Fire Todd Butler

[bleed yellow]

A friend of mine that details vehicles for a living got to detail Butler's and Marshall's university vehicle today.. He found it rather humorous that Marshall gets a brand new Chevy Tahoe while Butler gets a used Chevy Traverse..
I think it's just a clear example of where the administrations focus is at.

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

Yea, the bonus pool rules definitely helped, but I would dispute the bolded. That class was an oddity and stung the most since we had so many local kids (who had been pledged to WSU) go incredibly high in the draft, but we had been landing that quality of recruit with regularity for a long time by that point. Sometimes they showed up (Pelfrey after he slipped ~10 rounds further than expected), sometimes they didn't (Jason and Nathan Cromer in 1999), but the inconvenience had existed for a really long time.

Other coaches had adapted by oversigning their classes, which Gene was loathe to do although he ultimately embraced this practice in his last few years. By then it didn't really matter since we were oversigning more to boot off unproductive returners rather than anticipating a bevy of departures lured by big signing bonuses.

Actually the class with Kozma/Watkins/Norris specifically killed us. Norris and Kozma weredrafted high but Watkins was drafted late round but got top round money. $500k plus college he was dumb if he didnt take it. Id have to go back and look to see who else was drafted but we're talking 3 of the arguably most important position ssnatched up.

[wsu789]

My apologies if this has already been posted, but I found the comment about WSU's recruitment of this player somewhat interesting. Possibly, the baseball coaching staff does not follow the Marshall "shaving" approach to recruiting, as they have apparently promised, but failed, to follow up with the nation's leading junior college hitter. I guess we have all the really talented hitters that we need....

http://www.kansas.com/sports/college/state-college-sports/article71416492.html

[shockfan89_]

And why wasn't this kid in a Shocker uniform this year? Huge fail from a kid in our backyard that hit over .700 as a JR in high school!!!

[FutureShockerDad]

In regards to Gene being let go, the worst mistake administration made was allowing him to come back after he left for Oklahoma. Had the severed those ties then, perhaps the Wichita State brand could have attracted more of a proven guy and the talent wouldn't have been so depleted when the move finally happened.

THIS

[SHOCKvalue]

My apologies if this has already been posted, but I found the comment about WSU's recruitment of this player somewhat interesting. Possibly, the baseball coaching staff does not follow the Marshall "shaving" approach to recruiting, as they have apparently promised, but failed, to follow up with the nation's leading junior college hitter. I guess we have all the really talented hitters that we need....

http://www.kansas.com/sports/college...e71416492.html

He does not meet Butler's 6' tall minimum. Duh!

[Wuchalk]

I just want to add my two cents' worth. I have been wanting to give Coach Butler the benefit of the doubt, but no longer. For whatever reason, I listened to his show Monday night. He ended with, " I think we're headed in the right direction."
Uhh, Coach, we just got run-ruled by EVANSVILLE!!!

[ShockTalk]

I don't think there was anything wrong with taking back Gene. In fact, I thought the whole situation kindof lit a fire under the coaching staff's ass for a couple years. They had a pretty huge influx of talent and went to a couple of Super's.

The talent you speak of in those years was either already here as freshmen the previous spring or recruits already signed before he left to OU. Three seasons after they were gone (along with a couple of 2 years players), the team went 30-27 and we were never the same. One year of bad luck recruiting did not cause that clear drop off thereafter either.

[SB Shock]

I don't think there was anything wrong with taking back Gene. In fact, I thought the whole situation kindof lit a fire under the coaching staff's ass for a couple years. They had a pretty huge influx of talent and went to a couple of Super's.

Actually, Gene pretty much rode the talent he had in the program at the time he went to OU and came back for the next 3 year, but after talent left he didn't replenish it.

Since WSU last CWS, you can divide WSU history up into 4 groupings.



1. Pre-Molina (includes the '99 season) - WSU was winning at high level, was a national contender.

2. Pre-OU - drop off in talent (some might say the Molina incident was used against the program, but there was some off the field issues and distractions). Program was no longer a national contender, but a regional contender. But the program seemed to be recovering and building momentum

3. Post-OU - WSU momentum was stopped, and reversed itself after the immortal words of "I think we took it as far as we could possibly take it.". The program was fairly stable as Gene road talent that was in the program, but it became clear the talent level was dropping off and the program only hope to make the post-season was win the MVC tournament.

4. Butler Regime - as expected their was still negative momentum, when Butler took over there was no recruits signed for the next year. So you could say he really only into year 2, but the concerning thing is the decline is accelerating, not slowing down or reversing.

[Aargh]

I've always felt the Molina incident was the end of the good times. "That's what the coaches told me to do" casued some serious damage to GS's and BK's ability to recruit. That closed a lot of doors to a lot of living rooms.

[WSUwatcher]

And why wasn't this kid in a Shocker uniform this year? Huge fail from a kid in our backyard that hit over .700 as a JR in high school!!!

Gee, that's easy, shockfan -- he's only 5-11. Everyone knows you need to be at least six feet tall to play baseball.

Also, in regard to the recruiting toward the end of the Gene regime: no question it was a killer to lose guys like Kozma, Norris, and Logan Watkins (and it didn't help that Dusty Coleman also got a surprisingly large offer to turn pro sooner than expected). But there was a time, back when WSU worked harder at recruiting, that they tended to shy away from guys who figured to be top five round prospects (local players like DDreifort and Pelfrey being the exceptions), because they didn't think they'd be able to keep them anyway. Instead they emphasized guys likely to be drafted lower but still blessed with some tools, and then developed them.

The downturn in recruiting was at least in part because the staff got a little lazy about digging up hidden gems, and instead devoted too much effort to guys who were high draft risks (although in fairness they were also unlucky that a couple of very talented local kids in Watkins and Norris turned out to be much greater draft risks than might have been reasonably anticipated).

[DUShock]

I've always felt the Molina incident was the end of the good times. "That's what the coaches told me to do" caused some serious damage to GS's and BK's ability to recruit. That closed a lot of doors to a lot of living rooms.

I agree entirely, in fact, it harmed the program to such a degree outside of college baseball circles that it was even mainstream.

Remember the 2001 Freddie Prinz Jr. baseball movie "Summer Catch"? The story's antagonist was a win at all cost Wichita State pitcher.

[mr_baseball]

I agree entirely, in fact, it harmed the program to such a degree outside of college baseball circles that it was even mainstream.

Remember the 2001 Freddie Prinz Jr. baseball movie "Summer Catch"? The story's antagonist was a win at all cost Wichita State pitcher.

He was?..I was too hung up on Jessica Biel in that swimsuit to notice. ;)

[THam]

Someone asked about whether players are improving or not and this is something I've wondered about myself for awhile, so I did a bit of research.

I used the very small sample size of 30 ABs for hitters and 10 innings for pitchers, but even that gave us only 40 instances where a player had a chance to improve upon their immediately preceding season as a Shocker. I included Butler's first season, therefore giving him credit for a guy like Gillaspie showing improvement over Gene's last year, and penalizing him for a guy like Bayliff dropping off from Gene's last year.

With OPS as the gauge for hitters, 10 guys improved from one year to the next out of 24 chances.
With WHIP as the gauge for pitchers, 7 guys improved in 16 chances.

Obviously this is a crude way to measure improvement and the sample size is small, but 58% of our hitters and 56% of our pitchers have regressed from season to season. It would take a lot more work than I have time for to come to a ballpark figure of what those numbers would be in a healthy program, but I would assume more players improving than regressing is a modest expectation.

[SHOCKvalue]

Those Butler trend lines are hilarious, SB.