All Things Gopher Baseball

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DarrenTheGreek said:
Beautiful relay had the Ole Miss runner dead to rights but Swenson dropped the ball. 4-3 Rebels mid 5
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This is the play I'm worried is gonna come back as the killer tonight.
Gonzalez and Calarco are absolute killers offensively for Ole Miss.
After Capomaccio snuck out of the 6th I was hoping to see someone else come out for the 7th but they let him get in big trouble first end we head to the bottom of the 7th down 6-5 after the Rebels scored 2 runs.
 

Goldy Gopher said:
This is the play I'm worried is gonna come back as the killer tonight.
Gonzalez and Calarco are absolute killers offensively for Ole Miss.
After Capomaccio snuck out of the 6th I was hoping to see someone else come out for the 7th but they let him get in big trouble first end we head to the bottom of the 7th down 6-5 after the Rebels scored 2 runs.
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They never should have brought Capo for a second inning. Said it right at the start. He barely got out of the 6th
 

Klassen certainly looked more comfortable coming out of the bullpen tonight than in his starts the first 2 weekends
 

Time for Neels to get in the starting lineup more consistently. Think he can handle 1st well enough and Bork certainly hasn't showed anything to claim a regular lineup slot.
 

0-10 record. Wow, that’s bad!

Maybe they can turn their season around tomorrow… wink.
 



I love John and am grateful for everything he’s given to the program for 40 years, but when does the discussion begin in earnest about him stepping down? They’re now 22-77 since 2021. This program has been too good, has too much history and had too many great alums to EVER play .222 ball over two-plus seasons and have that be acceptable. It’s pretty clear from the last 100 games that this isn’t a fluke and that they need a new direction. Coyle just had a difficult conversation with Lindsay; it’s now time for him to have one with John.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
I love John and am grateful for everything he’s given to the program for 40 years, but when does the discussion begin in earnest about him stepping down? They’re now 22-77 since 2021. This program has been too good, has too much history and had too many great alums to EVER play .222 ball over two-plus seasons and have that be acceptable. It’s pretty clear from the last 100 games that this isn’t a fluke and that they need a new direction. Coyle just had a difficult conversation with Lindsay; it’s now time for him to have one with John.
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Anderson is on the last year of his contract. I'm guessing he will be asked to step away at the end or else they will have a difficult conversation.
 




LesBolstad said:
Big step forward last night. Maybe they can be competitive in the B10. Certainly there's some talent there. Good to see the bats get going. That being said, 0-10 is mind boggling with that roster
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Goal this year is to finish in top half of conf and make it to B1G tournament. I saw enough competitiveness against good competition in first 4 games and this weekend to think it's possible but also saw some really bad baseball against SLU and Milwaukee to think it's a pipe dream. At this point I just hope the guys continue to grow and plug away. One week at a time I guess. The hitting against Ole Miss was so much better than against Milwaukee it makes me wonder if I'm watching the same team.

When your 0-10 moral victories is all we have.
 


DarrenTheGreek said:
Goal this year is to finish in top half of conf and make it to B1G tournament. I saw enough competitiveness against good competition in first 4 games and this weekend to think it's possible but also saw some really bad baseball against SLU and Milwaukee to think it's a pipe dream. At this point I just hope the guys continue to grow and plug away. One week at a time I guess. The hitting against Ole Miss was so much better than against Milwaukee it makes me wonder if I'm watching the same team.

When your 0-10 moral victories is all we have.
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Listening to 14 on with Grimm this week he sounded pretty optimistic and not really surprised by the start. I think he has to be a little surprised to be 0-10 instead of like 3-7/4-6 but he mentioned this is a young team with a lot of inexperience at this level and they expected a ton of growing pains and inconsistency and that is what we are seeing right now. Mentioned the challenging schedule that will have them ready for conference play and that they hope to be hitting their stride and be consistent around that time. Talked about how he'd be more worried if some of the stats were down from what they are but most the stats show the results will come. The two he mentioned they have to improve on are hitting with RISP and executing pitches in advantage counts like 0-2/1-2, specifically mentioned they are doing a good job on first pitch strikes. He did talk about how they are focused on the process rather than results right now but to me that can only work for so long without seeing results before guys start to wonder about the process and if they need to stray from it.
 




Vandy jumped out to an early 3-0 lead after 2 hitting Holetz pretty hard but than Richie settled down and pitched 6 pretty solid innings. Vandy adds one more run late that they didn't need as 4 guys combined to no hit Minnesota. Number of walks, couple hit batters, and guy or two on by error for the Gophers but no hits tonight and only a couple of well hit balls.
 

Around the Big Ten this past week.....

Iowa 8-1 – Swept Southern, South Alabama and Pepperdine. Not overly tough competition but solid start for Iowa. They are now ranked #23 in d1baseball poll. Big 3 game series @ Texas Tech next weekend

Purdue 8-4 – Took 3 out of 4 from Akron. I’ll say it again, Boilers have played NOBODY. Definitely take their record with a grain of salt. They have 3 at Ole Miss next weekend. We’ll see what happens then.

Penn State 6-3 – Took 2 of from Dartmouth, Wagner and Holy Cross. Rematch with Holy Cross tonight, midweek game at North Carolina (tough) and then 4 game series against Brown. I still like their start but the competition is pretty weak right now (UNC is the exception)

Illinois 6-4 – Took 2 of 3 form Sam Houston State. Sam Houston is decent. They beat Iowa and K-State. Nice weekend from Illinois

Nebraska 5-4-1 – 2 out of 3 at Cambria Classic with big wins over Vandy and Hawaii. Gotta say I was surprised at that outcome. 5 games this week against Northern Colorado and Illinois State. Time to pad the W/L record a bit.

Michigan State 5-5 – Lost 2 to Charleston and beat Charleston Southern. I think Sparty is destined to hover around the .500 mark all season.

Ohio State 5-6 – Beat Miss State and Oklahoma but got obliterated by Cal 19-1. I have no read on the Buckeyes. They’ve had some good wins and some bad losses. Without knowing further, I’d attribute it to a lack of depth. That’s what it sounds like to me.

Indiana 5-6 – Lost to East Carolina and Long Beach but beat G-town. Give the Hoosiers credit as they’ve played a very tough schedule. They’ll be a tough out in the Big Ten but I don’t think they are quite an NCAA tournament contender this year .

Michigan 4-7 – Went 0-5 with that brutal schedule. Losses to Irvine, UCLA, TCU, Texas Tech and Louisville.

Maryland 4-7 – Went 0-3 at the Cambria Classic. After starting the year ranked #15 they’ve fallen out. I’m sure they’ll still be a Big Ten contender but they’ve really underachieved so far. Terps have to be disappointed.

Rutgers 3-7 – Midweek win against St Joe’s followed by a sweep to UNC-Greensboro. The disappointing start continues for the Scarlet Knights.

Northwestern 0-9 – Swept by Louisiana Tech. It would figure that the only other winless team in the Big Ten wouldn’t be on the Gophers schedule this year. Sigh.

Minnesota 0-11 – 5 games this week. Midweek games against Northern Illinois and South Dakota State followed by a 3 game series at West Virginia.
 

I know people have not been happy about the last 2-3 years with how the program has been. But if you go back to the start of the 2005 season the team has a winning percentage of .514. So you are looking at 18-19 years of .500 baseball. Without coach Anderson's tenure I am not sure how many other coaches would survive that.
 

Whiskybeaver said:
I know people have not been happy about the last 2-3 years with how the program has been. But if you go back to the start of the 2005 season the team has a winning percentage of .514. So you are looking at 18-19 years of .500 baseball. Without coach Anderson's tenure I am not sure how many other coaches would survive that.
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Not sure where you are getting your numbers from but by my calculations form the start of 2005 the winning percentage is .527 (504-453)

Additionally, I think you're playing word games. The team has a .527 win pct since 2005 DESPITE being 30-88 since the start of 2020. That only proves the point that from 2005-2019 the program was doing quite nicely. But you are implying that it was a .500 team during that period. That's misleading.

From 2005-2019 the program was 474-365 (.565) overall and 217-159 (.577) in Big Ten play with 3 Big Ten championships. You really don't think a coach should survive that?

What's a realistic expectation for a Big Ten baseball program in the upper midwest?
 

Ok, point taken. Let's go back to 2010. If my math is correct their winning percentage is .508. Now they did win a few big ten titles but do you consider that an acceptable overall record? They had a few decent years but also many lean years during that stretch. The baseball talent is good enough to compete with some of the southern schools but you have to get that talent. Most years the top 5 kids from both Minnesota and Wisconsin are not attending Minnesota. I know of more than a few kids that were either not contacted by Minnesota or drug their feet during the recruiting process or got in too late. I know of a player that was coming out of juco and the gophers could not commit to a scholarship number so he ended up going to the ACC and got drafted in the top 5 rounds the next year. Recruiting has drastically sped up and the gophers are still recruiting like its 2015. They are now relying on bounce back kids that they didn't get the first time. Sam Hunt, Aiden Maldonado and others. Just my two cents but something changed along the way and not for the better.
 

Whiskybeaver said:
Ok, point taken. Let's go back to 2010. If my math is correct their winning percentage is .508. Now they did win a few big ten titles but do you consider that an acceptable overall record? They had a few decent years but also many lean years during that stretch. The baseball talent is good enough to compete with some of the southern schools but you have to get that talent. Most years the top 5 kids from both Minnesota and Wisconsin are not attending Minnesota. I know of more than a few kids that were either not contacted by Minnesota or drug their feet during the recruiting process or got in too late. I know of a player that was coming out of juco and the gophers could not commit to a scholarship number so he ended up going to the ACC and got drafted in the top 5 rounds the next year. Recruiting has drastically sped up and the gophers are still recruiting like its 2015. They are now relying on bounce back kids that they didn't get the first time. Sam Hunt, Aiden Maldonado and others. Just my two cents but something changed along the way and not for the better.
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Back in 2021 I posted this concerning my expectations and I think it largely holds.
our ability to play home games in Feb/Mar and the Gophers should have an advantage over every other Big Ten program in that regard. I agree that the expectation for Gophers baseball should be top 4 just about every year, Conf championship every 5 years and NCAA appearance about 3 out of 5 years.
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I would concede that 2010-2015 did not meet my expectations. But 2016-2019 exceeded them.

Regarding the Gophers recruiting, I can't speak to the Gopher practices and how it measures up. However, I do personally know several families that have D1 baseball commitments to top 25 programs and for the ones I know, the Big Ten is not even on the radar if they get attention from the southern schools.

With that said, Gophers did land the PBR #4 (Kennedy) and #5 (Neels) from 2022 Minnesota rankings. Hokenson and Berkland were #9 and #10 on that list.

Malec was #4 in 2021
Bateman was #6 in 2020
 

Whiskybeaver said:
Ok, point taken. Let's go back to 2010. If my math is correct their winning percentage is .508. Now they did win a few big ten titles but do you consider that an acceptable overall record? They had a few decent years but also many lean years during that stretch. The baseball talent is good enough to compete with some of the southern schools but you have to get that talent. Most years the top 5 kids from both Minnesota and Wisconsin are not attending Minnesota. I know of more than a few kids that were either not contacted by Minnesota or drug their feet during the recruiting process or got in too late. I know of a player that was coming out of juco and the gophers could not commit to a scholarship number so he ended up going to the ACC and got drafted in the top 5 rounds the next year. Recruiting has drastically sped up and the gophers are still recruiting like its 2015. They are now relying on bounce back kids that they didn't get the first time. Sam Hunt, Aiden Maldonado and others. Just my two cents but something changed along the way and not for the better.
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I've heard this a number of times as well. They are pretty deliberate style recruiting and aren't near as aggressive as many other programs and it has cost them more than a few times. I've also heard the effort isn't always where you would like it to be on the trail.
 

They need to figure out something for NIL for baseball as well or risk falling farther behind. I know Nebraska has said their goal from an NIL standpoint is to be able to offer all their baseball players enough to cover full scholarships for all their players. Right now few players get full scholarships because of Big Ten limits.
 

GopherGod said:
They need to figure out something for NIL for baseball as well or risk falling farther behind. I know Nebraska has said their goal from an NIL standpoint is to be able to offer all their baseball players enough to cover full scholarships for all their players. Right now few players get full scholarships because of Big Ten limits.
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I'd be pretty surprised if anyone basically anywhere is on full scholarship without some funny money or NIL around the country. You get 11.7 scholarships to split between 27 or 28 guys I think.
 

Goldy Gopher said:
I'd be pretty surprised if anyone basically anywhere is on full scholarship without some funny money or NIL around the country. You get 11.7 scholarships to split between 27 or 28 guys I think.
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I've heard of some of the very top guys getting 75-80% scholarship with NIL making up the difference.
 






George Klassen on the mound tonight. Have a feeling we will make it two in a row.
 


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