re: Expectations for Baseball

Luck isn’t the right word, but in baseball more than any other sport, the best team doesn’t always win. The main reason is parity across the sport at the college level. There are far more college ready players coming out of high school than there were even 10 or 15 years ago. The training at the youth level is in warp speed. Simply put, there are more high level players to go around than there are scholarships to hand out, so more schools are getting equivalent or near equivalent players. It’s good for the smaller schools and good for college baseball in general. The price is that the blue bloods won’t be as consistently dominant bc the margin for error is razor thin on any given weekend, especially in the post season. Another reason is that there are days where athletes just don’t have their best stuff and it’s more evident in baseball bc you can’t scheme around it like u can in other sports. Your all American pitcher still has to maneuver through a line up even if his fastball is flat or his breaking ball isn’t as sharp that day. Meanwhile the scrub in the other dugout slept at a Holliday inn express last night and is toting an extra 2-3 mph and a hammer piece breaking ball. It happens. Same with hitters. Guys can be dialed in one weekend and look like they’ve never swung a bat the next weekend. Winning it all still takes some good fortune in that aspect.

I think it’s silly to set the success bar by picking wins/losses or a certain amount of cws appearances or anything like that. If you know the game, just look at the quality of the product on the field. If they have a solid pitching staff, strong talent at every position on the field and are playing fundemental, unselfish ball, and are managed well the results will come as a by product of all that. We haven’t had that in a while at lsu. People need to let it play out instead of measuring success/failure by a handful of arbitrary statistics.