This is on the coaches

Present baseball team does not deserve post season play. If they get in it’s on past accomplishments.
Do you really want to watch anymore of this product?

 

Seems some level of entitlement and complacency has taken root in the program. Fixable, if you want it bad enough.

 

You nailed it brother. This coaching staff has massively underperformed. We do not have Championhsip talent as we did in great abundance last year but we are a team that should not be struggling to get into the post season. We lose mid week game and shrug it off as "the Sully way" and then when we are 6-3 in the SEC and head to Mizzou we are soft in the cold weather and lose three one-run games. That was the start of the slide... We're done and the coaches should own it.

 

1. Are the coaches making the players' skills better? Another MPH or another inch of movement on a pitch, better batting stance or grip, better jump on a defensive play or a steal, working with the trainers or nutritionists and so on to improve their physical abilities. This is part we fans don't really see, (EDIT: but I have a hard time coming up with any examples where skills have leveled up this year.)

2. Are the coaches improving the mental side of the game? Approach at the plate (contact vs. power, all fields vs. pull), approach on the mound (doing something other than 2/3 good pitches, nibble ball 2, nibble ball 3, right down the pipe on 3-2) and so on. Related: are they calling for the right plays (e.g.; if you haven't taught someone to bunt -- step 1 -- don't ask him to bunt.) I'm pretty confident of a 'no' on this.

If the answers to 1 and 2 are no, the Gators might need to retool. Hopefully, Sully can adapt his approach to teaching and coaching the game. If necessary, which it likely is, he would hire new assistants in line with it. This might be a multi-year process, with TP and NIL also changing the team at the same time. But, there needs to be a plan.

On the other hand...
3. Have the coaches lost (or never had) the locker room? Do the players like playing for Sully and the other coaches? Do they support each other as teammates? I've had doubts about this stuff all season -- there was the Cade Fisher and Dale Thomas scrimmage HR incident, Sully even noting the loss of leadership among the players in interviews, that some players weren't even in the dugout during game since they were distracting (per a GDC speaker), and the way the team just didn't seem to give a damn about him when Ty Evans got seriously hurt.
And, worst of all... if #3 is a big par of the problem and not just one year that didn't "gel". I don't know how or if Sully can fix it.

 

Good post Neutrino B, you'll likely get some thumbs down from the 'Sully can do no wrong" crowd but you highlight good and legitimate points. There are truths in all three of your points. The team never seemed to gel with the lack of on-field leadership but my sense is that the coaches may have lost the locker room or perhaps worse..."part of the locker room." We will likely see an exodus from players that looked good in scrimmages but got virtually zero playing time. Looking ahead to 2025- it's daunting to think of a team without a Caglianone hitting and pitching. And it remans a question mark whether we can keep the top young arms on staff.

 

At what point are players responsible for some of the struggles? I have no issue with laying blame with the coaches, they have struggled this year, but so have the players in doing basic things that shouldn't be left up to coaches.

 

You must take into account the staff swung and missed too many times before the season even started. It started when we lost the UCLA pitcher to pro ball. Then lost out on Clemson transfer to TN. Instead we got Shelton who has been horrible the second half of this season. We did even worse with the rest of the transfers.
Russell, Guy, Donay, Albert, Wilson and Garrison = a D+ at best. 6 guys that didn't produce.

I said it at the beginning of the season......if we have Thomas as our starting 3B and Shelnut and Robertson are starting outfielders, we are in for a tough season.

Now with that said, a lot of this starts with NIL. We must hit the transfer portal harder, wiser and have more money to spend this offseason. If we don't, we could easily have a losing record next year.

I do think Sully needs to reevaluate his pitching coach as well.

 

(Trigger warning: this post wanders off the theme of the thread. Some people should just skip it.)

I would hope you mean entitlement and complacency by part of the fan base. We aren't the only fan base with that problem, but the level of whining about a winning season against high quality competition is a bit much. After last season, after Sully's winning history, after fall and preseason workouts that seemed so promising- especially to those of us who actually watched those workouts- few Gators fans are not unhappy that we may squeak into a Regional. But it's a bit much to say that the team doesn't deserve postseason play. Postseason play specifically targets conference champions and 30+ at large teams. Regardless of frontrunner hyperbole, the Gators ARE worthy of that group. Neither the team nor fans have reason to be embarrassed. Fans of HUNDREDS of college bsb teams can't imagine having a program as successful this one. I'm pretty disappointed by this season. I feel bad after every loss, regardless of the season record, but it's not that hard to keep some perspective on the nature of the game.

I enjoy reading analysis from the guys who have some personal experience in playing the college game, but they aren't perfect by any means and I don't think any of them ever was lucky enough to play the game at the level the Gators now play. On the other hand, I'm not so impressed with talking points cribbed from broadcasters and podcasters.

I'm of the era when UF frosh were require to take CLC 121, Comprehensive Logic, that covered logical fallacies including The Straw Man. An example is an assertion that a "'Sully can do no wrong" crowd,' exists. Speaking as a blindly optimistic fan who is ecstatic over baseball success under Sully, I have no doubt Sully can do wrong- as he has every year- and no doubt this Staw Man is a fallacy.

 

Sully has done enough to earn our trust.

A combination of factors produced a group of players that didn’t become a team this year. Such is baseball.

In Sully we trust.

 

Nope. Sully stopped teaching both the mental and physical parts of the game in between last season and this one.

 

Usually, I'm not a 2nd guesser of the coaches... Our opponent threw their no. 1 pitcher at us. We went with a pitcher who had less than 15 IP's all year, a high ERA, and a won loss record of 0-3 (0-4 after yesterday). In a one game play in, this scenario i can't wrap my head around.

 

Who is it you felt should have thrown

 

The Gators were the best college baseball team in the country last year, but gave up (18) runs in the deciding game of the 2023 CWS. And none of that was on 7. The 2024 Gators baseball team was in the Top 5 of every preseason poll, and just finished the regular season with a 28-27 record. And that isn't on 7. We were told that 7 was too loyal to a his third base coach, and he was replaced. Anyone notice a difference? Especially on the base paths. But, that's not on 7. So, tell me. When are we allowed to ask about the game to game, series to series, year to year results for 7's teams? And since it's been raised. Though small, there is absolutely a "7 can do no wrong" crowd on GC. During the 2023 CWS, I was literally told in a thread to stop posting negatively about 7, and to just "appreciate his genius". Their exact words. As an aside, that poster was no where to be found as the 2024 Gator baseball season progressed. I'm still here. And so are 74nole, wingtee, and many others like us. Just put a fundamentally sound Gator baseball team on the field every year. Is that too much to expect?

And, as I always finish this type post. Good coaches have good players, and great coaches have great players. Go Gators!

 

Do you know this for a fact or did you hear this third hand?

 

I believe that was sarcasm lol

 

There are a million variables that contribute to the outcome of a baseball season, whether that outcome is positive or negative, and so, no, I don't think you can just point to this season and say "coaches bad." And O'Sullivan has obviously earned a very long leash.

But what we saw this year is just not good enough, and O'Sullivan gets paid a lot of money to deal with weird variables and still make things work. And this isn't a one-time thing. As I pointed out on another thread, the pitching has been bad since Singer, Kowar and Byrne left the program, and it's not like we've had a lack of talented arms coming through town.

We went 28-27 with the best player in program history, and arguably the best player in the nation, hitting like the steroid version of Barry Bonds. And that guy's gone. Improving on this is going to require hitting a bunch of home runs in the transfer portal and getting lucky with the draft's impact on the high school recruiting class. That's asking a lot.

 

^^^^

Well said @MadduxFanII. Great points and accurately stated.

 

Our number one, duh.