How bad is Michigan baseball?
After losing its home opener today to Oakland -- Oakland U, not the Athletics -- Michigan is 4-8 with another southern trip looming. Can't seem to get anyone out and can barely hit.
I did not even bother to try seeing them play when they were in Calif. due to the weather (and bad play). Any hope for this team doing anything in the Big Ten? How bad are they?
I agree and that's fine as far as it goes. Of course Bakich left for a lot of reasons, and money was only one thing on the list--it feels it was just as much about being nationally and locally relevant. He wanted to have his name in the local newspapers, he wanted his team playing in front of 8,000 fans on the weekends, he wanted kids calling him up and begging to be recruited. He was never going to get any of that at Michigan, no matter what. Okay, so fair enough--we were not keeping Bakich and I'm not blaming Manuel for losing him.
But what really disappointed me over the last 10 months is how everything else has been handled. Michigan and Ohio State both had coaching vacancies. Ohio State made a hire that made national baseball press say "wow, great hire." Michigan made a hire that made the same press say "okay, surprising but I don't know if that will work out." And 12 games into their first season is way too early to evaluate the hires, so I will say what I have to say in May rather than March.
But it's perfectly reasonable to evaluate Michigan's hire in relation to Ohio State's, and it's reasonable to expect Michigan to make a hire that keeps them relevant in the Big Ten standings, and ahead of Ohio State and Michigan State, just as they have been the last several years. I think it's perfectly fine to say that we expect Michigan baseball to be in the top half of the conference almost every year and the top 4 at least half the time.
OSU went out and hired a first time head coach. Granted, he is very highly regarded but “great hire” is something we should probably pump the brakes on. Maybe he lives up to the hype, but there’s just not much to go on yet. Meanwhile Michigan went out and hired a proven coach with a history of success in the Big Ten.
The two schools took a different strategy in their coaching search and I don’t really think there’s any way of saying which way is the right way. And it’s certainly not something where you’ll see the answer this season.
+1, 100 percent agreement. I'm not going to judge Smith without at least one recruiting class that is his. Recruiting was something he was great at during his time in Indiana and his time at Arizona State, and so I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do at Michigan.
How was Warde supposed to keep E.B. from going to Clemson? Aren't they paying him a million? No one in the Big Ten pays that much for baseball.
Pay him a million. Idc. It's not like the department is in a money crunch.
But why? Bakich wasn’t pumping out elite results. He made the CWS Finals once but never advanced past regionals other than that. Never won the regular season title. Missed the tournament altogether in 4 of his 9 full seasons (omitting the Covid season).
Bakich was a good coach. But he’s not irreplaceable and he’s not worth overpaying for.
You know WHY the department isn’t in a numbers crunch? It’s because we don’t do dumb stuff like overpay for someone to coach a mid-major program.
You might want to reconsider your position on the department overpaying for mid major sports.
https://www.michigandaily.com/volleyball/mark-rosen-signed-five-year-extension-before-firing/
1. Big Ten Volleyball isn’t mid-major. It’s home to some of the best programs in the country. One could argue the Big Ten is THE premier volleyball conference. Big Ten baseball meanwhile, is a mid-major conference. A clear step below the ACC, SEC, etc. We’re basically Western Kentucky asking why we aren’t paying $7m+ for our head coach that goes 8-4/9-3 in this scenario.
2. they signed him to a $200k/yr contract… as of 2018, the average bball coaching salary in the Big Ten was $240k/yr so how do you figure that’s overpaying? That’s paying below league average. Meanwhile, Bakich already made over double the next highest B1G coaches salary in baseball.
That is what building better facilities and more for assistant coaches was all about. He was good with his hands tied, imagine how much better he could be without constraints and better recruiting pitches.
Better facilities and assistant coach pay isn’t going to put Michigan on par with the schools that run college baseball. It’s a geographic issue, it’s a fan interest issue, it’s a conference issue. Baseball isn’t big enough around here to justify spending the money and the results it would produce don’t justify it either.
As soon as Warde pays the baseball coach a million dollars (and then has to pay women's coaches in the Department matching amounts) everyone will be in here complaining about their football and basketball ticket prices going up. Watch.
$6.25M over 6 years
EB did a phenomenal job as baseball coach and he got an attaboy keep up the good work.Baseball not important in AA,not gonna show EB the money.Win a few lose a few,don’t overspend and no scandals.
Oh boy, just checked the softball record. Also, not good. I guess that will be a separate post!
I will personally miss being relevant in baseball. And apparently softball as well.
I wouldn't want to be the new coach who follows a very successful coach or in Hutch's case, a once in a generation coach.
Agree about following Hutch. That said I wish they would have gone outside the program for the new coach.
They probably would have lost Tholl ages ago if they hadn't some sort of agreement in place to have her take over. Continuity isn't a bad idea. Tholl has learned from the best for decades and has earned this opportunity.
They've relied on great pitching for generations. Last year's duo graduated, and their new ace is a transfer from Kent State who's probably middle of the pack in the Big Ten.
Lots of somewhat promising freshman hitters, but the top-ten recruit, who is the only one with any power, seems to be out with an injury. So zero team power so far (Tholl's niece, a junior, hit four of the team's five home runs this season all in one weekend and has barely gotten on base otherwise) and the offense looks even worse than last year's while the kids learn the game.
Still, recruiting is going well and maybe they adjust to the new reality of better league competition. This year will be rough - almost certainly the worst season since before Hutch. I'm sure she understood this when she decided to retire.
Softball, like baseball, will always be a challenge this far north because the cold weather makes home games impossible the first half of the season (the home-opening weekend has already been cut from two series' to one game, tomorrow). Because of that, Hutch would belong in the Hall of Fame with half the wins she ended up accumulating.
Hutchins was smart; she helped Tholl out by retiring not in May at the end of the season but instead retiring in August a week before school started and fall practice began.
She knew what she was doing, and she knew that Michigan couldn't conduct a national search right as school was starting up. Really, she probably would not have retired without explicit promise from Manuel that Tholl would be hired. And more power to her, I guess. Given all she has done for Michigan we can't begrudge her being allowed to name a successor herself.
Hadn’t watched a baseball game at any level live in forever, but when baseball went on a run (with 2 players drafted) and played at UCLA (with 1/3rd or more of their roster drafted) I went to the series, watched UM win it, and it was glorious.
Should have hired CMU’s coach. This guy is a dud.
We’re 12 games into a rebuild… the CMU coach wouldn’t have changed anything to this point. Baseball is mostly about the players, not the coach.
CMU coach is a complete weirdo. It’s why he is still at CMU.
Tracy Smith really inherited shit and it’s not his fault. He deserves time. He is recruiting decent with a really good pick up out of Grosse Pointe in the pitcher who took OLSM the distance. But yes he has a ways to go
Okay I'm not an insider and I know nothing about that CMU coach, but it's pretty obvious that there is something other than baseball acumen keeping him from moving up in the profession. After those last 2 seasons, almost any coach would have had top mid-major programs begging him to come there. The fact that it isn't happening is...weird.
Imagine a CMU basketball coach winning the MAC two years in a row, getting #14 seeds in the NCAA tourney, and beating the #3 seed both seasons. Is there any doubt that he would be cashing in and moving up the coaching ranks from the MAC to a mid-major conference at least?
To your main point, I agree completely--let Smith at least get one recruiting class in the door before we evaluate him. Bakich took everything he could take with him when he went to Clemson.
Fire Borges!
Pretty Bad...they CANNOT hit the baseball
As someone who played baseball at M and Coastal Carolina, I can tell you that early in the season the teams that reside in nice weather have a huge advantage. They've been outside practicing for a while. Up North you're typically using indoor practice facilities this time of year and it doesn't let you simulate live action all that well. Pitchers are usually ahead of hitters early on as hitters tend to catch up after a few weeks of seeing live action and warmer temps. It's obviously far from an even playing field and if your expectations are for deep CWS runs, you're setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment.
This is definitely true. I played at a small school in the north so we weren't taking big road trips for weekend series like Michigan can do (best we did was a drive down to like southern Ohio or Kentucky before a big Florida trip over spring break).
It was brutal at the beginning of the year. We spent basically 100% of preseason indoors on hard surfaced multipurposed gyms so ground balls didn't react like they do outdoors, hitting in cages against live pitching isn't the same etc...
At least at Michigan they can use the indoor football facility to spread out properly to work on team drills for baserunning and infield work and it has turf so baseballs would react at least similarly to outdoors. We didn't have anything of that nature.
Yeah the gap widens at the DII and DIII level with lack of proper facilities. My brother played at a DII school in Ohio and they made a yearly trip to Boca Rotan over spring break to get dismantled by teams like Georgia Tech and Miami. I was a litte more fortunate at the D1 level. Would of preferred to play football, but unfortunately Sparty was the only B1G team to offer.
This goes from little league on up. My son went to Cooperstown at age 12 from Illinois and played teams from California and Georgia who play year round. We got shellacked in every game. In one game, a California team scored 15 in the top of the first. And we were told going in that's how it was going to be so lower your expectations.
This is true. I played in an International tournament at the age of 13. You don't want to see those boys from Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic play baseball. Pretty sure their pitcher was throwing low 90's and had a wife and kids. Pretty humbling experience.
Title IX requires spending a ton of $ on non-revenue-generating sports. I think that is a good thing, and so do most people. Gives more opportunities to young people. Makes the U more diverse & enriched. It's a good look. So why is it bad to spend $ on baseball just because it doesn't make $? Why wouldn't dominating the Big Ten consistently be a good thing? Are $ and nattys all that matters? For heaven's sake, it's BASEBALL ... let's spend the $ to be GOOD at it!
Right now they seem to be pretty bad. As you said, they aren't hitting and their pitching hasn't improved.
They only brought back 3 full time starting position players from last year in Obertop, Flores, and Burton. Obertop is hurt and not playing. Marti and Van Remortel platooned at 1B and neither was that great. Now they are both basically starting and seem to be about the same as last year. Velazquez is a starter when he's available but he hasn't hit this year either. The grad transfer SS they brought in should have been able to come close to replicating Bertram's hit lines but he's at .156. They are starting 2 true freshman who are hitting like true freshman so far. I expect the veterans to bring their averages up to their norms as the season goes along. I hope the freshman figure it out a bit. The biggest disappointment for me is the lack of progress from anyone. I was hoping Dylan Stanton would make a jump as he played pretty good last year and so far he's been relegated to pinch hitting. Brandon Lawrence has also not seemed to have made many improvements. It says something that we only have 5 freshman position players, 2 are starting and a 3rd has seen time as well. Gabe Sotres, the grad transfer catcher brought in from MSU, has been their most consistent hitter. I would expect when Obertop comes back they switch off the DH and C roles unless they have other positions they can play.
We all knew the pitching was very bad last year. We had to hope this year they figured something out because we only brought in 1 freshman pitcher and 1 grad transfer. So far only O'Halloran has bounced back. Our other 2 weekend starters at this point are Chase Allen and Jacob Denner. It seems Allen has potential if he can find some consistency. Denner hasn't pitched well at all last year or this year. The mid week starter so far has been Kurt Barr, the only freshman pitcher we have. He's been pretty good for a freshman, let alone one with a uninspiring recruiting profile. Again, lack of development has been very disappointing. Some of these guys are to the point where they are what they are, but last years 2 freshman seem to be the same as well. And the grad transfer has fit in instead of continuing his previous ways.
Going forward I think the hitting will pick up. Getting Obertop back will be a big help. You would also think the hitters will start inching towards their career averages. The pitching is another story. It is better than last year, but not by much. I think/hope Allen will settle into some consistency but Denner may just be what he is now. If thats the case maybe Barr can be the 3rd weekend starter and we can patch together the weekday games like last year. As with last year, someone has to figure it out in the bullpen or none of this matters. Outside of Noah Rennard and Mitch Voit (who has been the everyday 3B), nobody is getting anyone out.
Sadly, next year might be worse. Unless Obertop, Burton, and Flores want to take their covid years, we are going to have huge holes in the lineup without obvious replacements. We have 3 and a half pitchers on the roster in the last 2 recruiting classes, with the current sophmores not showing anything. The entire Sophmore class was a 10 man class with only 6 making it to campus. 2 left after last year, both pitchers, with 1 going to Ohio State. Joe Longo seems like he's going to be good and can't write off Camden Gasser yet. But the pitchers, yeesh.
Michigan had an outstanding baseball program in the 80's with several future major leaguers. Times have changed, those kids don't play in the North anymore.
Short of the NCAA changing the baseball season Michigan and all Big Ten schools will have trouble competing.