Now that the season has wrapped up, how is everyone feeling after one year of Pollard?
This will surprise no one, but I’m feeling a bit underwhelmed. Given pre-season expectations + having two potential first rounders anchoring the lineup, the combo of a poor ACC performance + getting bounced in a very winnable regional is pretty disappointing
I feel great with the hire. He came to the team late and pieced it together as best as he could. Didawick bounced back, and you really only had two elite level guys on the team who both missed portions of the year. Everyone else is going to develop or be recruited over, which I think is fair. I do miss the small ball coach Oak did, but will be fine with Coach Pollard once he has a few reuniting classes. Have to remember, Coach Oak didn’t make the regionals last year with a pretty loaded team. Lastly, a 30-win + ball club with the year’s roster is pretty good. As always, GO MF HOOS!
Last year, with a HOF coach, we sat home after ACCs. We made it there this year. That’s a W, regardless of some bad pitching decisions (mostly depth-related, and injuries to Augustin and Roldan) and an everyday player committing 15 errors and hitting .150.
https://x.com/monty2740/status/2061228826437275722?s=46&t=lMa7F-gR141SbjqqmdY87A
Monty with a great look at our guys. I think if we got Hansen back and maybe 1-2 better players this team makes it to the supers…
Fine overall but he came across weak in the regional which has left a bad taste heading into the offseason. His press conference yesterday about the guys getting ejected was very soft. Hope he has a plan to rebuild the pitching staff because it was abundantly clear that we didn’t have enough good arms coming into this season.
I think we have a chance to have four or five really good starters next year. Need a bullpen though.
https://x.com/xandertilock/status/2061248892570685711?s=46&t=lMa7F-gR141SbjqqmdY87A
30 days to build and you get to the regionals? I’ll take that any day of the week!
Yeah that’s why I feel fine. I think he just didn’t have time/wanted to make sure he shored up future recruiting classes vs more 1 year rental pitchers. But if we do it all over again next season with this type of pitching staff then I’ll be concerned
I agree with you!
Scattered, very unorganized thoughts about this season (apologies for the long ass post)…
Overall I thought things went ok in Pollard’s first year at the helm. Not great, but not terrible either. D1baseball was an outlier in terms of not having us ranked in the preseason but to be honest they ended up being pretty accurate in terms of our outlook. We started out hot with a 21-5 record and a couple of really impressive weekend series wins over UNC and Wake, and I think that partially played to our downfall. It masked the fact that this was a deeply flawed team and made the struggles in the 2nd half of the season even harder to stomach in retrospect.
This was an extremely uneven, top heavy roster, and Pollard is around 25% to blame for that. Lots of different factors went into it that I can get into in the offseason thread, but all in all we didn’t have enough depth in the field or in our bullpen to make it past the regionals.
While our approach at the plate was frustrating the second half of the season, I think a good portion of the issue was due to personnel and not entirely the fault of our hitting coach. We had too many extreme pull side hitters with high chase rates and below average speed in our lineup. That should change next year based on the players we have returning and the HS prospects we have coming in.
I had a decent amount of issues with how we utilized our bullpen. We went to the Hartman/Kapa/Jaxel well far too many times in the middle of the season and ended up burning them out. Or in the case of Jaxel, delaying the inevitable. More opportunities should have been afforded to Yoder, Stewart, and Lucarelli who I think all have very bright futures here.
We did have pretty bad injury luck that cost us some games, but I don’t think it was the main root cause of our downfall. Our defense and bullpen were already on a downturn and the injuries just exacerbated things. It was never gonna be a consistent season because of those two factors.
I heavily disagree with the notion that Pollard played favorites with the guys he brought over from Duke (an argument I’ve seen in other places, not really here). I’d actually argue the opposite, he kept too many leftover arms from O’Connor’s roster last season that weren’t going to be likely contributors and afforded too many opportunities to holdovers like Jaxel, Colucci, and Yeager. He gave Perrotta more of a chance than O’Connor ever did and he helped Didawick turn in a solid final season. In the case of Murray, everyone’s favorite player, I didn’t agree with the playing time he got over Holmes but I also don’t believe it was a case of favoritism. I think it was as simple as our staff thought Murray’s defense was enough of a differentiator over Holmes to keep him in the lineup, which again I don’t agree with but I at least see their reasoning.
I thought Pollard in general handled himself very well in pressers and interviews this season. Outside of some mild frustration with how he reported injuries I thought he was candid with his answers and was fair with his praise and criticism of our guys. I know some people are upset about the apology he gave to USM’s program last night and see it as a lack of sticking up for our players, but honestly he was in a very tough spot. He had already complained about the umps giving him a quick hook after the first Jax State game, and that crew showed they had incredibly thin skin throughout the weekend. I understand why he wouldn’t want to make things worse for our guys by complaining about the umps a second time when we still had games left to play.
I’m very excited for the future, again I think our rosters going forward will be much more cohesive and much deeper. Pollard is recruiting his ass off on the HS trail which is no surprise given his reputation at Duke, and hopefully with the funds at his disposal he’ll be able to land some key transfers to fill holes at much needed positions. We have a very good nucleus of high potential pitchers returning and depending on how the draft goes could have a solid core of bats as well. Personally I think people who are out on Pollard and this staff after one season are being dumb and overreactive (again not on this board, more in other places/twitter).
All in all a fun season covering the team, even through the frustrations. Hope everyone was ok with the giant thread instead of going weekly, just made things easier especially since I wasn’t doing full PBP. Will get the offseason thread rolling probably tomorrow.
Other than UVApride’s game threads, I haven’t been able to follow this team as closely as years past, so the regional was my first chance really getting to watch the team. I knew the pitching was shallow (a concern going into the season) and the fielding was shaky, but I guess I thought the lineup was deeper. Hopefully something that sorts itself out with Pollard having a full off-season and more recruits.
I will admit that as down as I have been on Noah, he looked better in the regional and I could see him having potential if he could hit in mid 2s next year. Was more concerned with 1st base down the stretch.
We have some high potential infielders scheduled to arrive that should be able to play SS and 3B in Will Yow (Cville), Bryant James (Annandale) and Sal Garcia (NJ) that I would be very tempted to hand the keys to.
They’re all already bigger than Murray based on their listed size. I know that Yow and James are better overall athletes. I suspect that Garcia is too.
Have to avoid the draft with all three but only Yow is showing up really high on draft boards. Local thought is that he comes to school, however. He’s playing for the Cville Tom Sox which is a good sign as players usually avoid summer ball if they’re going to take the draft dollars.
Watching Squeeze Play, I’m jealous of how smooth Cal Poly’s infield defense is.
Little Rock wins 6-3 over Jacksonville State to advance to the Super Regionals.
A potential Little Rock at Troy Super Regional would be something.
I was disappointed in the fielding and hitting in the regional… but overall I think the season was much better than we could have expected with a new coach and how the whole Oak leaving transpired.
I mean… at least we didn’t flame out as the #1 national seed. Can you imagine this thread if we had been UCLA?
Just checked and it seems some of the guys who followed coach oak aren’t playing. I see Valincus and Teel someteimss (might be injured) are the only ones playing. Wish those guys would’ve stayed!
We have any more secret commits on 64??? Also, what positions you think we attack? 3B,CF, and LHP?
I’m not ready to concern troll about Pollard yet (and I love concern trolling our hires!). I’m happy we didn’t completely bottom out, and the young core (if we can keep them) seems promising. He was as good of a hire as we’re going to get and nothing he did this season changed that prognosis. But that prognosis still included a likely step back from the program. Talented team that underperformed a bit sure, but everyone with eyes could see the clear pitching hole we had which was always gonna limit us.
The things I’m watching with some interest though :
Anyways, keep the young guys and hopefully come back great next year, but going to need an impact transfer or two to keep the hitting power at this level.