They haven't had the right mix since 2009. Underachieved in 2012 and severely underachieved last year. This year they got hot toward the end of the season, but the streak came to a screeching halt vs UF in the SEC tourn championship, and continued through the regional. The bullpen, which had pitched well enough through the season and the SEC tourney, stunk it up in the regional.There is definitely something not right, whether it's CPM not pushing the right buttons in the post season, or my own expectations, or both. Used to be if LSU was playing at Alex Box in the post season, I felt reasonably assured they would win. Now, not so much. There is much more parity in college baseball now, but the one thing Stony Brook and Houston did so well was remain patient at the plate, taking the fans out of the game.
I don't think it's not a right mix problem it's more a in game decision problem cpm will change constantly throughout the season,he doesn't go after the bigger players.the more athletic players and it ends up bitting him in the arse every year,i have been a season baseball ticket holder since 1994,and i have seen the best and the worst and cpm isn't that good of a coach period,and javi is by far the worst hitting coach ever. But one bright side alan dunn is really good,but i will wager that cpm will never win another natty at lsu.
I think my comments were a little harsh. It was definitely not a good year for national seeds, but they played themselves into position and probably overachieved this year. That's just my opinion. You obviously don't have much faith in CPM. Was how this season ended the sort of last straw with you or do you see a trend? Can you be more specific? I don't advocate pulling the plug on him, he's been successful. Just want to know what you see differently.
Skip experimented a lot with pitchers and batters in the early season and took some losses, but he always had the team peaking at tournament time. I thought Maineri had them peaking at the right time this season, which is good. But his selection of pitchers has never been as good as Bertman. Skip seemed to always know when to pull a guy and rarely put in a fellow who wasn't ready to play. The pitching failures in that last game just killed us.
Does this include the games LSU won with scores like 15-13, 22-10, etc.? Hell we gave up 15 runs to Kent St in a regional loss on our way to a national title. Think he didn't make the wrong choices in games like these or put in relievers who didn't pan out. Skip was one of the best 3 or 4 coaches ever but the further we get from his tenure the more cloudy memories get. Basically we won the championships by bashing our way through many of those games. He did always seem to make the correct decisions in the CWS championship games with his pitchers. I'm mostly thankful that we didn't have the Regional / Super Regional format for most of Skip's career. I thought that CPM did an unbelievable job the past several years developing and using his relief and closers. They just didn't perform as expected in a few huge post season situations, they're human.
