The 2017 LSU Baseball Season

We have the same type hard-nosed guys minus the steroids. The difference is coaching and having them mentally prepared and game ready believing they're the best. Skip was a master motivator a PhD psychologist and a pitching genius.

Mainieri not so much. He's not skip. No one is. No one will be. Just like Les was no nick saban. We had two of the greatest coaches in those 2 sports you could argue. And their eventual replacements weren't too shabby either.

 

Skip's replacement was Smoke Laval. Went to CWS twice and was fired. You are better of following the coach who follows the legendary coach.

 

I said eventual replacement. Smoke was a crony.

 

I'm not sure you need to be an ass like Saban and Belichick, but you need to be detail driven and a master at translating that moment to your kids. They have to understand when the stakes are high, the smallest mistakes are huge. Skip was great at that. I doubt we see another like him for a long time, if ever. Some of those guys you mentioned have shown that you can have a personality and still get the most out of your guys. I just don't see that edge with CPM, but that doesn't mean I don't like him as our coach. I know he can never be Skip, but he can grow a little more in that role. Like I said before he is a great coach and has won a ton of games, I just get frustrated with him when the big stage becomes too big for us, it shouldn't. We played tight this series with FU and that is not all on CPM but he does deserve some of the criticism. It seems like our leaders disappeared when we needed them most. Btw, when I say leaders I'm talking about players.

 

I'm gonna be a contrarian and say that, although Skip Bertman might be the best college baseball coach maybe ever, the era he coached in was mostly garbage. Nobody cared about college baseball and LSU was one of the few schools that put any resources into it. The brand of baseball in that era resembled an office softball league with "pitching duels" that ended 12-10. Back then, watching Major League Baseball, then College Baseball was like watching two different sports...and that's not a compliment to the college version.

There is way more parity now and the game that is being played resembles baseball far more than that Gorilla ball crap when Skip was coaching. CPM is a great coach who has us in the hunt every year. He has also changed the athletes that we recruit to better compete in this era, with an emphasis on speed and pitching. We are in the hunt almost every season.

You people act like we just lost to Catholic High or something. Florida is good. At the very least, they pitch and defend better than we do. That's enough to win a lot of baseball games...which they did. Sorry, I didn't see a huge difference in the coaching of the two teams. Both teams were well coached. Florida played better than us. End of story.

 

That's something that Les Miles would rather walk across broken glass barefooted than do.

Florida played slightly better than us because for one their coach made pitching change decisions in the most timely manner while CPM made a couple of poor game situation choices. Also their players were more focused than ours on defense. We made costly errors. They didn't. After being highly focused in all areas from when the winning streak started through the SEC tournament through the regional and superregional and up until the CWS championship series with a single glaring exception, the players on Monday and Tuesday played with a lack of emotion and focus. CPM didn't get outcoached by a huge margin like Miles vs Saban but he was slightly outcoached and that was enough to make the difference.

 

The only thing I can think of that CPM did was stick with Reynolds one inning too long, but how do you know it's too long until it happens? Maybe after he walked the guy leading off the 4th you pull him, but IMO that's nit picking.

The problem with doing that is what if he pulls a guy who has been great for 3 innings and the next guy gets shelled...then people are saying "you leave in the hot hand."

Florida pitched, ran bases and played defense SIGNIFICANTLY better than we did. I think you are underselling just how well Florida played. It wasn't pretty, but they did what they did all year. Pitch and play defense and get hits when they needed them. We didn't do any of those things

 

We got beat by the better team. Plain & simple. End of story.