A "come to Jesus" moment

#1
fryeguy93

fryeguy93

Rufus X. Sarsaparilli
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#1
I think something has to be said out loud. We all say that prep baseball in Tennessee is great.

Let's say it....It's not. The state produces a few great players but overall, we are not competing with Florida, Georgia, Texas and California with Tennessee only talent.

Look at the high school players in the draft, very few Tennessee high schoolers get drafted early and hell, even the middle and late round guys - especially pitchers seem to go pro if drafted.

Tennessee (UT) can't win with Tennessee talent. Senzel is the rarity not the rule. He's our best player (at least reputation wise but he was basically developed into this talent through hard work as he was hardly all-world when he signed with UGA and then UT.

This school likely needs to step away from Farragut for a bit. We simply have not won with Farragut guys. And when Farragut guys go to Vanderbilt, other schools or to the pros, they are not consistently performing their either. Especially pitchers are seemingly all used up physically and emotionally by the time the get to LNS.

That 1991-1992 Knox Central was Lightning in a Bottle that Farragut or any other in-state team has ever duplicated.

In other words, we need Californians, Floridians and other great talents with a seasoning of quality in-state guys. Travel teams in this state has burned out a lot of kids.

But of course, the out-of-state relievers have stunk as well. So what do I know?
 
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#2
#2
".....need to step away from Farragut..." Well, AJ Simcox was a solid starter for three years and succeeded at the plate and in the field despite Bergeron's best efforts to hold him (and everyone else down), Senzel is the best player on the team (and arguably in SEC and nationally) and while you say he wasn't "all worldly" coming out of high school, he was recruited by most schools in the SEC. Eric Freeman, a walk on from Farragut is 3-1 with an ERA of 3.26. Nick Williams was a weekend guy for 2 years for UT and he was drafted too.

And about those who went to other places and didn't do so well: Phil Pfeifer was a weekend guy for Vandy for 2 years (3rd rd pick of Dodgers) and part of another one and now Patrick Raby is a freshman at Vandy (5-0; 1.42 era) and started the Sunday game vs UK yesterday and threw 4 innings of shutout ball before being removed. Curt Powell went to UGA, started 3 years and made all conference at least one year and is now in the Tiger organization. Michael Williams went to UK and started for 2 or 3 years and was drafted as well.

Looks to me like the Vols should try to sign more Farragut players, like Chase Chambers who was a Freshman All American 1st baseman for Tenn Tech last year. At any rate, the former Admirals have held up their end of the deal.

The MLB scouts don't agree with your pitchers being washed up by the time they get there. Pfeifer was a 3rd round selection and Serrano will be a first rounder when he decides to come out.

Try another approach there Scooter.
 
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#3
#3
fryeguy93 said:
Tennessee (UT) can't win with Tennessee talent.
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RA Dickey, Mookie Betts, Sonny Gray, Mike Minor, David Price, etc. etc. etc. disagree with you. The problem is not the lack of Tennessee talent, the problem is the lack of Tennessee talent that chooses to play their college ball in Knoxville. btw; Senzel is an awesome talent.
 
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#4
#4
State of the Vols said:
RA Dickey, Mookie Betts, Sonny Gray, Mike Minor, David Price, etc. etc. etc. disagree with you. The problem is not the lack of Tennessee talent, the problem is the lack of Tennessee talent that chooses to play their college ball in Knoxville. btw; Senzel is an awesome talent.
Click to expand...

Dang SOV, stop using so many facts in supporting your argument. Unfounded rants are much more reasonable.
 
#5
#5
well we aint winning ball games right now, maybe hart will hire a coach who can recruit better. but all the studs in TN will go to vandy or the majors til that happens
 
#6
#6
Agree with frye about In state talent not being enough.

Couple that with Vandy taking nearly all of what little we do have spells a huge mountain to climb.

Where I do think there deserves to be real criticism is we have done an extremely poor job recruiting a strong tenn juco system. That's an area Vandy is virtually a non factor and we have let very good players get away that could help.
 
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#7
#7
Here is an in state name from the past that makes zero sense why he's not still wearing orange.


@OVCSports: adidas® OVC Baseball Pitcher of the Week: @BelmontBaseball Aaron Quillen - 7.0 IP, career-high 16 K's, 2 hits in combined shutout
 
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#8
#8
State of the Vols said:
RA Dickey, Mookie Betts, Sonny Gray, Mike Minor, David Price, etc. etc. etc. disagree with you. The problem is not the lack of Tennessee talent, the problem is the lack of Tennessee talent that chooses to play their college ball in Knoxville. btw; Senzel is an awesome talent.
Click to expand...

So, you just named 5 guys, all who would have played college ball at different times, to try to make your point. Frye's point was that these guys are so rare to come that trying to win in the SEC on guys from Tennessee only won't work.

But let's say Betts came to UT, who are the other 15 or so guys from Tennessee that come close to that caliber? There aren't enough to field a team like that. Plain and simple.
 
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#9
#9
UT should recruit North and South Carolina as well as Georgia and Kentucky for baseball prospects.
 
#10
#10
Backwards K said:
".....need to step away from Farragut..." Well, AJ Simcox was a solid starter for three years and succeeded at the plate and in the field despite Bergeron's best efforts to hold him (and everyone else down), Senzel is the best player on the team (and arguably in SEC and nationally) and while you say he wasn't "all worldly" coming out of high school, he was recruited by most schools in the SEC. Eric Freeman, a walk on from Farragut is 3-1 with an ERA of 3.26. Nick Williams was a weekend guy for 2 years for UT and he was drafted too.

And about those who went to other places and didn't do so well: Phil Pfeifer was a weekend guy for Vandy for 2 years (3rd rd pick of Dodgers) and part of another one and now Patrick Raby is a freshman at Vandy (5-0; 1.42 era) and started the Sunday game vs UK yesterday and threw 4 innings of shutout ball before being removed. Curt Powell went to UGA, started 3 years and made all conference at least one year and is now in the Tiger organization. Michael Williams went to UK and started for 2 or 3 years and was drafted as well.

Looks to me like the Vols should try to sign more Farragut players, like Chase Chambers who was a Freshman All American 1st baseman for Tenn Tech last year. At any rate, the former Admirals have held up their end of the deal.

The MLB scouts don't agree with your pitchers being washed up by the time they get there. Pfeifer was a 3rd round selection and Serrano will be a first rounder when he decides to come out.

Try another approach there Scooter.
Click to expand...

A .282 average and a .942 fielding percentage in college is really not very good.

Kyle Waldrop is a prime example of Tennessee pitchers (specifically Farragut) that do not live up to any of the expectations/hype.
 
#11
#11
Absolutely disagree with the original post. Besides some of the players mentioned above I can think of these just off the top of my head. I know there are a ton more too.

Wil Crowe (#1 RHP @ SC before injury); Will Craig (Wake Forest, ACC poy, future 1st rounder); Ben Breazeale (Wake Forest starting catcher for 3 years, Johnny Bench award nominee); Ross Grosvenor (USC 1b); Dakota Hudson (MS State, RHP ALL_AMERICAN!); Brady Bramlett (RHP,ole miss weekend starter);Kole Cottom (KY, starting catcher as freshman); Alabama has several Tennesseans, Vandy is loaded with 'em...on and on. Guarantee I could put together a team TN that would make it to Omaha.

The issue is that we need to get our fair share of them. Also, baseball is not like football and basketball. You only have 11.7 scholarships per 35 man roster. So, the trick is getting in state kids to come with either limited (.25%) schollys or if they are really smart, as "preferred walk-ons" where you let academic money (Hope scholarship) act as surrogate athletic scholarships. The CA and FL kids you are wanting have a tougher time because they still have to pay tuition as out of state kids, so a .25% or even a .50% scholarship still has them paying a lot to come here.
 
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#14
#14
whobethis16 said:
So, you just named 5 guys, all who would have played college ball at different times, to try to make your point. Frye's point was that these guys are so rare to come that trying to win in the SEC on guys from Tennessee only won't work.

But let's say Betts came to UT, who are the other 15 or so guys from Tennessee that come close to that caliber? There aren't enough to field a team like that. Plain and simple.
Click to expand...

Why do you need "15 or so guys from Tennessee"??? Our current roster has only about 12 out of 34 who are from Tennessee, so it's not like our current squad is exactly home grown. My point is that if we could get some of the top talent in TN, we would be more competitive than we are now. Out of state tuition is upwards of $30,000 per year right now (tuition only) - not sure why out of state kids would be willing to pay a chunk of that to play for this Vols team unless they are getting a whole lot of other financial aid. Seems like it would be a much better situation to try to keep some of the instate talent here where they could pay a fraction of that as in-state tuition.
 
#16
#16
fryeguy93 said:
I think something has to be said out loud. We all say that prep baseball in Tennessee is great.

Let's say it....It's not. The state produces a few great players but overall, we are not competing with Florida, Georgia, Texas and California with Tennessee only talent.

Look at the high school players in the draft, very few Tennessee high schoolers get drafted early and hell, even the middle and late round guys - especially pitchers seem to go pro if drafted.

Tennessee (UT) can't win with Tennessee talent. Senzel is the rarity not the rule. He's our best player (at least reputation wise but he was basically developed into this talent through hard work as he was hardly all-world when he signed with UGA and then UT.

This school likely needs to step away from Farragut for a bit. We simply have not won with Farragut guys. And when Farragut guys go to Vanderbilt, other schools or to the pros, they are not consistently performing their either. Especially pitchers are seemingly all used up physically and emotionally by the time the get to LNS.

That 1991-1992 Knox Central was Lightning in a Bottle that Farragut or any other in-state team has ever duplicated.

In other words, we need Californians, Floridians and other great talents with a seasoning of quality in-state guys. Travel teams in this state has burned out a lot of kids.

But of course, the out-of-state relievers have stunk as well. So what do I know?
Click to expand...

The SEC is actually more stacked and loaded in Baseball than it is in football. It is not for the meek or the faint of heart, the competition is crazy good. I would not expect Butch Jones to only focus on the state of Tennessee for football prospects, so let's not expect any logical baseball coach to focus only on Tennessee. I would counter that Vanderbilt is a good example of how good Tennessee players blended with out of state talent can potentially be. It is a bonus for us to have a program like Farragut in our back yard - and unfortunate that we haven't recruited at a pace to compete with our SEC competition. The problem isn't with the talent in the state or at Farragut. Just like when Dooley was coaching and recruiting - the problem wasn't with the instate talent.
 
#18
#18
Fullfillmer said:
The SEC is actually more stacked and loaded in Baseball than it is in football. It is not for the meek or the faint of heart, the competition is crazy good. I would not expect Butch Jones to only focus on the state of Tennessee for football prospects, so let's not expect any logical baseball coach to focus only on Tennessee. I would counter that Vanderbilt is a good example of how good Tennessee players blended with out of state talent can potentially be. It is a bonus for us to have a program like Farragut in our back yard - and unfortunate that we haven't recruited at a pace to compete with our SEC competition. The problem isn't with the talent in the state or at Farragut. Just like when Dooley was coaching and recruiting - the problem wasn't with the instate talent.
Click to expand...

The tennessee baseball job is many many times more difficult than the football job. It's really not even debatable IMO
 
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#20
#20
OldTimer said:
dang Bruin, I'm starting to agree with you more everyday...:)
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More reasons this is so tough of a job


@JBrownPG: #Vandy adds another piece to their 2019 class, hit up PA for RHP Thomas Schultz. 6'4", easy arm action. #67 per @PerfectGameUSA #AnchorDown
 
#21
#21
whobethis16 said:
So, you just named 5 guys, all who would have played college ball at different times, to try to make your point. Frye's point was that these guys are so rare to come that trying to win in the SEC on guys from Tennessee only won't work.

But let's say Betts came to UT, who are the other 15 or so guys from Tennessee that come close to that caliber? There aren't enough to field a team like that. Plain and simple.
Click to expand...

You don't have to have a full roster of them. If Mookie Betts was currently on the team, we would probably have at least 5 more wins.
 
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#22
#22
Even when Delmonico was here, I still thought they should put some emphasis in recruiting Shelby County. I know it is difficult because Ole Miss and Mississippi State are closer, but there are plenty of private school and suburban kids who attend UT. It may not be as good recently, but there was some very good talent that has come out of Shelby County.
 
#23
#23
VolGee4 said:
You don't have to have a full roster of them. If Mookie Betts was currently on the team, we would probably have at least 5 more wins.
Click to expand...

If Mookie Betts was currently on the team, he'd be in his fifth year, which sort of reinforces your point.
 
#24
#24
Is there any possibility that the scholarship limit could go to an even 12 from its current 11.7 in the future?
 
#25
#25
I know I'm not going to be popular with this but...I'd like to see Serrano get 2 more years. When you consider exactly how tough the SEC is in baseball, I'm not sure we can get anyone that can do any better short of getting a guy like Corbin away from Vandy. There are a couple of things that I absolutely love about Dave Serrano. 1) The guy WANTS to be at Tennessee. 2) He absolutely does things the right way and is a great individual to represent the university. The baseball community recognizes the guy as an outstanding coach even if that hasn't translated to wins on the field. To me, those things are extremely important and I still believe the guy can make this team competitive on a long term basis. Given the high level of competition, maybe a little bit more patience and stability is all the program needs. Maybe that is just wishful thinking but so be it. With baseball not being a revenue positive sport, maybe we should be just a little more patient than we could with a football coach. If any coach could ever earn a little more time with all those things other than wins-losses, this might just be the guy that should get that opportunity in spite of the record. I absolutely hate to see those kids lose and if I didn't think that turnaround could come with Dave Serrano, I would want to make a move for a new coach right away but I'm just not sure that we won't be having this same conversation four years down the road if we have a new coach next season.
 
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