Spaceman_Spiff

Schloss recruiting for a week really puts in perspective that Pierce was stuck in neutral, especially on the portal

Keith Law updated his T100 draft rankings today. Flores (#69) and JT (#80) the only current players on the list. Bryce Rainer (#9), Theo Gillen (#21), and Levi Sterling (#92) are the signees on there. First two are likely gone but hoping we can get at least 2 T100 guys of our five (+Samuel Richardson and Jason Flores) to campus. Worth hitting home that this will be our best recruiting class in 10+ years, regardless of draft imo. We’re still a tier below LSU and Tennessee but this is the first year we’re signing a class that looks like a national contender, when we were more like T15-25 in most years. Just an order of magnitude difference in talent headed our way.

Pretty surprised we’re throwing Grubbs not Ace Game 1. Feels like playing not to go 0-2 rather than win

Who do we throw Game 1? Ace?

Borba bomb!

Aggressive send

3-1 Texas, B4 Glad Borba is ok

That was real fucking high, come on

Who could have seen this coming, impossible

Lol what on earth is Pierce doing

Hurt or just pitch count?

Seriously, is he hurt or what?

Awful. Feel for the kid.

Feeling a lot better here two days later. Baylor is not a good team, but we just maybe might have a bit of pitching. And we’ve definitely got the bats. Hope the starters keep it up, the BP starts to settle, and that Pierce works his magic with the defense and the lineup.

Hot damn, Max. Get him in the 3/4 spot Pierce

I swear Pierce does this every year. Weekend staff is totally not up to snuff and then he pulls one or two weekend starters off the bench and they crush it. Like clockwork.

DH JOD over Schussler is certainly a decision

Losing to Baylor sucks, but thats baseball. We’ve hit a few grand slams this year, so it’s just crap timing to have back to back killer GIDP. We probably win that game 8/10 times. Not our day, but time to go win the series.

Feels like the season is riding on Ace and Grubbs. If they can settle into starter roles there are still the pieces for a half decent, if below standard, season. If not, well, buckle up.

Polls hang on desperately to previous year’s teams even though 50% of the squad turns over. And discount midweek games far too much to fit their narrative.

Damn, JT is eligible this year? That’s a pretty big bummer.

Agree with this. He at least gets this and next year to show he can get the roster to a championship level and deliver. From there it depends on the combination of results, approach, available candidates, and money.

We won’t and shouldn’t fire Pierce this year, obviously. A repeat of 2019 puts him on a very hot seat, but I think anything else and he’s ok. Though I do think CDC starts to look at available names because after next year we’ll likely either need to extend or fire him. I’ve been adamant for a long time that Pierce has been a poor recruiter (though great eye for pitching and coach). In his tenure our HS recruiting rankings have averaged 25th in the nation on PerfectGame. We’re out-recruited every year by teams we think we should be on par with or beating: Vandy, LSU, Tennessee, TCU, Arkansas, Florida, Texas Tech, A&M…The 2021 class, which should have multiple senior players leading this team a la Hansen, Faltine, Zubia, Campbell landed at 97th and may not have a single meaningful contributor if Harrison doesn’t recover. ‘21-‘22 were great because we had a solid, senior HS core and hit on multiple all-star JUCOs/transfers. Now, with injuries and recruiting it could be a rebuild this year (though I’m waiting to see how the next 3 weeks or so go). BUT, I do think there are several promising signs. Our past two classes have been better and ‘24 and ‘25 are ranked 3rd in the country (the first time that Pierce classes even sniffed the top 5). That plus better NIL performance and I think we can improve quickly.

I think on paper we returned more this year. But we also had a much weaker core with basically no freshmen to build off of. This year was such a success because we struck gold (again) in the portal. Next year, we return less but feels like we’ll have a little bit more of a young core to build on. Target is about the same, and probably anticipating a bit of regression because so much aligned. But Pierce has been masterful in the portal so far, so we’ll see.

Disappointing to lose Minchey, he was one of our brightest young pitchers. I would hope they could have pitched him on the upside of growing his role a lot. Don’t see why he wouldn’t be in play for a weekday starter or 40IP+ reliever role. That should be seriously attractive at a program like Texas. How do you not point to Gordon and LBJ, who hardly did anything Y1, and say “you could be them?” Maybe guys just want the promise, idk.