Tracy Smith favorite to get baseball job
At Indiana, he had 40+ win seasons and won Big Ten in 2013 and 2014. They got to the College World Series in 2013 also. He left for Arizona State in 2015 and then was fired after 7 years there with minimal success.
Source: Michigan is planning to hire Tracey Smith as the next Head Baseball Coach.
— Blue By 90 (@bluebyninety) July 2, 2022
Smith has been a head coach at Miami (OH), Indiana, and most recently Arizona State. He lead the Sun Devils to a 201-155 record over seven years.
An announcement may come as soon as today.
He also coached a #1 overall MLB draft pick in Tork.
Tork will be a good one. Probably came up to early, but a great defensive first basemen, so they won’t send him down to get more seasoning at the plate, because the Tigers don’t have a replacement at 1st for him. He was also regarded by most as the best hitter in the draft, and a top 3 pick, no matter what team took him.
The collective mind is often wrong. Everyone scoffed at taking Seider, and Yzerman made everyone eat crow.
There are also a myriad of examples that the collective mind is often correct. The MLB draft, particularly, is not even close to an exact science.
people thought Seider was picked 1-2 spots too high ....its not like Stevie drafted some players no one wanted ---
So lets stop calling that a great draft pick --
Incorrect. He was expected to be drafted somewhere in the 15-20 range. Go ahead and Google it.
He also coached Kyle Schwarber of the Cubs, Nats, and now Phillies
Kinda hire you make when you've signaled to the world you don't plan to compete at the highest levels.
None of the candidates would’ve signaled that, at least the candidates that kept their hats in the ring.
Not a huge fan of this. If you can’t win at Arizona State you aren’t that good.
Michigan vs Arizona State 2015-2021
2015 Michigan 39–25 Arizona State 35–23
2016 Michigan 36–21 Arizona State 36–23
2017 Michigan 42–17 Arizona State 23–32
2018 Michigan 33–21 Arizona State 23–32
2019 Michigan 50–22 Arizona State 38–19
2020 Michigan 8–7 Arizona State 13–4
2021 Michigan 27–19 Arizona State 33-22
235-132 201-155
0.640 0.549
To be fair.......
I would guess the (former) Pac12 was a much tougher conference than the B1G.
It's an imperfect ranking system but, yeah, the (former) Pac-12 was a much better baseball conference than the Big 10. The gap between the Pac-12 and Big 10 in RPI (.314) is the same gap between the Big 10 (at #8) and the Southland at #18.
He might not be a stud but my guess is that Big 10 baseball also isn't considered that glamorous of a post. But he did have success at IU and it sounds like the issues he had at ASU (this year they had little pitching depth) are ones he'll inherit at UM so he won't be shocked.
This is a pretty lazy take. Pac-12 is a super competitive conference in baseball. 5 other Pac-12 schools have won 9 National Championships since ASU's last in 1981
I agree that this raises questions. But--then--the usual temptation, here, is to move to condemnation.
But first, if you're being rigorous, you actually ask the questions: What prevented him from winning at Arizona State during that period? And because you're (let's say) Warde and you have to take your job seriously--not just gripe--you note that in fact he was winning there, just not at a fabulous clip.
So what was going on there, Mr. Smith?
Could be this, that, or the other thing, but--if you're Warde--you take it all in, decide whether it stacks up. Weight it against other qualities the guy has. Make your decision. If we're lucky, Warde weighed a bunch of stuff and then made a good one. Guy could fail. Even that might not be Warde's fault, world being what it is!
I don't know what those answers were. Neither, apparently, does anyone here. But simply condemning is. . . what chat boards are for? I dunno. . . I still think we should push one another for just a bit more nuance.
I don't think Warde knows much about baseball.
But he does understand finances. It's safe to assume that Michigan won't be dishing out millions for a baseball coach.
As they shouldnt. The $600k you save is much better spent on a half dozen new administrators in the AD who can kiss Warde's butt.
whelmed.
Meh is right, especially with USC and UCLA coming aboard to finally strengthen the conference.
I dont get it. The guy might be okay...but Warde passed up the CMU coach like 6 times. And that one is a comer.
All in all, Warde, to me, has long lost his luster and its starting to look like tarnish
A couple of other major programs passed on that guy also...and I recall a post during the CWS saying "if you people aren't happy with the hot-dogging attitude of OK St(?) you won't want the CMU guy as the coach at M"...
In the last three weeks, he's interviewed with Michigan, Ohio St., Northwestern and Kansas and all four have passed. It's been reported that he was the top choice at OSU and rumored top choice here before the interview and then things changed. So there must be something that's not resonating with the bigger schools.
redwings-agree with your take. From a pure observers persepctive with little actual baseball program knowledge...
The AZ coach seems very similar to Warde's personality meaning the safe hire in a sport that M, and maybe anyone in the B1G, might need to take a risk at to make it back to the CWS. Bakich seems like the baseball version of Belien and perhaps almost impossible to strike that lightning twice.
I was fortunate to be at the CWS (I live in KS and made a business trip work) and see the great pitching performance to beat Florida State. Michigan fans were present and accounted for. I would rather Warde took the risks to greatness then perpetuate being good but not great.
The fact that a bunch of bigger programs all interviewed him and then passed would lead me to believe that there must be something going on beyond the tired "Warde Manuel is terrible at his job because I'm unhappy" cliche around here.
Thank you. We were 3rd in the overall sports thing. What dud hire has he made to earn the crap he gets here? I trust Manuel..
Michigan fans aren't happy unless they are complaining.....
Warde has done far better than par for the course...every single sport seems to have had an uptick. He deserves more appreciation here.
A lot of those non revenue hires and facility renovations came before Warde.
Could not agree more, OldSchool.
Geez, people are so damned negative here. What are the "safe" hires Warde has made? Seems to me the athletic department is performing wonderfully.
Many, many of our sports teams are performing extremely well. No scandals (other than Juwan's punch and maybe accusations against Mel - scandal lite?). Legitimate contenders for Director's Cup. Football, basketball and hockey all successful. Women's basketball at an all-time level of success. National Championships.
42-27, FFS.
Michigan's athletic department is, by all objective measures, doing a great job. Warde is in charge. Therefore, IMO Warde is doing a great job.
Clearly, I know less about sports than virtually everyone on the blog.
Fortunately for my ego, the blog suggests I at least know more than our athletic director.
The guy must be a terrible interview or have some skeletons because he’s now been passed over 3 times after interviewing
He is a total weirdo that’s the issue. Different cat
I'll give him a shot. He has two more big ten championships than I do.
gustave
MGrowOld was short and the block on Hotel Putingrad was clean. You deserve those 2 MGOBLOG championships so hang the banners!
More confirmation.
🚨BREAKING: @umichbaseball is expected to hire former Arizona State and Indiana head coach Tracy Smith as its new head coach, multiple sources tell @d1baseball. Smith led IU to the College World Series and most recently had a stint at #ASU. https://t.co/6ItKiv78UU pic.twitter.com/vMXb1aJGkP
— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) July 2, 2022
I still think if you're a good baseball coach, ASU should be one of the easiest places to win at even in a very hard conference. Having 2 losing seasons there in a place where young players would love to be doesn't bode well. Sure, he might do average at Michigan, but this is far from a homerun hire or even a single. This is more like a walk. He got on base, but nothing spectacular.
I hope he makes me look like a fool.
Everyone does.
Is this a transformation or a transactional hire?
Asking for a recruit.
Congrats on the best point made here. Very sharp-insightful.
Huh...
Wouldn't have been my top choice, but found this little article:
https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/high-school/2021/07/12/former-asu-baseball-coach-tracy-smith-provides-feedback-dv-ad/7946734002/
which made me feel better, particularly the "starting with diversity and inclusion" part. Because as I may have posted here before, I think one of the best things Erik Bakich did, and a key to being competitive with the warm weather teams, is to recruit beyond the baseball showcases in which kids from families with means are over-represented.
Nice article. Thanks for directing us to it.
To attach a link, click the icon in the menu bar at the top of the Comment box, to the right of the B for boldface and the I for Italics. The link icon looks like the link in a chain.
Then cut and paste:
Thanks!
What does that even mean? The first thing to building baseball is not to be inclusive. By the nature of fielding the best players, you have to be exclusive. You can only take the best players you can get and build them up if you want to succeed. If the focus at ASU was inclusivity, no wonder they were mediocre. If your goal is to get the baseball team you can field, it will be an exclusive club that only the best you can get play. If you're goal is to be inclusive, then your goal is not to win but to feel good. As far as diversity, that will happen organically like it does with every other sport. The best players play regardless of anything else but how well they can perform.
Those 2 things are nice for youth sports, but at this level, you work on that in the community while building your team to the best it can be.
The focus of top level sports is to be the best team you can be. Anything else is contrary to that.
From Bakich’s point of view, in your search for the best baseball players, you don’t exclude those that can’t afford to showcase themselves to bigger programs. You have to search for diamonds in the rough. Mid-majors (and that’s what B1G schools are in baseball) need to find the talent that bigger programs miss.
As for this article, it was about developing an inclusive culture around a program. As a fan of a school whose athletic program is centered around the concept of “the team, the team, the team,” I don’t see how you’d have a problem with that.
It takes quite a few logical leaps to think “being inclusive” means not recruiting and playing the best players you can get.
Not to mention the almost infinite variety of subjective decisions that coaches make as they determine which players are "best" for particular situations, for a series, for the season, for the team.