Michigan Baseball has been without a coach since since mid-June, when Erik Bakich was poached by Clemson. We covered that at the time and threw out a couple possible replacement candidates, but the search is now in full force and may be nearing a conclusion any day now. Some candidates have been interviewed but then pulled their names out of the hunt, while others are still vying for the gig. In this piece I'm going to run through the various names that have come up in reports (mostly those from Rivals' Brandon Justice) and evaluate their candidacy. 

The Top Dogs 

These are the names who have come up most often and seem to be the foremost contenders in the eyes of the decision makers, mainly Warde Manuel: 

Jordan Bischel, Central Michigan Head Coach. Bischel was a name I mentioned in my mailbag column right from the start because it seemed so obvious. In college sports, everyone is looking to hire 2005 Urban Meyer, the young, energetic coach who has won everywhere he's been and is ready to make the jump to a bigger program. Bischel fits that mold perfectly. He's just 41 years old (younger than Bakich) and won conference regular season/tournament titles at both NAIA Midland and D2 Northwood before moving up to CMU.

The Chips hadn't been to the NCAA Tourney since 1995 and had only won MAC regular season crowns intermittently before Bischel arrived. Since then, Bischel has transformed CMU into the class of the MAC, winning the regular season crown in 2019 and 2021, before finishing 2nd this year. He won the MAC Tournament in both 2019 and 2022 to qualify for the NCAAs, while earning an at-large bid in 2021. Thus, Bischel has made the NCAAs in every full season he has coached, and has compiled a 143-57 record at CMU (82-21 in the MAC). 

Bischel's track record speaks for itself, and Michigan should be familiar with him; it was Bischel's Chips who eliminated Bakich's Wolverines from the NCAA Tournament last year in the South Bend regional. Bischel is also attractive because he's a Midwestern coach. He's from Green Bay, attended college at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and has been a head coach exclusively in Michigan. Obviously there are questions about Bischel's ability to recruit nationally the way that Bakich could, but the fact is that most of Michigan's best players under Bakich have been from the Midwest. In hiring Bischel, you'd have a coach prepared to navigate the realities of the Michigan Baseball program, and also someone with local roots to suggest he could be more keepable than Bakich, should he succeed. 

Bischel interviewed with both Ohio State and Kansas ($), but those schools went different directions. Right now, he seems to be the top candidate on Michigan's board, and he would be on my board as well. However, the fact that Michigan continues to interview other candidates leads me to think that the administration may not be completely sold on him. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: lots of assistant coaches]

One of the candidates was a player so recently we have a pic [Mark-Gregor Campredon]

Kevin McMullan, Virginia Assistant Coach. This name appeared in the insider reports recently, with apparent confidence that he's near the top of the board ($). McMullan has been an assistant coach at UVA under Brian O'Connor for his entire 18 year tenure. Under the leadership of O'Connor, the Cavs have been a perennial tournament team, winning the national title in 2015 and making the CWS in 2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, and 2021. They've been a successful program and McMullan has been there for all of it. Not a bad coaching tree to be picking fruit from. 

McMullan is older than Bischel, 53 years old, and he has no head coaching experience. McMullan is a New Jersey native who attended college in Pennsylvania and then played some minor league baseball in the early 1990s. He was an assistant at his alma mater, then at St. John's, and then at ECU. An interesting note there is that he overlapped with Bakich, who was a player on the 2000 ECU team that McMullan coached. After his time with the Pirates was up, he joined Virginia and has been there ever since. McMullan is a coach more in the mold of Bakich, working with hitters and known as a strong recruiter/player developer. He has been named the top assistant in D1 baseball three times by Baseball America and was the 2009 National Assistant Coach of the Year. 

If hiring Bischel would be a baseball analogue to hiring young Urban Meyer, McMullan would be an analogue to hiring a vaunted defensive/offensive coordinator who has been a great assistant for years but has never dipped his toes in the pool of head coaching. The track record seems great and there are a lot of reasons to think it would be a great hire, but unfortunately one of those reasons is not "wins and losses". Some assistants have a great pedigree but are stinkers as head coaches themselves once they try it. The recruiting ceiling under McMullan definitely seems higher than with Bischel, but he would have to learn a whole new terrain, having exclusively recruited on in Atlantic coastal states. 

Michael Brdar, San Diego Padres Hitting Coach. Brdar's name has been cycling around for a week or so now, and it was pretty out of left field. If you want young, he's young alright. Brdar was born in 1994(!) and was a Michigan player under Bakich in the mid-2010s. His last year in Ann Arbor was the 2017 team that made the NCAA Tournament, before being drafted in the very late rounds by St. Louis. Following a short stint in rookie ball, he joined the Giants as a hitting game coordinator, and then was named Hitting Coach of the San Diego Padres this season. The Padres are a good team this year, but it's hard to say whether Brdar is a particularly great hitting coach, given that he's coached just 77 MLB games up to this point. 

Unlike Chris Fetter, Brdar seems interested in leaving the MLB to take the Michigan gig, but he would be a humongous gamble in your author's opinion. Yes, he's a young coach, which is always attractive, but he has zero NCAA coaching experience in any capacity. I don't doubt that he would bring some exciting, innovative ideas from the MLB, and it's always nice to have a recruiter who can tell high school kids "I have Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr.'s phone numbers in my contacts list", but I would ideally like someone more experienced. Brdar is not dissimilar from Juwan in his profile as a former player with exclusively pro experience and some appetizing connections, but Juwan had been an assistant in the NBA for six years before taking the Michigan job. Brdar has only been a top-level assistant for three months. Hiring Brdar would be a diceroll for the ages, and I don't think I would take that bet right now. 

[Jack Harris/Cronkite News]

Names with some interest 

These are candidates who have interviewed and are still in consideration, but the reporting suggests that they are not among the foremost contenders for getting hired. 

Karl Nonemaker, Auburn Assistant Coach. Nonemaker is more in the mold of McMullan, as an assistant at a southern school who might be ready to finally get a head coaching gig. Nonemaker played at Vandy from 1999-2002 before the Commodores were transformed into a powerhouse under Tim Corbin. He then had a short stint in minor league baseball as a player before going into coaching. He worked for Auburn from 2005-07, then had a small time at Louisville Slugger (it is unclear what he was doing... designing bats?), before going to Monmouth (2010-11) and then Old Dominion in 2012.

With ODU, he worked with hitters, baserunners, and outfielders under coach Charles Finwood, in addition to serving as recruiting coordinator. The Monarchs made the NCAA Tournament in 2014, and Nonemaker developed a few MLB draft picks, which led to his return to Auburn in 2017 under head coach Butch Thompson. Nonemaker's role with the Tigers is the same as it was with Old Dominion, and Auburn has cobbled together some great recruiting classes under his watch. Auburn has been a perennial NCAA Tournament team during Nonemaker's time there, making the CWS this year and in 2019. 

Nonemaker may not have the national accolades that McMullan has but there are some clear similarities as assistant coaches who handle recruiting for good national programs. The downside is that both have little history recruiting the Midwest. Nonemaker is younger than McMullan, in his early 40s (despite looking at least 55), so he could be a fine program-building hire. Again the reservation is that he lacks head coaching experience at the NCAA level and if you're matching Nonemaker up against McMullan, the latter has far more assistant coaching experience at a high level. So, I'd be inclined to take McMullan if we're going the assistant coach route. For the record, it sounds like Michigan's feeling is the same, as Nonemaker is not one of the top names at the moment. 

Tracy Smith, ex-ASU Head Coach. We learned recently that Michigan interviewed the recently axed Tracy Smith ($), formerly of Arizona State. If you wanted to go the complete opposite direction of Brdar/McMullan and pick a coach with looooooooots of experience as a head coach in the NCAA, Smith is your guy. He's been a head coach in D1 since before your author was born, having long stints at Miami (OH), Indiana, and then ASU. Smith was pretty successful at Miami, having won a couple MAC Tournaments to earn NCAA berths. After the second berth, he was promoted to head coach at Indiana, where he got the Hoosiers to just one NCAA Tournament in his first seven seasons, but then made it back to back years in 2013 and 2014, the former including a trip to the CWS.

Smith cashed in on that feat, and accepted a lucrative gig at Arizona State. With the Sun Devils, he took ASU to the NCAAs in four of six seasons, but never advanced past the regional and never won any PAC-12 hardware, failing to finish higher than 3rd in the league. His recruiting classes were impressive, churning out first rounders like Hunter Bishop, Spencer Torkelson, and Alika Williams (he also held the HS verbal commitment of Bo Bichette), but Smith's teams didn't produce on the field up to the level of their talent, and he was dismissed after the 2021 season. 

There are reasons to like what Tracy Smith offers, 805 NCAA wins speaks for itself, and at 56, he's not crazy old. He also has coached extensively in the Midwest and is the only name on here to have coached in the B1G. On the other hand, I don't think the track record is good enough for me to make Smith the top candidate on the board. He has had some good moments, but his MAC record was less impressive than Bischel's is currently, and his Indiana career was pretty good (building a foundation that has lasted after his departure), but it doesn't blow me away. And then at ASU, well, there's a reason he was fired. Smith feels like a safe option, a guy who won't tank your program, but if you're looking for another Bakich, or just a way to stay in the top 3 or 4 of the conference and compete in the NCAA Tournament, I'm not sure I'd tab Tracy Smith for that. 

An old friend won't be returning [JD Scott]

So long, fellas 

These coaches were contacted or interviewed by Michigan but chose not to pursue this opportunity due to their satisfaction with their current gigs, and are therefore no longer under consideration. 

Chris Fetter, Detroit Tigers Pitching Coach. Chris Fetter was the other name mentioned in my mailbag a few weeks back, but he pretty predictably poured cold water on the idea of coming back to Ann Arbor, taking his name out of contention. The Tigers desperately need him to stay on staff to keep the pitching staff upright considering the hitting has been putrid, and given Fetter's age, he could very well be on track to be an MLB manager at some point in the near future (working under AJ Hinch helps with that). Unless Fetter's dream was to be an NCAA Coach, it didn't make a ton of sense for him to come back to Michigan, and he didn't. 

Jim Penders, UCONN Head Coach. Penders was talked about very early in the search and was one of the first interviews, which made sense given Warde's previous history with Penders at UCONN. Ultimately, though, Penders chose to voluntarily pull his name out of the running. He would've been an interesting candidate, right around 50 years old and having built a pretty successful program at a northern school, making the NCAAs frequently in the last decade (making the Supers this year). I'm not sure if Penders would've been the guy, but he definitely would have been among the top names considered.