2019 Niner Baseball Thread

lost again. This is looking like it’s going to be a long season and not a fun one.

Apparently morehead state is like 7-1 on the year, but we needed that one…on the heels of the canisius series. Pitching needs to get it together FAST.

Should we fire him now or can he remain through this coming weekend’s series?

I disagree with most of this but I do agree that Doty has made a huge impact on our pitching staff. I also agree that our 2017 team was probably the best offensive team we’ve had in a long time. We just needed one more pitcher.

Yes we had 6 guys drafted that played on that team but the 2 guys that were drafted in 2018 had terrible years in 2017. If we had the 2018 versions of Josh and Reece on that 2017 team, that is definitely a Regional team, maybe more. As it was Josh struggled in 2017, lost his starting spot and was demoted to the bullpen during the season, and ended up giving up the walk-off to USM to pretty much end our season that year. Reece had a down year in 2017 too. Had to look it up but he batted only .264 with 4 SB. Both guys bounced back in 2018 and made themselves pro players. Doty did great with Josh during that offseason, and he became a stud Friday night starter.

During that season we had lost 1 weekend starter in Flanagan to injury, and had demoted Josh to the bullpen. By the end of the season our pitching was Colton Laws, who had a stud season, a Freshman Matt Brooks, and our closer Jonah Patten was the 3rd starter. Bullpen was also very shaky. We were still one out, maybe even 1 strike from being in the C-USA Championship game.

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Welcome to the board, @TW49.

My only gripe with Hibbs is I wish the team would bunt less, I don’t like giving away 1 of your 27 outs. I can maybe understand it in the 9th of the conference tournament, but in the 3rd/4th against Morehead State in a weekday game isn’t something I understand.

As a matter of record, he just started year 27 ( I think) so the 800+ wins actually averages out to a little over 30 wins/year.

I used to feel the same way, because we used to bunt a lot more than we do now. Seems like we have played less and less small ball over the past few seasons. I almost, almost want to say we should bunt more and play more small ball, but I’m not there yet.

We’ve gone through stretches almost every season where we have tons of guys left on base, and struggle to score runs. I’ve seen us try to manufacture runs during those stretches and I’ve also seen us sit back and wait for the big hit. It’s really a mixed bag on the results. We eventually hit out of those stretches, but we seem to always go through this at some point.

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Small ball all comes down to personal and situational timing, as well as who is on the mound for the opposition.

I see both sides of the Hibbs scenario here. At some point, change is needed for most programs/organizations unless you are simply operating at an elite level. On the other hand, Hibbs now has at his disposal what some have said was always lacking from making us a consistently competitive program.

It’ll be interesting to see the path Hill takes here. We’re in a great place to recruit for baseball.

I’m glad to see so much baseball discussion. I hate that it took a losing streak to get it going. I guess we can be glad that this thread hasn’t reached shout box post-basketball game levels of absurdity…yet.

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We could use a sweep of Kent State this weekend.

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I think that given Hibbs’ proximity to full pension and that the IPF was just built, I think it safe to say Hill will given him a couple years to see results, and if not, he won’t feel like an asshole replacing him just before being fully vested. The spousal situation is something I’m sure Hill would like to undo, but again, 2-3 more years til pensioned, unless some sort of departmental transfer can be worked out.

Not to be cold here, but I hope Hill isn’t worried about proximity to pension when looking at what is best for our programs.

Politics and personal relationships tend to mess with logical decisionmaking. It’s possible Phil says, “that’s a ‘no’ from me, dawg” about replacing Hibbs before pensioned.

I agree, that should not be a factor. The recent upswing over the last few seasons and the work he did to get the IPF done should be enough. He deserves to enjoy the success coming from all he did to get that built.

Kent State is probably the best team we’ve played all season. They have some really solid pitching and have played a brutal schedule up to this point. Took NC State into extras with the Friday guy. That lefty has only allowed 1 Run in 2 starts. Played 3 at Dallas Baptist, and in the MB Tourney vs NC State, Coastal Carolina, and Michigan State.

A sweep would be nice, but I’d be ecstatic to win the series.

Yeah, I saw they had played a tough schedule ----- but also have a poor W-L record against it. Of course, after starting 0-5, they have won 2 straight heading into today’s game vs. The Citadel. Getting it together just in time to visit us, I’m sure.

I agree that it would be poor form to not give him a couple years to recruit with the IPF he raised the money to build. We are still early on in the season to give up hope on this team but do need a bounce back series against Kent State this weekend to start building some momentum.

It sort of surprises me that we would spend much time talking about replacing Hibbs. I am not a fan of the game, so my perspective hinges on that I think. It seems to me that when deciding which coaches to replace there are two distinct lists that should be ordered from top to bottom. One is wins/losses, and Hibbs is probably in the top third of coaches on that. From that perspective he should be safe while we solve bigger problems.

However, the other list is “importance”, which is mostly subjective, but objectively I think you would have to put revenue sports at the top of that list. I believe that explains why Bobby Lutz was let go and we kept Aimee Devos. Clearly his win/loss record was much better than hers, but men’s basketball is far more important to the overall program than softball, so mediocrity (or less) could be tolerated for softball but not for hoops. This leads me to ask where baseball ranks–or should rank? For me–and I am only going to go watch basketball and football–baseball is probably around 5th on the importance list. I have men’s hoops, football, men’s soccer, women’s hoops then baseball in that order. If you put baseball at #3 then I think it makes sense to think about another coach, but at #5 I would focus on other teams.

In spite of my “scientific process”, I also believe in the theory of low hanging fruit. There are several teams like softball, volleyball, tennis and golf where it does not cost much to get a coach that can chase conference titles, so I make changes there quickly if I have someone that I think is a significant upgrade. (I have no clue how our volleyball, golf and tennis teams are doing, so I don’t mean to imply that they should be on the list to replace.)