You have as much right as anyone else to question the coaching staff. That is a given. What you do not have a right to do is utilize descriptive adjectives.... the all powerful and all knowing... to demean Coach Robichaux.
Would you be willing to adress him face to face with those descriptive adjectives?
Coach Robichaux has done as much, or more, than any of the past coaches in raising the Cajun program to national prominence. Your statement that the program has underachieved since 2000 is puzzling. Is that only in your eyes, or do you have solid information that it is the feelings of the majority of the fans who frequent Tigue Moore Field?
I have questions about our perfomance, but I certainly do not have the answers. Even if I had your baseball knowledge, I would not suggest changes or strategy without first speaking with Robe about what caused the mishaps. One of my pet peeves is a batter taking a called third strike without attemptingt protect the "plate". At the same time I can think of a myrad of reasons for this occuring. I just keep my "yap" shut and grind my teeth, cause I don't know why the batter chose that course.
So, before you get too worked up I suggest that you sit back, relax, and if you have questions attempt to have them answered by Robe.
I hear you, and like I said, I do not have all of the answers, but this turd just got me riled up.
I know Coach Robe has the best at hear for this program. If he didn't, he wouldn't still be here. Like you, I buy my season tickets and go to all of the games that I can. I'll continue to do so no matter how the team performs. I know the kids are giving 100% and I know they care or they wouldn't be here.
And just for the record, I did not demean Coach Robe directly, it was a dig at all those on this board who consider it taboo to even think about questioning him. He is falable just like all of us are, and I think he would admit that.
I am with you on this one. We as fans need to hold King Robe to higher standards since he has proven that we can get to the CWS at UL. Since that 2000 CWS appearance we have under achieved IMO. Last year we choked at regionals. This year we are not living up to the preseason hype. Does the entire blame fall on Robicheaux? No, but a majority of it should. I do not like small ball, and in todays game I do not think that it is successful at the college level.
8 out of 297 (2%) make it to the CWS. We are in the Sunbelt Conference with a limited athletic budget. Everything has to fall into place for us to make it all the way. That is what happened in 2000. We went to South Carolina and beat the #1 team in the country. I will also defend small ball as I have before. If the pitching and defense is there, small ball works. I'll say it to I'm blue in the face, and anyone who knows anything about baseball will agree. Good pitching beats good hitting. Period.
I do know the game of baseball. I chose to play two other sports in college instead of playing baseball. I do love some aspects of small ball, but for the most part we do not and have not executed small ball for quite some time. As far as us being in the Belt being an excuse for not performing well is lame. Other schools with small budgets come to mind when I think of the CWS Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton come to mind. They are perrenial powers with very similar budgets to ours and yet they get to the series way more frequently.
You are correct and last year was in no way under-achieving. Hundreds of teams would have loved to have been in our shoes. This isn't an issue of small ball either. We aren't hitting or finding any other way to manufacture runs PERIOD. Our OBP which is a huge part of what small ball is about is pretty pathetic. Our slg% isn't so hot either. We've hit 31 homeruns this year compared to 25 for our opponents.
As for catching. I asked Robe about catching last week prior to the series and he stated that EVERY pitcher wants Lafleur behind the plate. Lafleur is the best leader on the team and works best with the pitchers. Griffen is better at blocking the ball and will typically catch for Buddy because of how hard his pitches break and often end up in the dirt. Your also trading a guy hitting around .160 for a guy hitting around .130. Not exactly night and day. I will say that I think Griffen has more upside and generally makes better contact but we aren't talking apples and oranges here.
Sunday in the 7th inning there were a number of us questioning why robe didn't pinch hit for Lafleur when the bases were loaded but we now know he didn't have anyone else to really catch once Lafleur came out of the game.
Last year (ten games or more played) we had ten guys hitting over .300 and only one hittting below.200. This year we have four guys hitting above .300 and five guys hitting below .200 Yeah we lost some bats but we didn't lose that much.
As far as pitching goes keep in mind that it is much easier to pitch from a lead. A pitcher can be a lot more aggressive. So far this year we haven't been a position to give our pitchers that advantage. Not to say that our bullpen has been lights out. They have certainly had some holes.
In all honesty when you look at this team we have holes almost everywhere. 1. Hitting 2. Defense 3. Pitching We can't seem to put together a complete set in any area. Some guys are playing lights out and some aren't. Injuries have hurt us too.
It isn't coaching, or game philosphy its just bad baseball right now.
Cal State Fullerton does not have a football team to fund their total athletic budget is 3.5 million http://finance.fullerton.edu/Budget/...eport07-08.pdf (pg.11) with a baseball budget of 120K http://campusapps.fullerton.edu/news...nditures2.html
Long Beach State also does not sponsor football. Yet they have an athletic budget of 9 million as of 2004 http://www.csulb.edu/~d49er/archives...athletic.shtml
As you can see this is not an equal comparison.
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