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Replies: 13
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CU Medallion [65504]
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Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 10:00 AM
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irrevocably changed from what it was 15 years ago. It will never get back to that. Why?
M-O-N-E-Y.
As in, the money in Major League Baseball has risen to the point where it really is no decision for a kid who is drafted highly. Million dollar + signing bonuses tip the scale tremendously against college baseball in these instances now. Were Jack Leggett, or even Bill Wilhelm still around the program, they would be facing the same realities that Monte Lee is dealing with.
However, this brings up another point where deficiencies in the past were masked by pure talent. Coaching, or lack of. With the "cream of the crop" never setting foot on college campuses, we must have coaches that are highly proficient at nurturing and realizing the potential in the players they do get to work with. This is where I see us coming up short in recent years. I don't pretend to know who those assistant coaches are, but analytics would tell you who they are. There is no reason, other than not looking, that Clemson should not be able to lure them into jobs here.
That is what Monte Lee needs to do, to save his job, and our baseball program. I have no problem with a Head Coach being a "CEO" type, as many have accused Dabo of being. Great leaders know how to pick their management team so that success is a naturally occurring byproduct of those peoples skills. It works in industry, and it works in sports. Nick Saban is a great example of that. Despite all the yearly turnover, he keeps picking qualified replacement assistants, and Bama keeps winning.
Clemson Baseball can benefit from these same sound, proven tactics. But, we have to have the will, and the mandate that we will settle for nothing less. That is the message that I would hope DRad has already delivered to Coach Lee. And, if Lee is not willing to do the hard evaluation of his staffs results, and make the necessary changes to achieve those goals, then he himself should be replaced. I don't believe Coach Lee is a stupid individual. Even Stevie Wonder can see the writing on the wall that next year is his last chance to deliver real improvement, or his can will be kicked on down the road.
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Orange Blooded [2853]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 11:00 AM
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Baseball has a pretty limited staff to dedicate the head coach as the CEO. Pitching coach, assistant head coach (or whatever you want to call the second paid coach, then the volunteer coach. That’s right in the day of big salaries, they actually have to have a coach make their living via baseball camps etc. Then you have grad assistant(s). I believe Hennessy served in that capacity this year. The rest is administrative assistance. Thus, your head coach better be a good instructor of some important aspect of baseball and the game manager because he needs to pull his weight developing players.
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All-In [44050]
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Nice post. I agree with most of what you said
Jun 1, 2021, 11:12 AM
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except for the CEO part. I don't think college baseball staffs are large enough to allow the head coach to be a CEO. He has to be very hands-on due to only having a few other coaches on his staff.
It is also my understanding that we don't pay our baseball assistants as much as a lot of other schools. I don't know if that is correct, but I have seen it posted here the last few weeks so I assume that there is some truth to it.
As everyone has to hear me gripe about when it comes to basketball, we must pay our assistants well or it's unfair to have high expectations for the head coach. Having the budget to hire great assistants makes the head coach look a lot better, as evidenced by Dabo's tenure.
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Trainer [37]
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Re: Nice post. I agree with most of what you said
Jun 1, 2021, 12:40 PM
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Coaches in today’s game need to be able to develop. There is a lot of talent out there but if you are the same player or worse than when you get to Clemson after a year or two then the program can’t evolve. Leggett had Corbin and sully to help develop players. They turned good players into very good or great players. Monte has a launch angle approach as a hitting guy which as you can see doesn’t work. He has assistant coaches who can’t coach. See and LeCroy need to go. Lecroy needs to go more so as he was under Leggett as his program declined. You can bring in all the talent in the world but if you can’t get them better than you will be exactly where we are.
I go back to Seth Beer. He was freshman college player of the year and then never proceeded to hit over 300 in his next two seasons. He will be a all star major leaguer who had average numbers in college but everyone knew he had all the talent in the world.
Keep Monte and bring in coaches that coach under him or get rid of Monte all together. I keep seeing former Clemson baseball player now head coach David Miller popping up everywhere on Clemson sites and message boards. I did some home work. In 2017 he took over a 10-41 La Salle baseball team that was just cut. This past year they won 32 games. He was named A10 coach of the year. His offense went from a 220 team BA to a 280 team BA. he had three nationally ranked recruiting classes to a place whose facilities look worse than a JV high school field in the heart of Philadelphia. They had 9 all conference players in their last season. That is a coach I can get behind. Doesn’t ##### about facilities but gets the players and coaches them up. He also is a CLEMSON guy. Played for them in the 90’s. All American and 1st round pick. Played in the CWS in 95 with benson, Koch, Lecroy, Monohan.
Time to bring in people who know what they are doing. This looks like the guy who can help rebuild this program for Monte or lead it back to wear we were in his days.
It’s time for action before this program is completely destroyed by sub par coaching.
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All-In [44050]
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Melton seems to be a very good coach
Jun 1, 2021, 3:06 PM
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who would be a good one to talk to if there is a vacancy at Clemson.
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Orange Blooded [2853]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 11:25 AM
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As follow up. I think you’ve hit on an aspect of the problem. We never really get a good answer on who is performing with mediocrity as a developer of our hitters. It was easy to point the finger at Coach Starbuck, but he’s been gone for awhile now. The new volunteer coach has been advertised as a base running guru (what Monte Lee called his special teams coach). Coach See of course handles the pitching. Exclusively I guess because Lee doesn’t even come to the mound anymore. That leaves LeCroy but I thought he’s the generalist coach and the recruiting guru. Maybe I’m wrong and he is part of the hitting issues. However, if Lee is basically the hitting coach (who loves the hitting analytics such as launch angle and velocity so we can have crooked scoring innings), then he would need challenge himself to improve the hitting or fire himself. Not sure how that works out.
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Asst Coach [722]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 5:49 PM
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Just met someone who knows Starbuck and they said monte told him he doesn’t believe in small ball. That’s giving up an out.
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110%er [6446]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 11:26 AM
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I completely agree with your post.
Lee supporters want to use the excuse of, “College baseball has changed! Lack of scholarships, lack of funding, all the talent goes to MLB, Vanderbilt....blah, blah, blah!”
Everything has changed. No sport is the same as it was 15-20 years ago. Not baseball, not basketball, not football. You know what good coaches do? Adapt and evolve with the changes. Make lemonade out of the lemons you were handed. Clemson Baseball, like every other baseball program, will have to adapt and advance, or get left behind. Simple as that. Drad, Lee, and fans, can sit on their hands and whine about it, just settle for mediocrity, and be happy to beat College of Charleston and USC Upstate, or make the necessary changes, adjustments to advance Clemson Baseball.
Also, concerning is what you said about developing the talent/skills of the players that do come to Clemson. After, six years, I see little to none of that happening.
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Orange Blooded [2853]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 1:44 PM
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Bryce Teodosio may be the poster child of what must change. He has so much raw talent. The things he does in center field are MLB gold glove level stuff. Excellent speed on the bases too. Sadly, his ability to recognize chase pitches and make consistent contact with hittable pitches has barely changed since his freshman year. It wasn’t injuries that held him back, which many could argue has hampered Meredith. It wasn’t laziness because that guy plays 110 effort regardless of the score. Watching his goodbye interview with TCI you can tell he loves baseball. A couple things could be true, he wasn’t ever going to hit quality pitchers or received mediocre instruction (mental approach as well). I tend towards poor instruction because most of Clemson’s hitters make similar mistakes at the plate.
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All-In [48331]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 11:35 PM
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I posted on another thread. Sorry, didn't see this one. Not you, but I've gotten TD'd for speaking truth about Monte.
What many have said is very true in this thread. Obviously we're keeping Monte. I did all I could and wrote the AD. That said, I've posted about Teo before.
Teo was a really good hitter coming out of high school. Monte has destroyed him with his power launch angle b.s. Teo's stance and arm/bat was in good position and he used his lower body well. In HS, the kid hit to all areas of the field and would punch the ball in places. He was a traditional line drive hitter... Was NOT a home run king. Instead of going with that and developing teo, look what he did.
I was listening to scouts talk about him and they weren't concerned about his hitting. Said he'd get with a coach and get his bad habits corrected and get him back to his natural form. Tells me all I needed to hear about monte's approach.
DRad throwing out this Common market is a panacea. It appeases the big donors and masks the real underlying flaws. Is it needed, yes, any advantage is a good advantage. But SC already has lotto money that can be used. Talks cheap, takes money to buy whiskey. DRad needs to sharpen that pencil and get creative in paying a support staff that can sell a kid a dream, develop them properly just like Dabo has and then maybe baseball just might make a few more dollars.
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Orange Blooded [2853]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 2, 2021, 7:30 AM
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If Clemson keeps validating the situation of good HS hitters coming into the program and regressing with poor technique and lack of situational awareness then inevitably the best recruits will not commit as their high school coaches will steer them away. That problem would not be reversed until a new staff arrives.
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Legend [16908]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 2:39 PM
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https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/draft-system-has-pushed-teams-to-pick-more-college-players/
this article says your entire premise is wrong. An increasing percentage of the MLB draft is coming from 4 year colleges where, unlike basketball, they have to stay at least 3 years. That is the opposite of what you are alleging is happening. First round picks have almost always opted to sign rather than go to college. But a shrinking percentage of those is high school students.
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Freshman [-99]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 6:40 PM
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The fatal flaw of your argument is that this is happening outside of college baseball. Thus, all of college baseball is affected by this. Not just Clemson.
As the rules of college baseball currently stand certain schools and programs have great advantages over others. Private schools like Duke and Vanderbilt are going to have advantages over public colleges like Clemson. And as we have seen with South Carolina’s baseball program it proves the point that I have been making for years especially in football that coaching is the absolute most critical aspect of a program. Coaching is more important than talent. Georgia has all the talent in the world but their problem is coaching.
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Scout Team [193]
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Re: Here is a dose of reality. The college baseball landscape is
Jun 1, 2021, 8:23 PM
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This is spot on. One of my local high schools has had several 1st round draft pick in the past few years. These kids knew about where they would fall in the draft and already committed to play in college ( large D1programs). The $ spoke obviously and they spent 2-3 years in the minors. One made it all the way, and the others fizzled out.
On the other hand.... do you still go after these kids? Or do you get a true potential D1 caliber kid who will work their tail off and develop over time and keep them 4-5 years!??? So many preferred walk-ons get their dream shattered or the kids that are being recruited wind up going somewhere else. I know several high caliber kids didn’t even get the chance after the emails, calls, and texts stopped coming. That’s where this over recruiting comes in.... give me the “program kid” who fits the system and will stay 4-5 years.
Coaches!??? Watch out for McMillan at Charleston Southern. He will be turning heads down there soon. Also the guy at Upstate. He did more with a LOT less.
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