1) Happy long weekend, which I assume all of you are enjoying a bit more than Steve Bieser. In case you missed it, Missouri fired Bieser as its baseball coach Sunday. He was here for seven seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance. If that’s the standard going forward, it’s going to be tough. As I’ve said all season, I’m not going to argue too vehemently that the decision was unfair. But I also don’t really know that it changes anything.
Who Missouri hires matters far less than how Missouri approaches baseball going forward. Do you want to approach it like an SEC program or do you simply want to be a program that happens to play in the SEC? There are 14 baseball programs in this league. Thirteen of them have somewhat regular College World Series hopes. Then there’s Missouri. Here are the number of CWS appearances for every school in the league, including the most recent appearance
Alabama: 5 (1999)
Arkansas: 11 (2022)
Auburn: 6 (2022)
Florida: 12 (2018)
Georgia: 6 (2008)
Kentucky: 0
LSU: 18 (2017)
Mississippi State: 12 (2021)
Mizzou: 6 (1964)
Ole Miss 6 (2022)
South Carolina: 11 (2012)
Tennessee: 5 (2021)
Texas A&M: 7 (2022)
Vanderbilt: 5 (2021)
Eleven of the 14 teams in the league have made the CWS this century. Seven have made it in the last two years, nine in the last five. The only team without an appearance, Kentucky, is No. 2 in the country and will be favored to get there this year. Eight SEC teams are hosting regionals this year, a tournament record.
You want to compete in that league? It takes a complete overhaul of how you approach the sport, not just a coaching change.
2) So what does Mizzou need to do?
Sure a new stadium is going to help. Kentucky built one for $50 million four years ago. You’re going to have to pay the next coach (a lot) more. Bieser was making $475,000. He was the lowest paid coach in the league. The second lowest was Brad Bohannon at Alabama before he got fired, which probably not coincidentally is the program with the second-longest CWS drought in the league (also might explain why he might have been involved trying to pick up a few extra bucks gambling on games). Kentucky’s coach was making $575,000 at last report and I’m sure is due a raise. South Carolina’s is at $600,000 and Georgia just fired Scott Stricklin, who was making $655,000. Everybody else in the league makes a million or more.
You ready to throw that kind of money at baseball? Second question, does it make any sense for Missouri to throw that kind of money at baseball? The Tigers aren’t exactly the most cash-strapped team in this league. If that kind of money is going to be spent on baseball, to me, it can only be because Dennis Gates and Eli Drinkwitz have told you “We’re good, I can’t think of one other single thing we might possibly spend a dollar on.”But to me, you don’t fire Bieser if you aren’t willing to make that kind of investment. I wouldn’t have done either of those things.
3) But Missouri did, so the question is what’s next?
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