Beats Va. Tech,
2-7 in conference play which is good enough for DEAD LAST. That's right folks, touchdown Tony has em in the damn cellar. I'm sure Dr. Sander will extend his contract.

(04-19-2017 07:34 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Beats Va. Tech,
2-7 in conference play which is good enough for DEAD LAST. That's right folks, touchdown Tony has em in the damn cellar. I'm sure Dr. Sander will extend his contract.

They beat Tennessee 10-2 as well. I admit I don't know much about college baseball but how do you beat Tennessee and Va. Tech and suck so badly in conference play?

(04-20-2017 09:31 AM)Bucster Wrote:  

(04-19-2017 07:34 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Beats Va. Tech,
2-7 in conference play which is good enough for DEAD LAST. That's right folks, touchdown Tony has em in the damn cellar. I'm sure Dr. Sander will extend his contract.

They beat Tennessee 10-2 as well. I admit I don't know much about college baseball but how do you beat Tennessee and Va. Tech and suck so badly in conference play?

That is everybody's question.

(04-20-2017 10:20 AM)bucfan81 Wrote:  

(04-20-2017 09:31 AM)Bucster Wrote:  

(04-19-2017 07:34 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Beats Va. Tech,
2-7 in conference play which is good enough for DEAD LAST. That's right folks, touchdown Tony has em in the damn cellar. I'm sure Dr. Sander will extend his contract.

They beat Tennessee 10-2 as well. I admit I don't know much about college baseball but how do you beat Tennessee and Va. Tech and suck so badly in conference play?

That is everybody's question.

Winning percentage at this time:
Tech--.487
Voles--.558

Bucs--.558

All near the bottom of their respective conferences.
Nice to win, but there is little difference in the quality of the 3 teams. Others mules mileage may differ.

(04-20-2017 09:31 AM)Bucster Wrote:  

(04-19-2017 07:34 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Beats Va. Tech,
2-7 in conference play which is good enough for DEAD LAST. That's right folks, touchdown Tony has em in the damn cellar. I'm sure Dr. Sander will extend his contract.

They beat Tennessee 10-2 as well. I admit I don't know much about college baseball but how do you beat Tennessee and Va. Tech and suck so badly in conference play?

Short answer? Other than "paper-thin pitching," which is true of pretty much the entire SoCon, they played the league's three best teams the first three weeks of league play. Mercer is one of the top 30 RPI teams in DI; Western's record is mediocre, but they've played a brutal schedule, and UNCG always gives the Bucs fits for whatever reason.

ETSU has one of the top hitters in the country (Christian Bailey out of DB, hitting north of .400 as a junior) and one of the top hitting teams in Division I (tied with San Diego State for 10th with a .317 team average), but their ERA is bloated by a lackluster bullpen and the absence of a reliable, consistent Saturday starter to go between Ryan Simpler and Blake Smith. Even then, it's still comfortably above the league average.

Last year, they went 1-8 against Mercer, UNCG, and Western, the first three teams they've faced in 2017. They went 12-3 against everyone else in league play. This team is more talented than last year's team, and I think they might be in a position to go on a run late in the year.

I will make no prognostications on Skole's future at this point, because many posters on this board - myself included - have beaten that drum to death over the last several years to no avail.

I sure would love to know what he has on who to keep his job for 18 years and have a losing record.

(04-21-2017 04:10 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  I sure would love to know what he has on who to keep his job for 18 years and have a losing record.

My guess is the $$ being spent on football and basketball has kept him safe for a little while. This administration won't tolerate mediocrity for long though, and if he finishes in the bottom of the conference this year, I would be worried if I were him. Beating UT and Tech certainly takes some of the heat for a lower finish.

2-10 in conference play now...

This team should not be playing .500 ball - and definitely not DFL in the conference - when they're fielding a more effective lineup top-to-bottom than literally any SEC school. The defense is below average, and the pitching staff simply isn't reliable. I even have proof:

Three years w/Kyle Bunn as pitching coach (2012-14) - 4.57 team ERA
Three years w/Chris Gordon as pitching coach (2015-17) - 6.21 team ERA

No matter how good your bats are, they can't score 7 runs a game. Your pitchers have to hold, and your defense has to bail them out. ETSU has one truly reliable pitcher - Ryan Simpler - who has pitched well all year and gotten little help from his defense. In two of his three losses, the field committed 3 or more errors and yielded multiple unearned runs. That's part of why the team is way off its Pythagorean win/loss numbers (which say the team should be 22-16 and 5-7 in SoCon instead of 19-19 and 2-10). They are a handful of quality innings away from a much better record and season outlook.

I've done the research on this before, but ETSU baseball's assistants are paid little relative to their peers at other state schools in Tennessee. If the school were willing to commit even an extra $20k to baseball assistant salaries, we could probably attract a much better pitching coach and keep him here longer. You've gotta do some serious gymnastics to find a way to blame Skole for not having the money to put quality guys on his staff. Instead he's going with a young, unproven hitting coach and a pitching coach whose previous career highlight was the same job at Milligan.

I understand needing to prioritize resources, but baseball should not be an afterthought in that way. You're a Southern school, and the South dominates baseball in the spring (and vice versa). You can't pinch pennies on staff and expect to be competitive on an annual basis. We probably also don't have the money to hire a coach much better than the one we have.

I was told recently that Tony's contract is up after the year. I can't believe that we have three draft picks that came back to school and we are in last place in the Southern Conference. I don't think we'll finish there because we haven't played VMI or the Citadel yet, but come on. I can't believe we are this bad.

Pitching staff got shelled again yesterday; they lost 11-8 and are now 3-12 in SoCon play. I really thought they'd find a way to start winning games, but they just don't have the pitching to back up their bats.

If they don't win another conference game - which is unlikely with 9 to go, but I wouldn't rule it out - this would be the worst conference record for an ETSU baseball team since 1987. Even if they go 4-5 against VMI, Samford, and the Citadel, it'd still be the fewest conference wins Skole has ever had in a season. Unless there have been massive budget cuts for baseball and Skole is running the program on a shoestring budget, this is unacceptable.

You know, I honestly always thought that our way out was going to come when The Citadel fires their coach (which will probably happen in a few weeks) and Skole would be in line for that position. At this point, I don't see how they would trade a 3-12 conference record for another 3-12 conference record. Somebody has to win this weekend to get out of last place. I really do hope we make a change after the season. I don't really care who the new guy is, I just feel like we could use a change. We know what we are going to get out of what we have. At least some new blood will give us a chance to do something different. My only fear would be that Sandler try to recoup some $$$ from Tony's salary and hire a new coach for $10,000-$20,000 less. Therefore, severely limiting our pool of applicants. I, for one, want a young energetic assistant who is looking to make a name for himself. UNC-Greensboro did that a few years ago with their coach and it seems to have worked out well.

What's not going to help his case is Brad Irwin doing as well as he is with softball this year.

Looks like we just dropped game 1 in our series of SoCon cellar dwellers.....and I'm pretty sure the Citadel has the best pitcher in the conference starting in game 2. The bottom is a lonely place.

(05-04-2017 03:11 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  What's not going to help his case is Brad Irwin doing as well as he is with softball this year.

That will have zero effect on Skole's future. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

ETA: The rising standard of the whole athletic department will definitely have an effect on whether or not Skole continues to coach, but the success of softball on its own has no bearing on baseball.

(05-05-2017 05:52 PM)BucBaseball20 Wrote:  Looks like we just dropped game 1 in our series of SoCon cellar dwellers.....and I'm pretty sure the Citadel has the best pitcher in the conference starting in game 2. The bottom is a lonely place.

Sears is really good, but scoring runs hasn't been the issue for ETSU - it's preventing them. Now that Simpler is done for the weekend and McCann got his head bashed in by Citadel's offense in the 7th today, expect runs aplenty tomorrow and Sunday. This was the best chance we had to win a game; now we might get swept.

I disagree. Softball has ALWAYS struggled. He's winning with less money than baseball. No excuse for how bad baseball is, none.

(05-06-2017 07:44 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  I disagree. Softball has ALWAYS struggled. He's winning with less money than baseball. No excuse for how bad baseball is, none.

It's true that softball has ranged from mediocre to horrendous, but there's no excuse for how bad baseball is whether softball finishes first or last. If softball wins the regular season title tomorrow, in a vacuum, that shouldn't change how Skole's repeated failures are viewed.

That being said, when you lump softball's success in with all the other success the athletic department is having right now, then it starts to generate extra pressure on a struggling program like baseball. But even then, Skole is failing on his own merits and should be dismissed on said merits. ETSU is committing itself to excellence in athletics, whether it's football or tiddlywinks. If baseball isn't living up to that standard - and it is not - there should be a change in leadership no matter what the other programs are doing simply by nature of failing to meet the expectation of a competitive baseball team.

We'll see what happens in a few weeks. At this point, we are almost certain to get the Tuesday Play-in game at the tournament and get one of the military schools. Both of them have a front line #1 starter. I would think our season would be over on that day. But who knows.

I'm just really curious to see what route the administration decides to go if a change is made. I agree the the poster who references the tiering system. I could see us cutting the salary and hiring a young coach who is looking for an opportunity to be a head coach. He won't come from the SEC or ACC unless he's out of a job. Maybe Conference USA or the Sun Belt.

The baseball program has been bad in the number of wins and loses since the 60's. With the exception of Charley Lodes, no other coach has been able to have more than a couple of winning seasons.

IMO, it goes a lot deeper than just coaching.

(05-06-2017 10:51 PM)Mister Consistency Wrote:  

(05-06-2017 07:44 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  I disagree. Softball has ALWAYS struggled. He's winning with less money than baseball. No excuse for how bad baseball is, none.

It's true that softball has ranged from mediocre to horrendous, but there's no excuse for how bad baseball is whether softball finishes first or last. If softball wins the regular season title tomorrow, in a vacuum, that shouldn't change how Skole's repeated failures are viewed.

That being said, when you lump softball's success in with all the other success the athletic department is having right now, then it starts to generate extra pressure on a struggling program like baseball. But even then, Skole is failing on his own merits and should be dismissed on said merits. ETSU is committing itself to excellence in athletics, whether it's football or tiddlywinks. If baseball isn't living up to that standard - and it is not - there should be a change in leadership no matter what the other programs are doing simply by nature of failing to meet the expectation of a competitive baseball team.

It should've been the second move made after Bartow was shown the door. If he hangs around after this year and people don't do some real honest digging as to why he's allowed to keep his job then there's something he has on the university. Also at that point if I were Karen Kemp I would absolutely file a civil suit against the university. In 19 years, she had a winning record, multiple conference titles and postseason berths, yet she got shown the door while Skole has been allowed to hang around and continue to be mediocre to awful. Aging black woman gets fired, white dude keeps his job while doing worse. Worse overall record, fewer championships, still employed. Why?