re: Baseball

Getting 3 hit by Missouri's Sunday guys isn't exactly stellar either.

It's why I just can't get on the wagon with this team. We may end with a respectable conference record and might even host, but I dread seeing this team in the postseason format.

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Why did we go back to Fisher starting? Good lord DVH just punting game 3's now? 1.1IP 5ER against Mizzou? Start anyone else. Anyone.

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I said this on another board, but DVH has made some inexplicable personnel moves this season.

Fisher had an ERA of nearly 10 coming into today and has looked terrible for weeks now. It made zero sense to start him, especially when Gaeckle and Coil were available for an opener role.

And then it made even less sense to send him back out in the 2nd inning to give up 2 more runs after spotting them 3 in the 1st.

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We’re just not good at anything. We can’t hit (as per usual), we have zero pitching depth, and our not good at fielding because we have guys playing out of position.

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Congrats DVH!

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We’re just not good at anything. We can’t hit (as per usual), we have zero pitching depth, and our not good at fielding because we have guys playing out of position.

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Exactly. In other words, our ace was a bust. Our preseason freshmen all American short stop was a bust. And our junior 1st baseman is Brady slavens without the rare random home run.

It’s too much to overcome.

I said it before and I’ll say it again - this was just a bad job of roster construction by DVH, Nate, and Hobbs. Hell, I think DVH would even admit it over a beer (and has basically hinted at it in his postgame comments throughout the season.

They pinned their hopes at shortstop on Brumbaugh. Once he went tits up, it had knock-on effects defensively because they had to start playing Kozeal out of position.

If they’d have gone and gotten a SS out of the portal, we could’ve potentially shifted Kozeal back to 1st (where he was last season before Souza went down), or put Rutenbar there when he started hitting and shifted Souza to 3rd to spell Pompey. Or put Rutenbar in RF once he hit his way into the lineup.

Also we quite literally don’t have a RF. Aloy fell off a cliff this year (and was never a good fielder to begin with), and Stewart is dead last on the team with a .169 BA and .577 OPS in SEC games.

They went out and got a bunch of .265 hitters (save for Ruiz) and no decent arms (save for McElvain), and that’s what we have. Niu hit .276 at Marshall and never got near .300 at New Orleans, but he's going to suddenly be able to hit SEC pitching? Same for Stewart who hit .269 at Missouri State. Conversely, Ruiz hit .388 at Lamar, and not surprisingly he's been the lone pickup out of the portal. The one aberration is Pompey, who raked at Tech and has been terrible here. We didn’t bring him in to be a 9 hole hitter and lead the team in strikeouts.

Lastly, the hubris to believe that we could finally make Gaeckle a starter (despite trying and failing last year), that Fisher could suddenly morph from quasi mid-week guy to Sunday starter, and that we didn't need starters from the portal is incredible to me.

Fast forward to present day when our defense is terrible because we have too many guys playing out of position, we have no RF, our CF and 3B are bottom of the order hitters, we're getting nothing offensively from 1B, and our leadoff hitter is an unheralded freshman.

DVH got a wake up call after the 2023 and 2024 seasons and went all-in on bats in the portal and pulled guys like Iredale, Davalon, Maxwell, Kozeal, and even Justin Thomas of the portal, and consequently we ended the season with 7 out of 9 guys in our lineup hitting above .300 and made a decent run in Omaha. Maxwell hit .335 at TCU. Iredale hit well over .400 at his previous stop. Davalon hit .345. By and large, hitters hit, plain and simple.

We're going to have to do that again.

NIL is always the boogieman for roster mismanagement by the head coaches.

See : The Sam Pittman era. Musselmans last year here. DVH this year.

I called this weeks ago.

The last time the suck set in earlier than normal for baseball it was because the basketball program got their facilities before the baseball team (and it was paid in full!) and vandy had all the gimmicks and toys in theirs.

If DVH wants his "share" of the revenue pot, his program needs to start contributing to the pot. Throwing together a hodgepodge roster who is great at nothing and mediocre at everything isn't putting butts in the seats for all home games, selling concessions, and driving donations.

Don't forget the new revenue sharing kicks in this year. Baseball will get some more money, maybe a million. I believe he cut tennis programs to also give more to baseball.

Three post's trying to put lipstick on a pig.




Money, rankings blah blah blah.

Fact is, this coaching staff swung and missed, and they've been doing that a lot lately.

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Sometimes even the highly ranked guys just don't work out, same with several LSU and MSU guys this year for two programs that spent a ton. Niu was the #6 overall position player transfer on D1, had a huge cape cop league summer. We beat out all the big dogs for him. And he's faceplanted.

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Jay Johnson had a great presser after their game 1 loss to A&M when he said candidly that he and his staff did a bad job of roster construction and misevaluated the type of player that fit their program and coaching.

Basically said they got a bunch of guys who over-focused on exit velo and launch angle, and that it didn’t jibe with their coaching about plate approach, working counts, and situational hitting.

Feels like we got some 3 outcome guys in Niu, Stewart and Pompey, and DVH’s comments throughout the year would seem to mirror Jay Johnson’s.