STARKVILLE — During a week that will see 16 teams compete in eight super regionals for the right to advance to the College World Series, Mississippi State’s 2015 baseball season was put to rest Tuesday, two weeks after a season-ending sweep at Tennessee.
Early Tuesday afternoon, MSU coach John Cohen talked about the heartbreak involved with a 24-30 season.
“We were very disappointed,” said Cohen, whose team finished 11-30 after a 13-0 start. “If you look at all phases of the season in terms of our overall production and the health with our club, everything was pretty disappointing.”
Cohen did little to hide his emotions. Two years removed from a College World Series appearance, the seventh-year coach missed the postseason for the first time in five seasons with a team that was ranked as high as No. 6 in the country early in the campaign.
During his final news conference of the season, Cohen said MSU was close to putting things together despite the record.
“I don’t think we’re that far away,” Cohen said. “We’re one crazy play away from at least taking two out of three from a very good, older, and experienced LSU club, or a pitch or two away from taking two out of three from a very good Texas A&M club. But I think for us to recover from the many things that happened, it’s going to take a tremendous task. We just didn’t answer the task the way I wanted us to.”
The Bulldogs lose eight seniors, including starting first baseman Wes Rea, a four-year contributor; left-handed reliever Ross Mitchell, who won 24 games in his first three seasons; and closer Trevor Fitts, who led MSU with a 1.65 ERA.
The losses, plus a season that saw MSU lose nine of 10 SEC openers, has Cohen taking a long look at MSU’s approach.
“I think any successful organization is always assessing what’s going on in their organization, and we are no different,” Cohen said. “I think every successful business does that. I think anyone not doing that is not doing their job. Anybody who is status quo in anything they do is not a very successful person. We are evaluating everything we do from every phase of our program.”
Vote of confidence
Cohen suffered losing seasons in his first two years on campus, including a 2010 that saw MSU win 23 games and finish 6-24 in conference play. But the 2015 team came close to matching that mark, finishing last in the SEC, winning one conference series win, and winning three of its final 21 games.
The season ended a string of four consecutive regional appearances and featured appearances in two super regionals and a trip to the national championship series in 2013.
MSU Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin supported Cohen on Tuesday morning.
“He is a tremendous coach who happened to have one bad season,” said Stricklin, who also worked with Cohen at Kentucky. “I have all the confidence in the world in John, in his leadership. I’ve seen him take a program (Kentucky) that was traditionally the worst in the SEC and he turned them into a team that won the SEC championship. I’ve also seen him lead Mississippi State and take us further in the College World Series than we’ve ever been.”
Pitching struggles
The way the Bulldogs made their way to the SEC race was atypical for a Cohen-coached team. In the previous four seasons, the Bulldogs finished in the top five in ERA three times. This year, due in part to the loss of bullpen stalwarts like Jacob Lindgren and Jonathan Holder, coupled with the lack of emergence of a true ace, MSU finished with a 4.51 ERA, the worst in the SEC, and the worst of Cohen’s tenure.
But young pitchers like Zac Houston (0-2, 3.66 ERA) and Dakota Hudson (26 strikeouts in 16 1/3 innings) showed promise, a necessity for a team that also finished last in the conference in earned runs allowed and strikeouts.
“Those guys have to be good,” Cohen said. “We have a lot of young arms coming into our program, and we need those two guys who are going to be juniors to make a jump. I think both of them will tell you that. Both of them showed flashes this year, but we are going to need more than that.”
The Bulldogs also return SEC weekend starters Preston Brown (a junior from Lewisburg, Tennessee) and Austin Sexton (a sophomore from Huntsville, Alabama). Brown led MSU with five wins, while Sexton had MSU’s last three quality starts and was 4-4 with a 3.77 ERA in his first season as a starter.
Bats needed
While MSU’s pitching suffered an uncharacteristic dip in production, the Bulldogs finished ninth in the SEC in batting average (.271), but they were 12th in doubles (87), 13th in triples (eight), and 13th in home runs (22). Only Auburn, an NCAA tournament team, homered less (18) than MSU.
Worse, MSU loses a number of its top bats. Of MSU’s returning hitters, only three — center fielder Jacob Robson, right fielder Cody Brown, and third baseman Luke Reynolds — hit better than .300. The Bulldogs lose five of their top eight in batting average.
Robson, a sophomore, led the Bulldogs with a .324 average and 60 hits, but he is one of several returning Bulldogs who are draft eligible.
Offensively, the Bulldogs will need big leaps from players like Reid Humphreys (.247, five home runs) and Gavin Collins (.228, two home runs).
“There are some positive things coming back,” Cohen said. “You look at a Luke Reynolds as one example. He is a guy who got punched in the face a little bit at the beginning of the year, and even in the fall, then started remembering that he was a pretty good player. We had a freshman shortstop (Ryan Gridley) this year who I think has the chance to be a really good player, I think we have a dynamic center fielder (Jacob Robson) who started to figure some things out as an offensive player.”
Help coming soon?
Cohen believes help is on the way. MSU’s 2015 recruiting class is No. 2 nationally (PerfectGame.com) and brings the potential to help offset the loss of Fitts. Of MSU’s 20 commitments or signees, seven are ranked in the Perfect Game’s top 200 nationally, including five pitchers. That includes Austin Riley, a 6-foot-3, 235-pound right-hander from DeSoto Central (No. 64 nationally); right-hander Grey Fenter, of Memphis (No. 67); right-hander Parker Ford, of Lufkin, Texas, a 6-foot-3 power pitcher (No. 79); and left-hander Ethan Small, of Lexington, Tennessee, a 6-3, 195-pounder (No. 103).
Getting top-flight pitching talent on campus and avoiding losing several to the Major League Baseball First-Year Player draft is paramount to Cohen.
“We feel like we’re in as good of a position as we can possibly be,” Cohen said. “If this entire class shows up, I think it can be one of the best classes in the country, if not the best class in the country.”
Cohen’s recruiting class also features position players like Greg Pickett, a 6-4 power hitter from Aurora, Colorado, who plays first base and outfield, and is No. 33 among high school prospects on Perfect Game. There also is Miami native Elih Marrero, a 5-9 catcher; Luke Alexander, an infielder from Belmont; and Hunter Stovall, the No. 1 catcher from the state of Alabama.
The draft, which starts Monday, could target several of Cohen’s recruiting prizes, though none of the 20 are listed on MLB.com’s list of the top 100 draft-eligible prospects.
During the season, after an 11-4 loss to LSU, Cohen said he and his staff were concerned about as many as 11 potential signees and the draft. He had backed off that projection Tuesday but remained cautious.
“I don’t know of anybody who recruits at the highest level feels confident,” Cohen said. “What we’re competing against are dollars, and in our society money wins a lot over development and over a long-haul assessment of a young man’s life. Dollars can win the battle in a hurry, but we’ve been in close contact with every one of our kids. We’ve been in a ton of homes.”
When pressed on how many signees he expects to see on campus come fall, Cohen said, “I think we have a chance to get all of them. Even some of them whose folks are mentioning a late first round or second round, I still think we still have a chance to get every one of them.”
If all 20 signees make it to MSU, it could create a numbers crunch. Adding 20 players to MSU’s current returning roster, which features 28 players, would give MSU 48, 13 players above the NCAA’s varsity roster limit of 35.
Cohen, aware of the numbers, gave away little Tuesday.
“You just don’t know,” Cohen said. “We’ll know a lot more next week. We have certain challenges that are really hard to talk about from an administrative standpoint in terms of putting together a baseball team that puts us in a position to make sure we have a good product to put on the field. We have to have good players. We don’t want to go through what we did this year, and in knowing what we went through this year we want to make sure we have the best possible roster to represent Mississippi State in the best way.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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