re: Who are the leaders on our baseball team?

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Nah, people pick the low hanging fruit always. They love to turn to the intangible thing & blame it on that.

Most the time it is just a talent &/or experience gap.

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I agree. I just said it's A weakness, but certainly didn't mean to imply it was the only one or even one of the bigger ones. I think it's mainly the Jimmy's and Joe's. Jay may have slightly mismanaged this roster a bit by gambling so much on guys like Kling, Pearson, Neal (combined 0-25 with 9 Ks in SEC play so far), Frey, and Hurd really stepping up production wise. And the former 4 haven't yet (though Frey has been hurt both literally with his injury and the cluster in the outfield haven gotten even more crowded when Pearson was added to the mix after Milam's hot start) and may be a year away. Hurd hasn't either, but he won't be back next year. (Kling may not be either, but I think that's still up in the air).

I think Loer has been a pretty huge disappointment too that Jay was really counting on to be a high leverage, back of the bullpen guy. Coleman and Little as well to a certain extent. Still time for everybody to turn it around, but we are in serious risk of digging ourselves in a hole that will be really hard to get out of. That loss Saturday stung and may have serious long-term repercussions. I know it's only 1 game, but 3-3 is big difference between 2-4 with a trip to Fayetteville coming up and series with Vandy and at Tennessee looming the 2 weekends after that.

We'll see. That's part of the beauty of college baseball. It's a long season and some guys develop and some are gamers that step up in the postseason and play way over their heads. But no matter how it ends, the journey is always exciting, if often disappointing at points along the way. They rarely end like last year. And that's actually a good thing because we're able to appreciate the greatness of those teams. Not every team is gonna win it all, obviously. But if this one can develop into one playing good ball towards the end, it could go on a nice postseason run. Maybe not a NC run, but it could really set the '25 team up to be special if Jay can convince some borderline guys to come back and hit on the right portal guys to fill the missing holes.