[Ill flame]

I just spoke with my son. There was a pitcher Jackson offered him 20%. Then, University of George offered him 80%. Another position player Jackson offered for 20%, then received 80% from Duke. These players played for the Canes National team and played for Pro5 Academy. They deserve real scholarships. Not some money Jackson pulled in and ask them to be a walk on. That is ridiculous! I am telling you, I question his recruiting ability.

This isn't football where everyone gets the same 85 full ride scholarships. Ever since the ncaa allowed schools to combine athletic scholarships with other types of scholarships, anything resembling parity went out the window. UGA has the hope scholarship that pays 80% of cost of attendance for Georgia residents that qualify. Their coaching staff is not shy about targeting players that are eligible for that scholarship to free up money for other players. In addition to that they have six endowed scholarships for baseball players.

Duke is in a similar boat as vandy. They give out so much academic and need based financial aid that I would be surprised if they had very many walk ons getting less than 50% scholarships of some kind unless they come from a wealthy family. Liberty doesn't exactly have a ton of academic or need based scholarships compared to schools like Duke to bridge that gap.

I can speak from experience when I say coaches aren't usually forthcoming about what pot of money these offers come from. They'll just package all of the financial aid a kid would be eligible for and say this is how much I can offer while glossing over the fact that a lot of times very little of it is actually baseball money. I went to the school that offered me the most money which was about 30% (coaches never talked in percentages, only dollars), it wasn't until I was about to sign my financial aid paperwork that I realized less than half of that money was actually baseball money. The rest was academic which was surprising to me at the time because my grades were terrible in high school. Plus kids like to one up each other when it comes to how much they were offered and even if they know some of that money isn't from a baseball scholarship they'll keep that to themselves sometimes.

[Purple Haize]

Maybe there is some kind of technicality they are using to get around the rule?? Because it hasn't changed. Or this is another AF1 situation

I was waiting for someone to go there

[aredd33]

I don’t have a lot of value to add to this conversation but I’ve been worried about the talent coming in for a while now. With very few exceptions it seems like Jackson intentionally targets undersized guys. And maybe this comes from not offering up enough of a scholarship % but we are extremely small overall. It is very difficult to win without hitting the ball over the fence.
I’ve never once worried about the pitching with Jackson. That doesn’t seem to be an issue at all and I’m very confident in the new coach from Campbell.
But man, the offense has been concerning for a few years now.

[Ill flame]

We've had players drafted every year under Jackson with the exception of 2020 when the draft was only 5 rounds so there's been no shortage of high end talent. He was a pitching coach for awhile at UNC and he clearly prioritizes pitching and defense. Prior to the current pitching coach we've mostly gone after pitch to contact pitchers and speedy, defense first position players. The new pitching coach prefers power arms that can pile up strikeouts but itll take a year or two to bring his guys in. Personally I'm glad we don't rely on the long ball to produce runs. Those teams typically don't do well in post season play against the best pitchers. Indiana comes to mind, always one of the top teams in the country in home runs but they dry up when it matters. Omaha is a notoriously difficult place to hit home runs.

[aredd33]

I’m certainly not advocating for a whole team of high homer high strikeout guys but it’s also difficult to win with a team full of guys that hit for virtually no power. We had one player with double digit homers last year. Cam Foster hit 12. And only 4 guys slug over .400 with significant playing time. We were 222nd in the nation in slugging. No pitching staff or defense in the country can make up for that.
And I know last year was a down year and an outlier for Jackson but lack of slugging is not an outlier.
Don’t get me wrong I think Jackson is fantastic and I have said so many times especially when talking about his pitching but there are issues here too.

[jinxy]

I’ll be very surprised if we don’t rake this year. The pieces are there pitching wise but that will be more of a work in progress. If horn and Moran do what they’re capable of we will be fine. I also think hertzler has a chance to have a huge year. Stuff was always there and Robinson has helped.

[Ill flame]

Out of curiosity I started digging into some of the team stats from last year. Overall we were just an average team, being ranked 198th in runs scored per game and 125 (of 295) in ERA. Our pitching staff was ranked 44th in the country in hits allowed per game and 35th in strikeouts per game but 273 in walks allowed per game. If we can just be average in walks allowed this year we should have above average pitching. The hits allowed and strikeouts per game tell me we've got pitchers with good stuff that just need more development which is promising.

[aredd33]

We are picked second in the preseason poll. Preseason polls don’t really mean much but this is still pretty surprising to me. Certainly didn’t think we’d be that high.
Unsurprisingly (to me anyway) Dallas Baptist is picked first.

[AATL]

Three all-conference selections as well: Horn, Foster, and Sweatt.

Perhaps this is an uncompetitive mindset, but I'd be pretty content if we lived up to this selection and finished 2nd. I think DBU is a clear frontrunner.

It will be interesting to see how the rotation evolves over the course of the year. Horn is likely a front-to-back lock, but I wonder if some of the new faces (Dolby, etc.) will crack the weekend group before the year ends.

[aredd33]

I don’t think that’s an uncompetitive mindset. Honestly I’d be thrilled if we were able to finish second. I hope I’m wrong, and I’ve said this before, but I’m concerned over what our team will be more specifically what the offense will be.

[Ill flame]

CUSA will be no joke for baseball. DBU is one of the best programs in the country and NMSU should be the only cupcake at the bottom of the conference. A second place finish behind DBU will be well earned and if we do well in nonconference play we may be able to steal an at large bid.

[jmclaughlin]

We often make cracks at the Football and Basketball non conf schedules. I love the competition that Jackson squares the Diamond Flames up against.

I Really think this team can surprise us all this year.

[aredd33]

I love Jackson’s schedules. They are so much better than what Toman would put together.

[ECC29]

Pitching better hold strong. Or else this will be a long season.

[aredd33]

Pitching better hold strong. Or else this will be a long season.

I’m afraid of that too. We’ve been down this road before.

[Ill flame]

Baseball team is looking strong in every facet of the game so far although I question how good this Quinnipiac team is going to be. We won 10-0 yesterday and are already up 3-0 in the first inning today. I'm loving the team speed up and down the lineup, you can tell the opposing pitchers are having issues focusing on the batters with our guys taking aggressive leads on the basepaths.

[thesportscritic]

Let's see if they are good against real competition.

[aredd33]

This is obviously the best start possible and it’s easy to get excited but till this offense scores consistently against real pitching staffs I’ll be skeptical.

[ballah09]

Any idea if Horton is out for the year or that he’ll return later in the year? It would be huge to get him back with this line up. I think this is one of Jackson’s better teams.

I’m hopeful Horn can get it together. We need to him to go deeper into games and not get knocked out in the 3rd/4th innings.

[Ill flame]

This is obviously the best start possible and it’s easy to get excited but till this offense scores consistently against real pitching staffs I’ll be skeptical.

That's fair. We scored a lot of runs through these first two games but there was a ton of bloop hits that will get caught later in the season when the wind isn't so strong and we are playing against teams with better defenses. Quinnipiac isn't a conplete cupcake, they will likely finish toward the top of their conference but they aren't good either.

[olldflame]

For the record, Quinnipiac was tied for 3rd at 16-8 in the MAAC last year, and are picked to finish second this year behind Fairfield. Not the strongest conference, but I'm not sure it's fair to say they are not a "real team" at this point.

[AATL]

Any idea if Horton is out for the year or that he’ll return later in the year? It would be huge to get him back with this line up. I think this is one of Jackson’s better teams.

I’m hopeful Horn can get it together. We need to him to go deeper into games and not get knocked out in the 3rd/4th innings.

No, he's not out for the year. If I recall, I think he's expected back in March.

[Chippy]

Horton caught the last inning today. Looks like he's getting close to returning

[Ill flame]

We finished the sweep winning 10-5 today. Quinnipiac clearly wanted to win this game more than us after we embarrassed them in the first two games of the series but our lineup was just too deep. Our third string, true freshman catcher finished the series with a .600 OBP including a HR Jackson is going to have some difficult decisions to make once Horton and Hillier are 100% which is a great problem to have.

The pitching side was not as impressive. On one hand we only allowed 17 hits through 27 innings which is phenomenal but on the other hand we allowed 16 walks and 4 hit batters. This is the same issues we had with the pitching staff last year, I'm hoping this doesn't continue or we will struggle to beat good teams.

Through the first weekend, CUSA has a 85% winning percentage which is second only to the ACC. Most notably SHSU won their series against OK state. The rest of the conference largely played cupcakes but in a sport where bad teams are expected to beat good teams on occasion this was an impressive start to the season. Every team in the conference won their series.

[ECC29]

We talked about this before when it comes to pitching. The walks are a concern. Against better teams, the walks will destroy them. I was concerned about the offense as well. But time will tell against better pitching.