Decisions on Mingione
- Thread starter Jjohnb5393
- Start date
Sorry, but I'll take another year of Ming if it means a sweep of UT and a chance to get into NCAA tourney. I hate Vitello.
Nah. It's time to make a change.
If he is back another year, this will be my last post (not that they care) because I will enjoy another college program other than UK, head west to UL. They have a real coaching staff.
Done with the UK idiotic coaching decisions and excuses.
I want to compete. Barely sneaking into the tournament and losing a regional isn't competitive enough for me. Doing that should be basically a minimum standard and not a true success. Mingione isn't going to get us there so I don't want some tiny success to keep him around just to continue to be mediocre or worse.
At the end of the day one series doesn’t make or break a season. But you can bet coach is going to point to Mitch this series and the injuries and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s enough. I am in the mindset he had to make the ncaa tourney in year 6 to keep his job and hope that’s the case.
Well, with that thinking we should have given Joker a lifetime contract.
Listen, I’m thrilled that UK won the series and has a good chance at a sweep. But stop putting lipstick on a pig. Mingione has shown he can’t recruit, he can’t develop and relies way too much on the transfer portal. Is that how a team should be built? I want nothing more than to beat Tennessee at everything. But I want a competitive baseball program more.
Well, I hate to see you go but enjoy retirement from the board. He’ll be back next year and we will be right here discussing who the next coach should be.
I doubt he gets let go this year, even if the Cats end up in last place. Horrible job by Mitch.Now you have to wonder: if the Cats take the series with Tennessee, does Mingione get an extension?
And while listening to the game today Headrick was really playing up the injury angle. Almost like the two victories over Tennessee really opened the door to play this narrative up to its fullest to make the excuse to bring him back next year.
This narrative has been been brought up for weeks now. And it’s just not Headrick. During the telecast Thursday the SEC guys were even talking about it and how it wasn’t fair to judge Mingione with all the injuries this year. We as fans might as well face it, he’s back next year.
Mitch needs to find baseball Stoops
You're not a UK fan if you start cheering for UL simply b/c you disagree with the admin on coaching decisions. There is room to debate who should be the coach, but cheering for UL shouldn't even enter the calculus.
I agree with you in general, but making the NCAA tourney is (at this point) a success for UK. The expectations should be higher next year, but for this year, if he makes the NCAA tourney he should get another year IMO.
Beating UT isn't enough, but if he makes the NCAA tourney then he should be back for another year.
The injuries have been rough this year. I don't know how it effects our year, but it's easy to think that without them we'd be better.
Baseball is a balance. Pitching and hitting. You're a very bad team when both are bad. You can be a good team when one is good, even if the other isn't. The great ones have both.
I don't think our hitting is good enough to be great. .245 while being almost entirely healthy just isn't going to make you great. So, we'd rely on pitching to make us good. Without the injuries, that might have happened. Hard to really know.
I think if you do this then you fall into a similar trap that we were in with Henderson. Henderson had 3 average years where he won 12/13 games and then had an 8 win season. Then he had 2012, a really great year. After 2012, we had an 11 win season. Then we went to the tournament again with 14 wins, followed by 2 more years of not making the tournament. So, we got 8 years of Henderson and just 2 years of tournaments. Each of those tournaments bought him more time when it was clear that those tournaments were probably more anomalies than they were ever going to be regularities.
With Mingione, we've had 3 years now without a tournament, and I think it would obviously be 4 years but for 2020 being canceled. So, sneaking into the tournament this year would again feel like an irregularity rather than something that we will ever achieve regularly. Being that next year we will be without a whole lot of the key players that led to this year's success (if we end up with it at all), it makes it hard to believe that we will follow it up with another tournament, and that we'll once again be rebuilding.
So, I just think that it would be a mistake to take this one year as a success and allow it to buy him more time. Unfortunately, his contract is set up to reward him for this type of success, so if we do make the tournament there will be absolutely no doubt that he gets at least another year.
Looking at things closer, I am increasingly skeptical, but we could get pretty close and it will depend on how our RPI plays out.
For a point of reference (which I mentioned on another thread), in 2016 UK finished league play at 15-15. This is almost always a point in which you'd expect to make the NCAA tournament. UK didn't. The reason? We were just 32-25 overall. By contrast, Ole Miss who also had 15 wins that year in the league had 43 wins overall and they got in and hosted a regional (that they went 0-2 in, lol). That year, looking back we lost to some silly teams (Wofford and Bryant). Seems familiar to this season with losses to 4 teams in Q3 and Q4.
So, I think best case scenario for UK is that we win 4 of the last 6 SEC games. I just never predict sweeps, unless they seem very likely. So, that gives us 13 wins. Our RPI is currently 59th. I think we need to get our RPI into the mid to low 30s to really be comfortable. Will winning 4 of the last 6 do it? What if we win 1 SEC game? Will the fact that we end on a 'hot streak,' make a difference?
I think it is possible that we sneak into the tournament, but still is a longshot at this point.
Will have to win remaining series plus make a deep run in SEC tourney. Steep odds against.
They are both KENTUCKY teams, correct?
I am Kentucky bred, so supporting EITHER team is considered appropriate. Not supporting a KENTUCKY based team based on location, IMO is ridiculous. Whether it is UK or UL, if I do not like the staff or coaching decisions or the product I see on the field, then I will not suport them. I have given UK a chance for several years now, so it's time to flip over and see what UL can do. I will spend my time/money there next season and I can do that because I am a baseball fan who is an adult, can make my own decisions and have my own money. HAHA
So, according to Warren Nolan... their extremely crazy predicted results states that they think we will finish league play with 12 wins. 2 wins to USC and 1 to Auburn. That isn't out of the realm of possibility. They also predict a loss to Tennessee Tech, which also isn't an impossibility.
If this were to be the reality, according to them... our RPI would be 78th.
You can refresh and get the page to change things up some (i.e. it changed us to beating Tn Tech and gave us two losses to USC and 2 wins against Auburn) and that changed our RPI from 78 to 65.
So, this seems to me like it would be pretty unlikely that we could get enough wins to get our RPI low enough to get us into the NCAA tournament. I mean, maybe if we sweep both series and finish 15-15 and then win a game or two in tournament play we'll be in, but I doubt that happens.
If this were to be the reality, according to them... our RPI would be 78th.
You can refresh and get the page to change things up some (i.e. it changed us to beating Tn Tech and gave us two losses to USC and 2 wins against Auburn) and that changed our RPI from 78 to 65.
So, this seems to me like it would be pretty unlikely that we could get enough wins to get our RPI low enough to get us into the NCAA tournament. I mean, maybe if we sweep both series and finish 15-15 and then win a game or two in tournament play we'll be in, but I doubt that happens.
I think you can ignore this Warren Nolan thing. It is all over the place. Hit refresh again and it predicts 10 SEC wins with just 2 wins more in the season (UT Martin and 1 to Auburn). Yet, the kicker is that it claims our RPI would be 54th with this record. So, it really isn't worth anything given that it is so all over the place. I thought at least the RPI thing might give a barometer, but doesn't seem like it.
Not that I care either way what you do, but I think you made his point. A UK fan would never consider pulling for U of L, period. A casual fan might.
To me it’s simple, if he makes the ncaa tournament he gets another year. But Mitch has to let him know the way he continues to grab jucos and transfers to build a team isn’t sustainable for a program. Recruiting and development have to pick up or we’re going nowhere.
I still would feel better going in a different direction no matter what considering what we have returning next year and how ugly that will be.
I still would feel better going in a different direction no matter what considering what we have returning next year and how ugly that will be.
I am a baseball fan. Period. BTW, I also attended UK and that is probably what makes me so disgusted with how the baseball program is being handled.
I think this is the difficulty of the situation - Ming has gotten himself in a situation (and rightfully so, he has had plenty of time) where he needs to win now. So, to say, go get recruits and develop them is something that takes time, and he probably knows he wont have that time, so he has to get get transfers who can help win now. So, its a vicious cycle. Somehow he will have to figure out how to do both.
So if you attended UK, you cannot be oblivious to how everybody associated with that U6 program would NEVER pull for UK in anything!
Not to belabor the point, but you are making his point. As baseball first fan, and not a UK first fan per se, you are searching for a winning team to support. By contrast, I am a long suffering UK and Reds baseball fan. I love baseball, but I don't love baseball more than I love UK or the Reds. I'm not going to jump ship to find a winning team to support because my teams aren't performing well. I'm going to support my team, win or lose, year after year.
I believe, as his contract is written, Mingione gets an automatic one year extension anytime UK makes the NCAA tournament. I do not think that this would effect his buyout as it specifically states a year and not a contract year, or something like that.
While I think you certainly have a point that he is now in a hole that he cannot dig himself out of... it was his strategy from the beginning and it was he that dug the hole.
His first recruiting class in 2018 it was clear that this was the direction he wanted to take. Aklinksi, Dawson, Haake, Johnson, Macciocchi, McGeorge, Miller, Rodriguez, and Shinn were all brought in in 2018. 9 JUCO/transfers they brought in that year alone. Compare that to the year prior, in 2017, where Henderson had brought in just 3 JUCOs/tranfers. Not that these weren't capable players, but clearly it was the beginning of the roster makeup; and it helped to contribute to us losing a ton of players after 2018.
They brought in 6 more in 2019. So, I think that lack of development there set this whole thing in motion.
I attended UK and sorry I don't get caught up in the whole rivalry thing. That is their right to pull for whomever they want just like me. My cousin and her family love UL, and they attended there, but I have never given thier baseball program a chance. Again, I just don't like what UK is doing with the baseball program, so I will see what kind of baseball I can watch over at UL. Whether they win or lose, it's not about that, it's about doing what is best for their baseball programs and players and IMO Mingione and his style of non-development is not what is best. So I'll go check out what is over at UL. As the youngsters say..."you do you bro."
Last edited:
I'm a baseball fan too. So would I go to a UofL game just to watch some baseball? Of course. But I won't be cheering for them. Eff that. No UK alum/fan would.
Well sorry guys, I'm just different. I'm too old to care what people think and definitely too old to argue about it.
I want to enjoy discussing baseball with grand kids at a baseball game and hope their park is more kid-friendly, I don't think it is, but we will see. I have several months before the next season, so I'll find out then.
My subscription will end on this board as soon as UK makes or doesn't make the tournament. I will sit back and enjoy reading the posts until then but I will not post anymore. My season tickets will end this year also (not that it matters to anyone but me, well maybe a few that I have given tickets to in the past).
There should have been 0.00% chance that he retained his job last year. The fact we are even discussing him keeping it again is absurd.
