament?  I think they can and I think they should, but anything after that is anyone's guess.

[Insideradvantage]

I agree. This thing could go just about in any direction. 

[hasbeen67]

Who knows? Hopefully it can't be much worse for MSU and OM than last year. With the all turnover of rosters now in all the major sports, you're never going to know from one year to the next what you're going to have. 

[Dawg83]

2 hours ago, hasbeen67 said:

Who knows? Hopefully it can't be much worse for MSU and OM than last year. With the all turnover of rosters now in all the major sports, you're never going to know from one year to the next what you're going to have. 

Man that’s a huge piece of it, I don’t even know where to begin because I don’t even know who 80% of these guys are. It’s tough to keep track of in football and basketball, it’s dang near impossible in baseball.

[Bulldogs4]

I looked at the lineup Steve listed the other day. Those pieces look good BUT BUT we have got to hit the ball better than the Dave Kingman style from the last two years (.200 BA, 50 HR, 62 RBI’s with 250 strikeouts). Larry & Mershon should be a good 1-2 at the top of the order. 

 

If we don’t pitch it better it will all be a moot point. I dare say that we all thought we shoot the ball better this year in basketball and that has not happened so there is no reason to think we will pitch the ball any better this season. Unless we throw strikes and locate pitches well it will not matter.

 

Finally, our fielding defense was suspect last year too….if we do not improve there, we will be last again. I guess that about covers it. 

 

To sum it up, we will not know about State until we play about 30 games. Here is hoping that we will be better. As Harry Carey said “Hope Springs Eternal  and the Cubs are going to win the World Series this year”.   LOL 

[Dawg83]

And State’s nonconference schedule is absolutely terrible so you won’t learn much until SEC play even if they win a lot.

 

Well, I guess you could learn plenty if they lose several of these games.

Edited February 13, 2024 by Dawg83

[Former Coach]

Hopefully  pitching will be better. Trackman has made it difficult. Umpires have not given that pitch off the plate much, in fact they usually don't give the pitch on the black because they get dinged on their grade. That should change this year a little. I went  to an umpire clinic a few weeks back that had 4 SEC guys working it, among them Scott Kline and Jeff Wright. They said the NCAA was giving them a buffer of a ball off the plate both inside and outside. So look for some of those pitches that stay in the river between the black and the inside white of the Batters box to be called strikes this year. The also said they were told to get that strike at the numbers and the bottom of the knee, (the hollow).

 

A story that Wright told was that he was working a game that by the 8th was a blowout,(before mercy rule). Both coaches were ready to get it over with and he expanded the zone a good bit and neither coach had a complaint. Through 7 innings he had not missed but 3 or 4 pitches, but by the end he got dinged real hard by SEC for a bad zone the last 2 innings. Both coaches were happy because they didn't have to use another pitcher.

[Bulldogs4]

Interesting information. I would much rather attend a baseball game where the umpires are generous (consistently) with the strike zone. 
I am old fashioned in baseball that I would much rather see a 2-1 game that is well played in the field than a 11-10 ball buster where no pitcher can get an out and lazy fly balls are HR’s. 
 

So here is hoping that comes to fruition this season. We shall see. 

[Former Coach]

Yes, as long as the guy behind the plate is consistent both ways no one should care if he's giving a ball off the plate. Makes for a much more enjoyable game than one with 10 walks. Had an umpire tell me once the plates 17 inches wide and the bat is 33 inches long. That pitch can be hit.

[maroontide06]

21 minutes ago, Former Coach said:

Yes, as long as the guy behind the plate is consistent both ways no one should care if he's giving a ball off the plate. Makes for a much more enjoyable game than one with 10 walks. Had an umpire tell me once the plates 17 inches wide and the bat is 33 inches long. That pitch can be hit.

In other words, the strike zone should cantilever over to the white edge of the batters box closest to home plate.  That actually makes sense.  Hopefully they will call it that way and then I think it takes some of the pressure off of the pitchers.  It makes you wonder why they had the strike zone so small to begin with.

Edited February 15, 2024 by maroontide06

[s1nglewing]

Why not just make a bigger plate?

[Bulldogs4]

WHAT!!!!

Can’t mess with baseball tradition or can you?

After all things have changed, the  DH in particular…among other things…

 

But if they made it 20 inches wide, then someone would still complain…

[Dawg83]

D1 does not project State or Ole Miss to make the NCAA Tourney this year. Whoo boy if that happens for the second year in a row…

 

USM projected as a 3 seed, so they’re lower on them than they’ve been in prior years.

 

I dunno, guys. Just no telling what this season may be like. It would not shock me if we are talking about at least one and possibly two coaching searches in about 3 months (Lemonis could very well get fired, Bianco would have to retire but I could see it happening).

[maroontide06]

Lemonis needs belly room under the limbo bar so you can't set it too low.  Maybe if it's too low, you just go over it instead of trying to go under it.  There's honestly no telling what's going to happen, but if he wants to save his job he needs to show improvements and those improvements will need to equate to wins.

[hasbeen67]

Remind me why MSU was so bad last year. Was it overall talent, mostly pitching, coaching, a combination of all, or something else?

[Dawg83]

2 hours ago, hasbeen67 said:

Remind me why MSU was so bad last year. Was it overall talent, mostly pitching, coaching, a combination of all, or something else?

Honestly, we’re only now about to find out.

 

If they are much improved this year, I think you can chalk it up to Foxhall losing his way as a pitching coach and just not developing guys well other than a few notable exceptions that arguably came to him pretty well developed already. Foxhall being the fall guy bought Lemonis another year, so we will see if it really was more on Foxhall.

 

If they stink again with a new pitching coach who is highly regarded, I think at that point it’s a failure of recruiting and program management after the championship by Lemonis.

 

Two years ago they had a ton of pitching injuries so I thought maybe it was just bad luck. Then last year they had far fewer injuries and were even worse on the mound. Their SEC ERA was almost 10.

 

I’ll be honest, I didn’t think they did a great job of addressing these issues in the portal. They’ll start a Purdue transfer on Saturday and have a Miami transfer in the mix somewhere, but otherwise it’s gonna be a lot of the same faces you’ve seen the last two years (other than some guys here and there). Justin Parker really had his work cut out for him with fixing this group. He had to totally change the way the program was handling pitchers. We shall see if one offseason was enough time for him to get clear improvement out of some guys.

[Dawg83]

And look, this is a big legacy season for Chris Lemonis. He can either prove to everyone that he actually is a good coach and 2019-2021 wasn’t just him winning with Cohen and Cannizaro’s guys…. Or he can get himself fired and go down as the Gene Chizik or Larry Coker of baseball for a lot of people.

 

I have been of the belief the whole time that he 1000% was an excellent coach his first three years at State that made a lot of smart moves, but there’s also no justification for the immediate wholesale collapse of the last two years. It’s complicated and nuanced and I can’t quite figure it all out. But if he doesn’t fix it, people will remember the enormous fall from grace just as much as they remember him reaching the pinnacle.

Edited February 16, 2024 by Dawg83

[Bulldogs4]

If State is not 15-2 over the first seventeen games then we are in trouble.

I get it that on a given day in baseball you can lose a game. But given the two disastrous seasons we are coming off, this team needs to start fast and win and win and win. This is a really weak early schedule and if we don’t beat up on these teams early and often, it is going to be a long season. 
 

The only team with a pulse is USM. USA was terrible last year though they are traditionally good. UNO was a good program many years back. Now, not so much. 
 

I don’t know but at this point I do not have much confidence until I see us playing Diamond Dawg baseball again. Here is hoping that today will start just that. 

[Dawg83]

1 minute ago, Bulldogs4 said:

If State is not 15-2 over the first seventeen games then we are in trouble.

I get it that on a given day in baseball you can lose a game. But given the two disastrous seasons we are coming off, this team needs to start fast and win and win and win. This is a really weak early schedule and if we don’t beat up on these teams early and often, it is going to be a long season. 
 

The only team with a pulse is USM. USA was terrible last year though they are traditionally good. UNO was a good program many years back. Now, not so much. 
 

I don’t know but at this point I do not have much confidence until I see us playing Diamond Dawg baseball again. Here is hoping that today will start just that. 

Yeah it’s maybe the worst nonconference schedule I can remember State having since I’ve been following things closely. They don’t play a single game outside of Mississippi until the end of March.

[Bulldogs4]

One Inning(LOL) and we have given up a run.

So not a good start. Would prefer a 123 inning.

But maybe Dohm will settle down now. 
 

At least we did take a lead 2-1. For now anyway. 

[Dawg83]

Biggest news (win or lose) may be the shoulder injury to State’s starting 3B. He was a Memphis transfer that’s a good defender and also expected to be a middle of the order bat. Hopefully it’s not a long term thing.

[Bulldogs4]

Air Force is folding under pressure in the field. Good win but we will see how it goes tomorrow.

Dohm is a decent pitcher but if he is our long term Friday night guy then that is not a good sign (IMO). 

[Dawg83]

26 minutes ago, Bulldogs4 said:

Air Force is folding under pressure in the field. Good win but we will see how it goes tomorrow.

Dohm is a decent pitcher but if he is our long term Friday night guy then that is not a good sign (IMO). 

No, don’t think Dohm is the answer on Fridays either.

 

I was very impressed with Schuelke at the end though. He’s obviously going to be an important bullpen piece. That funky delivery is going to give some teams fits.

[Bulldogs4]

But I am glad for the win.

All in all a good day on the diamond for the Dawgs!!!