The sun is really bright in RF late in the day.

Night games matter.

The baseball forum is no different than any other forum

Our team athletics culture is completely broken

Robo umpires can't get here soon enough.

players look at their NIL check as payment / reward for the prior season

as opposed to something they need to go out and earn for the current season

Bad things can happen to good people.

And good things can happen to bad people.

W said:

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players look at their NIL check as payment / reward for the prior season

as opposed to something they need to go out and earn for the current season

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Has nothing with to do with them thinking it was payment for last season.

It's just the I mentality of this generation and being paid a lot makes it worse.

During Skip Johnson's interview he talked about it. An older coach is going to understand this one. Not a young coach such as Earley that inherited a job he did not deserve.

I know many on here had concerns hiring him last year such as myself but we kept pretty quiet bc we knew the backlash it would receive. Also we understood it was going to be hard to get a solid coach with the timing. I think Skip Johnson was the only one last year that we probably could have got if we actually had tried to get him. My guess is he was not really being considered bc of his ties to Texas.

Anyway, they better do well this year with a correct and thorough coaching search. My guess is they are going to try and get a coach like O'Connor.

AJCB said:

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Yahtzee is still the greatest game there is.

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Jace's batting average was .258 … the same as our second baseman. There was nothing extraordinary about his season. In fact, it was nothing better than ordinary. His draft stock definitely went down.

SECTAMU#1 said:

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I need to stay off TexAgs.

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Same. There were days when I managed it, but I did keep crawling back, lol.

What the heck is going on in this thread??

Quote:

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coaches dont come lining up at becking call like we think they do

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Quote:

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That highering the hitting coach does not mean the team should be able to hit.

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Our coach may have plenty of free time soon to come and evaluate these message boards.

Personally I need full time professional umps and/or robo strike zones. These players are too good to have B/CS volunteer coed softball quality blues.

And NIL needs to evolve into true employment contracts. Base salary with incentive bonuses. Single year contracts or multi-year with two way buyouts. Preferably a soft salary cap (think MLB luxury tax). I'd also like to see the NCAA ban infield shifts.

None of those things would have saved us this year, but I think they'd make for a better overall baseball experience.

I figured that second one was a genius move. Hiring the hitting coach or highering him, as in... elevating him from hitting coach to head coach. Amazing.

AJCB said:

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Baseball is still the greatest game there is.

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Only if there are electronic strike-zones. I'm a football, basketball guy but I'd legit say baseball has an argument as the greatest sport if it just had Electronic strike-zones. It's a ridiculous flaw as is and feels pretty illegitimate.

Who?mikejones! said:

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deadlift said:

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I'm now in favor of just using technology to call balls and strikes, or at least be able to challenge. I'm no longer a purist in that regard.

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Im with you.

Im a purest in just about every other way. Day games, no dh, no safety base, upholding unwritten rules, bat flippers are ****** bags, umps are part of the game....

Before auto strikes, id like the sec to hire its umps (and football and basketball officials) full time and actually dedicate real money and training and see if it produces better and more consistent results.

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MLB about threw a parade a few weeks ago for an Umpire calling a "perfect game". That's how rare professional Umpires get it all correct. It should be computerized.

Don't really care that much whether its perfect. 99.5% is good enough for me. Really don't care where exactly the zone is so long as it's consistent for both team's.

Umps are like the weather. Deal with them and move on.

I probably will never be on board with robot umps.

Don't wait until the bases are loaded with no outs in top 9 to change pitchers. Earley went and got Lamkin in top 6 I think against Auburn after he lost control and walked the leadoff. Much better.

How was is audited as "perfect"?

Computer?

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Karma is not a thing in baseball.

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Obviously not

That baseball is the cruelest game there is.

And bad things happen to great people.

And great things happen for sheetheads

ensign_beedrill said:

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SECTAMU#1 said:

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I need to stay off TexAgs.

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Same. There were days when I managed it, but I did keep crawling back, lol.

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Same. I'm like who are all these people that I've never seen before that all of a sudden seem to want to bleed all over the board about a coaching change that is unlikely to happen.

TexasAggie81 said:

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Jace's batting average was .258 … the same as our second baseman. There was nothing extraordinary about his season. In fact, it was nothing better than ordinary. His draft stock definitely went down.

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He had another 1.000+ OPS season and showed he'd play hurt, which is not nothing in MLB where contracts are guaranteed and players sometimes wait to have surgeries until they're back on the clock.

This sums it up #strugglebus.

Losing sucks. That's what I learned

I dream of the day that the boys in blue are a thing of the past.

dermdoc said:

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This sums it up #strugglebus.

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What Derm is saying is he could handle more alcohol than he previously thought.

Don't take the bait in Aggie sports. Preseason #1, no thank you. Next year I hope we start the season unranked in every sport.

We were unranked in hockey. Didn't improve there much.

I'm going to go back and address the original question of "what did we learn?"

I believe, and said it from the fall, that I was concerned about the construction of the team. I was worried that we went after bats with a "we'll figure out where they play later" mentality. We had a ton of guys playing out of position (and in some cases players that really don't fit any position) which made us really suspect defensively, especially early in the season. I'm all for having 1-2 Swiss Army knives on the bench for depth, but you can't roll 6-7 guys deep that aren't great defenders, or are our of position. How many guys would you truly say are ++ defenders on our team? 2? Maybe 3 towards the end of the year as TK came on? And all in the OF? Playing out of position puts extra, and unnecessary, stress on the player. ...and on the pitchers.

And speaking of pitchers, I am not a fan of an all LHP rotation, especially when the pitch mix is substantially similar. That's some discussion this year for OU that the Witherspoon twins have seen two different results and one theory is... Drum roll... They're Twins!! They have the same pitch mix, same slot, same look. Yes, Kyson is better, but all the worse for Malachi. Now you've seen the slot, the pitch mix, and you're going to see it again with a little less bite and velocity.

I think we have a similar problem. Better than RH, RH, RH, but our guys, even with different deliveries, don't tax a lineup by turning switch hitters around or forcing any type of platoon situation from Fri-Sun. You're going to see FB, Slider, change, and none with tremendous velocity. Assuming you're asking your guys to go 6IP per game that means Patton is facing a lineup that is more or less getting at least their 6th or 7th look at that same left handed mix. I would really love to have a quality RHP in that mix. Going Left Right Left on the weekend is ideal in my mind unless it's Randy Johnson, Glavine, Sale.

And the bullpen just didn't develop. Say what you want about ole Weinergobbler, but he seemed to find a way to get relievers to commit to a pitch. Rudis was more upright this year and struggled. Wilson got a little better but still struggled. Moss and Jackson matured a little as you would hope they all would with an extra year of strength and experience. But overall that bullpen was a real mess without Stewart and Achenbeck this year.

So there you have it... We went shopping in the travel portal while hungry and instead of ending up with steak we bought candy and lunchables. We didn't starve but it wasn't overly nutritious at the end of the day.

The bigger problem was not using fall ball properly to identify the 9 that should be on the field in the right spots. It seemed to me spots were determined prior.

TexasRebel said:

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We were unranked in hockey. Didn't improve there much.

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So I wasn't disappointed there. When we aren't supposed to be good & we lose I don't like it but I can tolerate it. If we are supposed to be world beaters I don't like losing to teams that have no business beating us.

LB12Diamond said:

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The bigger problem was not using fall ball properly to identify the 9 that should be on the field in the right spots. It seemed to me spots were determined prior.

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I mean, don't you think they were?? You think you recruited guys in today's day and age and said, "maybe you'll play, maybe you won't? ...maybe you're 3rd base, maybe left field."

I think you recruit an all conference player in the portal and he's going to want an understanding of position and likelihood of playing time.

Does not mean practice cannot be used to confirm. Once the games started it ironed out eventually but losses occurred prior.

Just another knock on Earley. The best coaches try to figure out in practice.

To add. It was stated Bindy looked great in fall ball. What kind of defense practice took place to think this one?

If it was run properly and based on what we saw in games, it would have been identified.

Is there a winter transfer period for baseball? If so I could see keeping the lineup close to the vest. Not saying I condone it, but if you tell a transfer player they got beat out, but you think they're a reasonable fit at another position I could see getting past that transfer window without announcing it

As for the rest of your post I agree 100%. I cannot fathom any fielding drill where you watch BB and think, "that'll be okay."

Sean98 said:

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What the heck is going on in this thread??

Quote:

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coaches dont come lining up at becking call like we think they do

---

Quote:

---

That highering the hitting coach does not mean the team should be able to hit.

---

Our coach may have plenty of free time soon to come and evaluate these message boards.

Personally I need full time professional umps and/or robo strike zones. These players are too good to have B/CS volunteer coed softball quality blues.

And NIL needs to evolve into true employment contracts. Base salary with incentive bonuses. Single year contracts or multi-year with two way buyouts. Preferably a soft salary cap (think MLB luxury tax). I'd also like to see the NCAA ban infield shifts.

None of those things would have saved us this year, but I think they'd make for a better overall baseball experience.

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Base salary with incentive bonuses

.... as in low base salary for batting average under 260 and increasing incentive bonuses as batting average increases above 260?

The main lessons we learned are: 1) that our athletic department is still completely incompetent for something like the 75th year in a row; and 2) that our administration (now that Bowtie is gone) will lie there and take it anytime the sips want to humiliate us and take what they want. They made no attempt to stop the sips from completely gutting our best baseball program in school history. They made no serious attempt to keep the sips out of the SEC. There's a word for that and it rhymes with ducks. Its like everyone at the top of our university leadership is told that as a condition of your employment you can have some success, but you may not ever pass the University of Texas in any lasting academic or athletic way. They've been assigned the #2 spot by the state and they are damn sure going to stay in it.

That's not "self loathing", that's instead overwhelming contempt for our university leadership (academic and athletic) for decades of malpractice.