2024 Season and Louisiana Baseball

[Cajuns78]

I agree with all of this, but that 2019 season was Robe’s last season. Degg’s first season was 2020.

[CajunT]

I’ll go a little more in depth in terms of how the program has done since Deggs stepped into the HC role.

2019: 28-31 overall (15-15 SBC)
Lost in the SBC tourney to end the season. Short and unconventional offseason going into 2019 after Robe’s passing.

2020: Covid year 8-9 overall

2021: 31-23 overall (13-11 SBC)
Went 2-1 in the SBC tourney and lost in the semis. Is this the year the tourney was cut short for weather and switched to single elimination? IMO, Deggs still hadn’t had a normal offseason between Robe and the Covid years.

2022: 37-23 overall (19-11 SBC)
Probably Deggs’ first true offseason. Had to win the SBC tourney to get into a regional and did. Received an auto-bid as a #3 seed. Went 1-2 in the College Station regional beating TCU in game one and losing to A&M in a well-played game 2. Ran out of gas against TCU to end the season, missing the regional final.

2023: 41-24 overall (18-12 SBC)
Went into the conference tourney pretty much needing to win to get into a regional. Beat both Tx State and Coastal twice and lost to USM in the SBC championship game. Received an at-large bid as one of the Last 4 in as a #3 seed. Went to the Miami regional where I thought we competed well against really good Texas and Miami teams. Went 1-2 in the regional, missing the regional final.

2024: 42-20 overall (23-7 SBC)
SBC regular season champs. 0-2 in the SBC tourney which was disappointing. Received an at-large bid as a #2 seed in the College Station regional. Made it to the regional final.

From what I see above, I call that IMPROVEMENT and PROGRESS. Cajuns baseball has been trending up since Deggs got here, and I expect this staff to keep things moving forward for years to come. Losing one of the best middle infields I have seen come through this program will sting. But good programs reload year after year and I expect that from this staff. I’m not familiar with recruiting for next year but it seems Deggs will have to dig into the portal and the JUCO transfer list.

The big dogs are putting more and more money into the diamond sports. It will get harder and harder for “mid-majors” to compete. But I expect us to do so. There is so much talent just in the Lafayette area alone when it comes to baseball. Deggs has a good pipeline in Texas. I expect Gunner to learn from his first year and grow.

2024 was a great but frustrating season at times. I think a lot of us get frustrated because we watch every game and see what these guys are capable of. We saw this pitching staff throw really well throughout the season, and then saw them struggle. We saw what guys can do at the plate, but also saw when they struggled. We’re losing a lot of production next year, but there are still a lot of guys coming back (I assume) who saw tons of time this year.

Reload. Progress. Improve.

Geaux Cajuns!

The "Process" as Coach Robichaux use to say can be frustrating at times. The growth of a team in a season can have its challenges and excitement. As a baseball fan, it can be frustrating to watch a team struggle early in the season and then begin to peak or take off on a win streak.

I think once exit interviews take place and players are sent out for summer ball, we can get a better idea of which athletes will remain with the program and which players are moving on. They've already signed a JC outfielder, so I expect those positions to look at little different after fall. They are also looking at a transfer at SS and maybe 2nd base, and several JC arms as well. They like Marcotte, Tollett, Kirby and Hess. I think most of those young players will be some work this summer to come back and compete in the fall. Morgan will be a major concern if he goes out and pitch this summer. I would try to talk him out of it, but you never know.

The transition from the current roster will be interesting this fall.

[Rainman66]

Frankly, I thought the team overachieved. Still not sure how we got to 40 wins. It is a testament to the coaching staff and players. Pitching was much improved, BUT still had way too many walks and HBP. I am very interested to see what type of arms CGL can attract to the program in his first full offseason.

Backfilling Debo & JT up the middle is gonna make or break next season both offensively and defensively.

As of now, next year's team is appearing to be a pitching, defense & small ball team. That is not what I envision a Matt Deggs team to be, so that could be interesting.

[HOUCajun]

Congrats Cajuns on a great season. In hindsight, our best chance to win the regional was to have UT beat aTm Saturday night. They were simply too good rested and ready. That was such an emotional game I think either team would have come out flat. I would have liked our chances sneak one against aTm and get 2 w’s against Texas.

What juniors do we lose to the draft? Debo and LP? Any others?

[CajunSID]

Very good season. As noted above, program has improved year by year despite the ever changing obstacles.

Yes, pitching faltered down the stretch, but I don’t see how it could be expected not to given injury and fatigue to your top two arms.

I think the weekend scheduling was fine, and the only thing I would tweak is adding midweeks at 1-2 SEC schools if you can’t get a weekend there.

If they can do it, would be great to sneak a home weekend w/ a Kentucky or Big 12/Big Ten school needing to hit the road in February.

There is a lot to replace, for sure, but I thought the Texas game showed what most Cajun fans know about this program.

Elimination games often show the character/will of teams, and UL just wasn’t losing to UT yesterday. I don’t know what everyone else thinks, but to me it speaks volumes.

Geaux Cajuns!

[jaxmc1023]

Any chance LP comes back? Awful lot of guys holding radar guns at his games late in the season.. Hard to imagine his stock getting much higher than SBC pitcher of the year.

[CajunT]

Any chance LP comes back? Awful lot of guys holding radar guns at his games late in the season.. Hard to imagine his stock getting much higher than SBC pitcher of the year.

Projected 4th to 6th Round in the Draft.

[MountainDew]

I agree with all of this, but that 2019 season was Robe’s last season. Degg’s first season was 2020.

Oops. Baseball website needs to be fixed. They have Deggs as HC on the 2019 roster.

Well that makes the turnaround and progress just a little more impressive imo.

[Cajuns78]

Yes it does. If you look at the new additions from each of the last 2 years, there is no reason to believe that we won’t sustain this success for the long term.

[JamesBond]

A lot has been said about walks and HBPs. But the flip side of that is this years staff had some of the best pure stuff by a Cajuns team in a while. Better stuff = more walks. College baseball has become a power stuff game, so I doubt we see that change much in future years.