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2018 Husker Baseball


Bugeaters1

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I counted at least 7 players who played high school baseball in the state of Nebraska that were drafted out of college last week - 4 in the top 11 rounds - and 0 of them played at NU this past year. (Chandler was here and did nothing in 2 years before transferring and becoming a 6th rounder in one year.)

 

NU had 12 in-state players on its roster in 2018, 8 of whom were draft eligible, and 0 were drafted. I can't see any of the other 4 ever becoming draft picks.

 

There's your talent gap.

 

I get that not every Nebraska-born kid wants to play at NU. But if you get 4-5 of those 7 kids in your program -- and you absolutely should, if your talent evaluation is worth anything & if you have any kind of relationships built, which you should after 7 years -- I guarantee we'd have challenged for the B1G title this year. 

 

I mean with most baseball players paying roughly 2/3 of their own tuition, you should have a huge advantage recruiting in-state players. You should have your pick, whether it's straight out of high school or after they go to juco for a year or two. We've been picking the wrong ones.

 

In college baseball, you just have to have several professional-level, draftable players in the program, or you can't win at a high level. We had 3 this year. We had 3 last year ... and, technically, we had 4 different players drafted, as Schreiber and Alvarado were drafted both this year and last year. 4 is nowhere near enough over a 2-year span. 

 

And next year may be worse as far as number of draft picks. If Luensmann & Tillotson prove they're healthy, they'll get drafted. Beyond that, there aren't any sure things. Barring someone making a huge step forward, 2 might be it. 

 

We're going to have to rely on a bunch of newcomers in 2019, which has not worked well under this staff and in the B1G in general. Hopefully the coaches can put their heads together, figure out what's been holding them back, switch around some roles, and make '18 look like the blip on the radar.

 

But they can't turn around the talent gap overnight, so that means a lot of things must go perfectly in '19 to get back to an NCAA bubble team. That's asking a lot. They were able to do it during the regular season in '16 and '17 with similarly talent-challenged teams, so maybe there's some hope. But the drop in '18 was so fast and so far, it's going to be tougher to climb back up to that level and get the players to believe in that same message that worked in '16 and '17 after they watched it fail so badly in '18.

 

Edited by throwback
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2 hours ago, royalfan said:

This all boils down to erstad and staff not having the it factor of understanding what to look for in a recruit.  Need bigger faster stronger players.  

 

OK, Birds, rather than just coming on here and down-arrowing a legitimate opinion, what do you think?   Please give us your view on the subject, rather than just doing your "drive-by" thing.  

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39 minutes ago, HB said:

 

OK, Birds, rather than just coming on here and down-arrowing a legitimate opinion, what do you think?   Please give us your view on the subject, rather than just doing your "drive-by" thing.  

Okay, my problem with this type of post is that it comes across to me as Royal making a declarative statement which is not an opinion being expressed.  If one is expressing an opinion, in my humble opinion, it should be clearly stated as such.

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  • 3 weeks later...

My "general" list of absolute needs:

1) Pitching depth - not just arms ~ quality depth is a must;

2) Defensive improvement ~ excellent defense takes pressure off of both the pitching staff and the offense; 

3) Offensive consistency ~ I would include power, but if we can bring up our on base percentages and find the gaps up and down the batting order,  I would take it.

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