OT: Boogs MSU not men’s softball...
- Thread starter Slippin Jimmy
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Didn’t Clint Meyers want the baseball head gig when we fired Sonny? I may be crazy but I seem to remember that. Maybe bring him on as hitting coach because Gabe Gross is brutal right now
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Didn’t we hire Gabe at one time earlier and he did awful?
Are we trying to make Gabe happen?
He hit a lot of home runs in the Auburn celebrity home run derby in the fall, so they trust his expertise
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“Aight guys, when I slide my hands across the belt...that means to hit the ball right over the fence”
“What about the other signals?”
“Nah, just hit it as hard as you can”
I think he was a volunteer assistant under Paw that Sunny didn’t retain, and I don’t think that was a big surprise.
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IMO we have to win our next two series. To make a regional, I think we have to win 13 SEC games at minimum, and it’s going to be really really difficult to get to 13 if we don’t win 4 in these next two series.
Are you asking me if I want us to take a second look at Sunny? If so, no, I don’t think we should.
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I was being dead serious. Thank you for your honesty.
It’s not because I don’t think Sunny can coach. I think he’s a very good coach, and his resume shows that. I just don’t think his personality is a very good fit for Auburn and its fans.
I think Sunny got a bit of a raw deal when he was fired because I think JJ realized he’d made a mistake by hiring someone whom he didn’t fully understand. I think Sunny brought some of that on himself. Ultimately, that relationship was never going to work out. I know some here will call it a soft mentality/non-winning/whatever, and maybe to some extent, they’re right. I just don’t think the way Sunny handled himself on and off the field was ever going to endear himself to players or the fan base at Auburn, and I think that was a big issue.
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I agree with most of that, but the best way to endear yourself to fans is to win.
I think if given the appropriate time/support to get more mentally tough guys in here, and get the “travel ball over-involved ‘Super Dads’” the hell away from our program, Sunny would’ve won at an exceptionally high level for years here. He was never gonna be the guy you invite to your kids’ birthday party. But he WAS the guy who wouldn’t embarrass Auburn with years of terrible baseball.
Butch is a nice guy coddler who is easy to get along with so he’ll have more rope than Golloway ever would’ve. But the things that make him endearing to fans, players and our AD are the things that are gonna keep us playing mentally weak, undisciplined, and unable to handle adversity.
But it's not like those travel ball dads and players only exist at Auburn. The year Sunny was fired was the best baseball season we'd had in half a decade, but fans didn't like him then. And I don't think Sunny was going to get that time or support with the way he coached, even with more success and wins than he had in that 2015 season.
Do I think there's a softness to the game that didn't exist 10-15 years ago? I do. You can't coach kids now like I was coached, and I think you probably came up and played in that same era. I feel like Sunny would've been highly successful in the late '90s, early 2000s, but his tactics just don't work as well any more. And they aren't received by the public or fans nearly as well now. Oklahoma fans had grown very tired of him, and that was why their administration didn't try to stop him leaving a perennial winner to come to an average to below average program.
I'll be interested to see if someone hires Sunny in the offseason.
If you don’t start spelling Sunny correctly we’re going to have a problem
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Shit you're right. Who is Sonny? Was that from the Godfather?
I’ll be interested to watch him coach a team with no travel ball kids.
Well, Mize did his thing tonight. Complete game, 9 Ks, really efficient late in the game. Scored a couple runs early, and Mize did the rest. Offense still struggled to put anything together. State’s starter, Pilkington, was very good tonight as well.
If you want play by play game threads for every game you should head on back over to boogville. Nice W last night regardless. Now lets see if we can keep from blowing these next two.
Hell, he’s done his part all year. I’m just happy we found a way to scratch across enough runs to get him the win.
I got play by play here the other night when we were losing. You know how that goes.
LIGER and Jimmy are making Sunny out to be something he isn't. He never won his conference in 9 years at Oklahoma. He only made it out of the Super Regionals once, so if you want to see choking down the stretch that's Sunny Golloway. Plus he did it in a state with scholarship money from the lotto (which is huge in baseball) and a much weaker conference. It's incredibly tough to win any kind of championship playing small ball these days. I guess if your goal is to get embarrassed in Super Regionals then we should hire him again, but I'll pass.
4 Supers, a CWS appearance, and a conference tourney title in 9 seasons would make Sunny one of our best baseball coaches ever.
Neither Jimmy nor I have made him out to be anything he’s not. His resume’ speaks for itself.
Right but he did all that in a weaker conference at a school with essentially more scholarships. He would have never been able to replicate that at Auburn playing goofy dick small ball with aluminum bats. Especially when it turned out his ability to keep kids HE SIGNED wasn't very good. Just Auburn hiring another old guy that couldn't keep up with the times. Glad he is gone and we have an elite recruiter who developed some nobody from Springville into the top pitcher in the country and possibly the number one overall pick.
Tough to say. Burns has better numbers (right now) as a freshman than Mize did, so if Butch works his magic again he could be our Friday night guy. Hopefully Butch will continue to upgrade our bats and sign elite pitchers and we can get this roster recovered from that miserable old Golloway.
Unprovable but likely incorrect, as up until just a couple years ago, aluminum bats had largely been deadened for several years to all but remove the long ball from the D1 college game.
Small ball was the appropriate approach in the early 2010s.
Let’s hope he can recruit and develop more than just one ace pitcher each year. Like say, some hitters, some lockdown middle infielders, some MLB caliber outfielders, a bullpen, and a lockdown closer...
Tanner is an unbelievable talent and I’m excited to see him become our Ace the next few years.
There's a reason OU wasn't upset at him walking away. There's a reason there wasn't a big line to sign him up after the AU stint ended. He can flat out coach, but he's a dinosaur and he's probably not going to win big enough/early enough anywhere so the short leash is going to be a constant problem for him now. I say this as someone who loved Bobby Knight as a coach and would have wanted to play for him if I had any hoops talent. That style is just not a fit today. Part of that is that guys like Knight absolutely went too far at times and now all of that hits social media instead of some local reporting sitting on the only tape because he is loyal to the program. You don't get the same help in covering over your worst moments and you have helicopter parents waiting for you to screw up at every turn too. Sonny doesn't have a bright future despite being a really good coach because he cannot and will not adjust at all to that.
This little town is gonna go pretty nuts if the kid is #1 overall. Even the huge bammers here talk about Mize constantly.
Complete ass? Probably not. There’s a very good core of guys (Burns, Williams, Julien, Holland, Ward, Greenhill) that are all good players with great potential. But we will likely have a lot of holes to fill. If we can get Daniel, Wright, and Venter to all return for another year, this team could be pretty good. Don’t think that will happen though.
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Not a great start today. I’m not sold on Daniel being the answer going forward.
Doing my part to cheer on the Boogs men's sAUftebaulle sqaud. I think one more beer and we can pull this thing out.
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