How long is enough (serious question)?

[bigredrl]

At the conclusion of this season it will be 5 full years for DE. Is that long enough to evaluate this experiment? And by no means am I drawing an definitive conclusions after 9 games. For me you have to evaluate the body of work as well as the recent trend.


That said, I am concerned. I hear all the comments about our youth, etc……but that happens to every high level D1 program every year. Kids who signed, go in the draft, somebody you may be expected to come back for their SR year gets drafted and decides to sign as JR, players(s) transfer (seems to happen A LOT in baseball), and all this means youth and/or unproven players are required to step every year for almost everyone. It’s the nature of the game.


At times under DE’s tenure we pitch well, at times we hit well (but have been rather powerless outside of this surge we’ve seen to start 2016), rarely have the two come together at the same time. Overall we seem to be settling into being a middle of the road B1G team (gawd that’s just awful to even type that). Yes, we’ve been to the conference championship game twice under DE, but our regular season performances have been pretty pedestrian. We have great facilities, and while I think ours are some of the best, more and more schools are improving theirs. We can’t compete with the weather down south, our conference is known as soft league, typically getting 1-3 teams into post season in an average year, so outside of DE being a former major leaguer and all-star, what’s our advantage?


If we finish a few games over .500 in conference, go 2-2 (or worse) in the conference tournament, and fail to even really sniff post season consideration is it time for a change?


I’m not sure what my answer is yet, but I’m a strong lean towards yes. Maybe coaching, or the college game in particular, is just not his thing. Overall this kinda feels like FB for me in that we continue to make excuses under the premise next year is going to be the breakout year.

 

[huskerbaseball13]

I think we better hope the MLB continues to come calling. Erstad is likely a better fit at that level. Unfortunatly I think we are stuck with him for the forseeable future. The "youth" excuse does not fly when you previously had an experienced ball club and finished 8th in the Big Ten Conference.

 

[rrthusker]

Five years is plenty of time to evaluate the head coach and arrive at a definitive conclusion. Five years is enough time to put a conference champion on the field.

 

[HuskerSoCal]

I think people don't realize how early the recruiting process occurs for top talent in HS. The top recruits are often committed by the time they are in the Sophomore year in HS, and still have 3 HS seasons to play before they ever make it to campus. Unless you go the Juco route, you can't build a program over night - and even then you're getting players who didn't go D1 out of HS for one good reason or another. The Sophomore class here now is DE's first full recruited class of his guys and they are solid players (Meyers, Alvarado, Schlepp, King, Dilday, Eddins, etc) and the freshman class looks very solid too. I think next year will be the year. If we don't get it done then, it's something else.

The pitching will be fine this year, the hitting will bounce back. Had we won those two close games at LB State (where we left 19 runners on base) we'd be 5-4 heading home for a long stretch, which would have been a good goal starting the season against the teams we did.

I believe it's going to be a good year and this team will put it together...

 

[huskerbaseball13]

I think people don't realize how early the recruiting process occurs for top talent in HS. The top recruits are often committed by the time they are in the Sophomore year in HS, and still have 3 HS seasons to play before they ever make it to campus. Unless you go the Juco route, you can't build a program over night - and even then you're getting players who didn't go D1 out of HS for one good reason or another. The Sophomore class here now is DE's first full recruited class of his guys and they are solid players (Meyers, Alvarado, Schlepp, King, Dilday, Eddins, etc) and the freshman class looks very solid too. I think next year will be the year. If we don't get it done then, it's something else.

The pitching will be fine this year, the hitting will bounce back. Had we won those two close games at LB State (where we left 19 runners on base) we'd be 5-4 heading home for a long stretch, which would have been a good goal starting the season against the teams we did.

I believe it's going to be a good year and this team will put it together...

We weren't void of talent when Erstad arrived and we were arguably a more talented bunch when he first arrived than we are now. That's a Erstad issue. You can play the "what if" game all you want...it's been that way since Erstad arrived. Fact is..we went 1-2 the first three weekends. Not a killer, but those games are important for a program that wants to get back to regional play. What's a good year? Erstad needs to bring home some hardware...if we don't win the Big Ten in his first five years that doesn't look good...if he misses out on a regional yet again...that doesn't look good.