Wicked Good Ag said:
The rules of transfer have been relaxed to the point that most players don't have to sit in the non revenue sports because the schools grant the waivers typically now. Much more than 5 years ago.
You have such a black and white perspective on these things that you're really difficult to debate with but here we go. There's only so much a coach can do and I think you way overestimate what a college hitting coach can accomplish. A college coaches job is to recruit the most talented players he can get to campus and implement a system. I'm in no way saying that the system we've implemented on offense is good, I'm saying that the things you think a coach can teach are probably more innate or learned via experience than by coaching. Let me be that dad for a minute:BoozingAg said:LOYAL AG said:This sounds more like an agenda than a well thought out take. More than once we heard Johnson, who had a consistent record of developing hitters, say that if you're a junior and still a guess hitter that's on you. Some guys just don't see the ball well. Generally speaking there's a reason position players go to college. You hope they learn to recognize a slider and a curve and to keep their weight back so that when they get fooled by a change they can still get good contact but it doesn't always happen. For Foster it didn't happen.W said:in 2018 he was pretty close to a 3-tool player. Hit for power, average, and plus-throwing arm. Posted a .924 OPS.TMartin said:
This whole conversation is about Foster's regression at the plate. How did Foster rate as a five tool player?
in 2019 he was a 1-tool player. Just the outfield arm. Posted a feeble .719 OPS.
that reflects very, very poorly on the coaching staff to have a player drop 200 points in OPS from his sophomore year to junior year
It all falls at the feet of the coaches. They recruit and then are supposed to develop players, and our HC is paid nearly a million $ a year to do that. To act like it's just some random thing with no accountability, both with the coach and player, is ridiculous. Given the way our offense has regressed since 2016, it's fair to place most of that accountability on the coaching staff.
LOYAL AG said:You have such a black and white perspective on these things that you're really difficult to debate with but here we go. There's only so much a coach can do and I think you way overestimate what a college hitting coach can accomplish. A college coaches job is to recruit the most talented players he can get to campus and implement a system. I'm in no way saying that the system we've implemented on offense is good, I'm saying that the things you think a coach can teach are probably more innate or learned via experience than by coaching. Let me be that dad for a minute:BoozingAg said:LOYAL AG said:This sounds more like an agenda than a well thought out take. More than once we heard Johnson, who had a consistent record of developing hitters, say that if you're a junior and still a guess hitter that's on you. Some guys just don't see the ball well. Generally speaking there's a reason position players go to college. You hope they learn to recognize a slider and a curve and to keep their weight back so that when they get fooled by a change they can still get good contact but it doesn't always happen. For Foster it didn't happen.W said:in 2018 he was pretty close to a 3-tool player. Hit for power, average, and plus-throwing arm. Posted a .924 OPS.TMartin said:
This whole conversation is about Foster's regression at the plate. How did Foster rate as a five tool player?
in 2019 he was a 1-tool player. Just the outfield arm. Posted a feeble .719 OPS.
that reflects very, very poorly on the coaching staff to have a player drop 200 points in OPS from his sophomore year to junior year
It all falls at the feet of the coaches. They recruit and then are supposed to develop players, and our HC is paid nearly a million $ a year to do that. To act like it's just some random thing with no accountability, both with the coach and player, is ridiculous. Given the way our offense has regressed since 2016, it's fair to place most of that accountability on the coaching staff.
When my son was 11 he played 12U ball in New Braunfels. We had a game where he went 3-3 and his team managed four hits total (including his three) in 5.1 innings against a 12 yo opposing pitcher. The kid was throwing A LOT of curves and nobody but Kyle could figure it out. I asked him after the game why he was so much better than his teammates and he spent the next 20 minutes telling me how this kid threw a fastball, a little league curve and a regular curve. I asked about the difference between the two curves and he explained that for this kid the LL curve broke later and was really only a loop while the regular curve broke in front of the plate and had a sharper break. I asked how he knew the difference and he explained to me the difference in the pitchers hand as he gripped the ball. So at 11 my son could see the pitchers hand and read the difference in two grips to know how much break he was going to see while nobody else had a clue what was going on. Three of his teammates played college baseball at some level.
My point is not to brag on my kid it's to say that he saw it and processed it naturally while the overwhelming majority of hitters cannot do that, particularly at the college level. They say you can't teach speed. Well IMO you also can't teach pitch recognition or hand-eye coordination. The reason Shewmake was a better hitter than Foster is because he has better hand-eye coordination. He was baffled by the same pitches Foster was. The expectation is that with experience at a given level a guy learns to read the rotation of a ball and learn that a red dot means breaking ball and that he can see all of that fast enough to lay off. When that evolution doesn't happen I'm not sure there's anything a coach can do about it. If he hasn't figured it out by his junior year when he's had 400+ plate appearances I just don't think he's going to get it.
I say all of that to say this. There are a lot of flaws in the baseball program and I've been very clear that I'm ready for a change. But pitch recognition or lack thereof isn't something I'm going to spend a lot of effort laying at the feet of the coaches. It's a skill and I'm 100% certain we are doing what we can to teach it but that doesn't mean the guys being taught are capable of learning it. The flaws I lay at the coaches feet are recruiting, S&C and the system being implemented. They have 100% control over those things and aside from pitching they've failed at them. This junior class was recruited on the heels of #MASHU which is pretty shocking. There are more misses than hits among the position players and that's a recruiting problem.
BoozingAg said:LOYAL AG said:You have such a black and white perspective on these things that you're really difficult to debate with but here we go. There's only so much a coach can do and I think you way overestimate what a college hitting coach can accomplish. A college coaches job is to recruit the most talented players he can get to campus and implement a system. I'm in no way saying that the system we've implemented on offense is good, I'm saying that the things you think a coach can teach are probably more innate or learned via experience than by coaching. Let me be that dad for a minute:BoozingAg said:LOYAL AG said:This sounds more like an agenda than a well thought out take. More than once we heard Johnson, who had a consistent record of developing hitters, say that if you're a junior and still a guess hitter that's on you. Some guys just don't see the ball well. Generally speaking there's a reason position players go to college. You hope they learn to recognize a slider and a curve and to keep their weight back so that when they get fooled by a change they can still get good contact but it doesn't always happen. For Foster it didn't happen.W said:in 2018 he was pretty close to a 3-tool player. Hit for power, average, and plus-throwing arm. Posted a .924 OPS.TMartin said:
This whole conversation is about Foster's regression at the plate. How did Foster rate as a five tool player?
in 2019 he was a 1-tool player. Just the outfield arm. Posted a feeble .719 OPS.
that reflects very, very poorly on the coaching staff to have a player drop 200 points in OPS from his sophomore year to junior year
It all falls at the feet of the coaches. They recruit and then are supposed to develop players, and our HC is paid nearly a million $ a year to do that. To act like it's just some random thing with no accountability, both with the coach and player, is ridiculous. Given the way our offense has regressed since 2016, it's fair to place most of that accountability on the coaching staff.
When my son was 11 he played 12U ball in New Braunfels. We had a game where he went 3-3 and his team managed four hits total (including his three) in 5.1 innings against a 12 yo opposing pitcher. The kid was throwing A LOT of curves and nobody but Kyle could figure it out. I asked him after the game why he was so much better than his teammates and he spent the next 20 minutes telling me how this kid threw a fastball, a little league curve and a regular curve. I asked about the difference between the two curves and he explained that for this kid the LL curve broke later and was really only a loop while the regular curve broke in front of the plate and had a sharper break. I asked how he knew the difference and he explained to me the difference in the pitchers hand as he gripped the ball. So at 11 my son could see the pitchers hand and read the difference in two grips to know how much break he was going to see while nobody else had a clue what was going on. Three of his teammates played college baseball at some level.
My point is not to brag on my kid it's to say that he saw it and processed it naturally while the overwhelming majority of hitters cannot do that, particularly at the college level. They say you can't teach speed. Well IMO you also can't teach pitch recognition or hand-eye coordination. The reason Shewmake was a better hitter than Foster is because he has better hand-eye coordination. He was baffled by the same pitches Foster was. The expectation is that with experience at a given level a guy learns to read the rotation of a ball and learn that a red dot means breaking ball and that he can see all of that fast enough to lay off. When that evolution doesn't happen I'm not sure there's anything a coach can do about it. If he hasn't figured it out by his junior year when he's had 400+ plate appearances I just don't think he's going to get it.
I say all of that to say this. There are a lot of flaws in the baseball program and I've been very clear that I'm ready for a change. But pitch recognition or lack thereof isn't something I'm going to spend a lot of effort laying at the feet of the coaches. It's a skill and I'm 100% certain we are doing what we can to teach it but that doesn't mean the guys being taught are capable of learning it. The flaws I lay at the coaches feet are recruiting, S&C and the system being implemented. They have 100% control over those things and aside from pitching they've failed at them. This junior class was recruited on the heels of #MASHU which is pretty shocking. There are more misses than hits among the position players and that's a recruiting problem.
I don't disagree with any of this, I just have a hard time equating Foster's falloff to his own shortcomings or pitch recognition when something like 250 teams had a better batting average than we did. And maybe recruiting Nebraska isn't a good strategy.
If we were talking about a team that put up decent offensive #'s, I wouldn't make this point and would be in 100% agreement with you on Foster.
You are telling me Nebraska isn't the hotbed of baseball talent like California or the South?Quote:
And maybe recruiting Nebraska isn't a good strategy.
Well hold on because we have some JUCO guys coming in originally from Nebraska.powerbelly said:You are telling me Nebraska isn't the hotbed of baseball talent like California or the South?Quote:
And maybe recruiting Nebraska isn't a good strategy.
Quote:
And maybe recruiting Nebraska isn't a good strategy.
Please tell me the number of Nebraska players are on any of the eight teams in the current CWS, and also the total number of Texans, it will not be even sorta close!Quote:
If we followed this line of logic, we'd only recruit Nebraska and quit recruiting Texas
Which is most certainly true but the few players Rob brought to A&M were certainly not bust.Mark Fairchild said:Please tell me the number of Nebraska players are on any of the eight teams in the current CWS, and also the total number of Texans, it will not be even sorta close!Quote:
If we followed this line of logic, we'd only recruit Nebraska and quit recruiting Texas
BoozingAg said:
I don't really think the issue in people's mind is getting players from Nebraska. I think it's when we are getting beat by teams with a bunch of players from the Houston and DFW areas, or even BCS, combined with the rumors we read about RC's reputation among some players, parents, HS coaches. And really, with the amount of players in proximity to CS, recruiting Nebraska is a head scratcher, regardless of how they turned out.
Mark Fairchild said:Please tell me the number of Nebraska players are on any of the eight teams in the current CWS, and also the total number of Texans, it will not be even sorta close!Quote:
If we followed this line of logic, we'd only recruit Nebraska and quit recruiting Texas
No matter. Aggie baseball fans are equal opportunity coach haters.texag0928 said:djktamu said:
He regressed this year, after two solid seasons, yet he may be following the hitting coach. Maybe Lance Harvell is a wonder worker. Still, if the kid is that homesick, can't fight that. Good luck with Bolt, Logan.
Justin Seely is the hitting coach, my friend.
Aggies2009 said:Mark Fairchild said:Please tell me the number of Nebraska players are on any of the eight teams in the current CWS, and also the total number of Texans, it will not be even sorta close!Quote:
If we followed this line of logic, we'd only recruit Nebraska and quit recruiting Texas
You mean a state with 30 million people put more players in the CWS than a state with 2 million? Say it ain't so!
BoozingAg said:
Rob sure seems to spend a lot of time in Nebraska, except when we want him to be
BoozingAg said:
Do you think you're going to get some sort of badge from rob for defending him on the internet?
Sandman98 said:BoozingAg said:
Do you think you're going to get some sort of badge from rob for defending him on the internet?
I'm working on you. Read the post. I really don't care what you think about him. I want to know why.
BoozingAg said:Sandman98 said:BoozingAg said:
Do you think you're going to get some sort of badge from rob for defending him on the internet?
I'm working on you. Read the post. I really don't care what you think about him. I want to know why.
Why what? I have nothing personal against Rob, I just think it's time to move on. And most people agree with me. There are a few lunatic Rob fan-boys our there that don't, obviously.
It's Monday. Give the guy a break!Sandman98 said:BoozingAg said:Sandman98 said:BoozingAg said:
Do you think you're going to get some sort of badge from rob for defending him on the internet?
I'm working on you. Read the post. I really don't care what you think about him. I want to know why.
Why what? I have nothing personal against Rob, I just think it's time to move on. And most people agree with me. There are a few lunatic Rob fan-boys our there that don't, obviously.
So you're just a giant nerd. You might consider finding another way to blow off some steam.
