hsjnlssmith89 said:
When you get down by too many runs in early innings, it changes the batter mentality and creates desperate situations. Batters get out of their game. Dont have those bad-pitcher innings and we are still in it.
That doesn't explain the first 6 innings of the last game or all the zeroes in the 3 that followed Freshcorn giving out at a heroic 100 something pitches. It's complete nonsense. It was USC's 5th game of the week too, and the guy that pitched the middle innings for them had an ERA around 5 and gave up more runs to Lamar than he did to us.
I don't follow the logic here at all. When Montgomery was injured in 2024, the team didn't pack it in and give up in the postseason.
When Stilson and his 1.20 something ERA was injured before the 2011 postseason, the team didn't call it quits either. They won a road super regional to go to Omaha because there were around EIGHT ADDITIONAL pitchers on that roster that ended up playing professional and could get outs. Or the season where we lost AJ Minter before conference play after 4 starts....and still had a 3.04 team ERA for 3rd best in the conference and the 2 most strikeouts in the conference.
The coaching staff replacements either mean you're scapegoating or making necessary changes, but if you're making those changes this quickly and they're needed, I don't see how it's evidence of anything other than lack of experience in being a head coach.
And that's what's frustrating about this to me. We did this before with Coach Childress, but even then, we didn't break the bank for it. I think we're experiencing growing pains while an assistant coach learns to be head coach, and I don't think we had to go that route.
I would agree that injuries decimated the overly optimistic expectations of last season, and to an extent limited the potential of this year's team as well. But so far we have:
-An almost universal agreement on poor staffing decisions
-An offense that was the worst in the league in Year 1, hitting .260 (worse than our weakened bat era Childress teams).
-A pitching staff that gave up the most home runs and had the 2nd least strikeouts in 2026
-Two completely non-competitive baseball games to end the year (except for a heroic effort by Freshcorn)
-A reliance on a few guys to prop up an entire roster either offensively or on the pitching staff
-People somehow repeating the mantra that the mindset and focus was off when it mattered most...which is a type of preparation that lies significantly with the head coach. How you believe your team wasn't focused and you place that blame entirely on the players is bizarre to me.
-2 seasons where I don't think anyone believes we reached the potential of the team
And on top of that, Grahovac and Sorrell are leaving and accounted for a significant amount of what made this offense work. Those 2 guys were a combined 38% of our home runs, 32% of our RBI, and 35% of our extra base hits. Replacing them, even in aggregate, is a tall task.
