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Post by wildcat1997 on Oct 25, 2017 19:29:43 GMT -6
Anthony Dominguez won’t be back either. He announced on Twitter he will be playing at UT Arlington.
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Post by wildcat1997 on Oct 30, 2017 20:08:34 GMT -6
Cole Solomon will also be playing at UT Arlington next year.
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Post by OscarWildeCat, Admin on Oct 31, 2017 1:47:53 GMT -6
Players exiting en masse. Same song, new verse.
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Post by wildcats0075 on Oct 31, 2017 8:22:30 GMT -6
Players exiting en masse. Same song, new verse. Seriously, why can't we keep a core team together. I would be curious to see what the attrition rate is for the baseball team the last four years. Have we reached the point that we need to stop bringing in transfers from JCs and just recruit all HS players and try and build a team that has some loyalty and time invested in Abilene. Does all of this turnover hurt our GSR or whatever stat the NCAA now uses to track graduation success of transfer students.
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Post by Cap'n Cattitude on Oct 31, 2017 8:42:58 GMT -6
Players exiting en masse. Same song, new verse. Seriously, why can't we keep a core team together. I would be curious to see what the attrition rate is for the baseball team the last four years. Have we reached the point that we need to stop bringing in transfers from JCs and just recruit all HS players and try and build a team that has some loyalty and time invested in Abilene. Does all of this turnover hurt our GSR or whatever stat the NCAA now uses to track graduation success of transfer students. Does not hurt our APR (or our GSR, for that matter) if they transfer to another 4 yr school.
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Post by wildcatter on Oct 31, 2017 9:01:26 GMT -6
The majority of players leaving are high school kids. Lots of them are kids that contribute as freshman. So essentially he brings in freshman, they contribute, then determines they aren't good enough and either pulls their scholarship or they don't like the program and they leave?
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Post by Cap'n Cattitude on Oct 31, 2017 9:14:05 GMT -6
The majority of players leaving are high school kids. Lots of them are kids that contribute as freshman. So essentially he brings in freshman, they contribute, then determines they aren't good enough and either pulls their scholarship or they don't like the program and they leave? Yeah. There's something all wrong here. I will say that as someone who spent 24 years as a college professor - mostly not at ACU - I dislike baseball more than any college sport. The season is stupidly long. Student athletes are constantly missing class. Teams are in constant turnover and have little connection with the campus. The best players choose the minor leagues or JC then leave after a year because 900 guys are drafted. College baseball is a mess and just no fun. My opinion.
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Post by wildcats0075 on Oct 31, 2017 12:02:03 GMT -6
The majority of players leaving are high school kids. Lots of them are kids that contribute as freshman. So essentially he brings in freshman, they contribute, then determines they aren't good enough and either pulls their scholarship or they don't like the program and they leave? Yeah. There's something all wrong here. I will say that as someone who spent 24 years as a college professor - mostly not at ACU - I dislike baseball more than any college sport. The season is stupidly long. Student athletes are constantly missing class. Teams are in constant turnover and have little connection with the campus. The best players choose the minor leagues or JC then leave after a year because 900 guys are drafted. College baseball is a mess and just no fun. My opinion. Should I read this to say that our baseball team and program shifting is typical of college baseball teams and to complain about what is typical is Foolhardy?
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Post by wildcat1997 on Oct 31, 2017 12:21:23 GMT -6
Yeah. There's something all wrong here. I will say that as someone who spent 24 years as a college professor - mostly not at ACU - I dislike baseball more than any college sport. The season is stupidly long. Student athletes are constantly missing class. Teams are in constant turnover and have little connection with the campus. The best players choose the minor leagues or JC then leave after a year because 900 guys are drafted. College baseball is a mess and just no fun. My opinion. Should I read this to say that our baseball team and program shifting is typical of college baseball teams and to complain about what is typical is Foolhardy? College baseball for sure has the most roster turnover from year to year of all college sports but I’m not sure if our amount of turnover is normal compared to the rest of college baseball.
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Post by Cap'n Cattitude on Oct 31, 2017 12:55:21 GMT -6
Yeah. There's something all wrong here. I will say that as someone who spent 24 years as a college professor - mostly not at ACU - I dislike baseball more than any college sport. The season is stupidly long. Student athletes are constantly missing class. Teams are in constant turnover and have little connection with the campus. The best players choose the minor leagues or JC then leave after a year because 900 guys are drafted. College baseball is a mess and just no fun. My opinion. Should I read this to say that our baseball team and program shifting is typical of college baseball teams and to complain about what is typical is Foolhardy? LOL. Great question. My opinion only reflects my experiences. I'm sure there are better situations. Our baseball all team has played 53-55 games over 15 weeks each of the last few years. Most weekends - home and away - have games on Fri, Sat, Sun and occasionally Thu. Then 9 or 10 of the weeks they play on Tues or Wed. That's 4 game days most weeks during the semester plus at least 2 hours of practice time other days of the week. On game days, the players are required to show up about 3 hours before the game for infield, batting practice and so on. So when do they study? In my experience, many (but not all) don't do as well in the classroom as their counterparts in other sports. Contrast that with Softball who play around 50 games over 13 weeks. The difference is that 21 of those games were played in the first 4 weeks of the season at tourneys where 5 or 6 games were played in 2 days. Then they play 3 games on Fri and Sat. That's 2 game days most weeks although they do schedule Tech, Baylor, UNT on Wed or Thu a couple of times during the year. Clearly the sports aren't equivalent since a softball double header takes less time than a single baseball game. Meanwhile, the softball team carries about a 3.0 gpa most years. No no other college sport demands what baseball does. Is it any wonder that - especially at smaller schools - baseball is a revolving door.
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Post by wildcatter on Oct 31, 2017 13:43:29 GMT -6
With that explanation you make it seem as if our revolving door is due to grades, whereas a number of our players that are leaving are transferring to other 4 year programs. Not to dismiss the point you make, I can see the struggle for some players and keeping up with school. I just know that at my time at ACU there wasn't an issue with turnover. Lots of guys I knew that were 4 year players.
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Post by OscarWildeCat, Admin on Oct 31, 2017 13:52:16 GMT -6
With that explanation you make it seem as if our revolving door is due to grades, whereas a number of our players that are leaving are transferring to other 4 year programs. Not to dismiss the point you make, I can see the struggle for some players and keeping up with school. I just know that at my time at ACU there wasn't an issue with turnover. Lots of guys I knew that were 4 year players. Nationally Graduation rates are higher for baseball than for either football or basketball so I’m not sure grades are an issue for baseball in general . Plus, as you point out many of those leaving ACU are transferring to other four year schools so eligibility apparently isn’t the problem. www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/May2015_public-release_FINAL.PDF
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Post by Cap'n Cattitude on Oct 31, 2017 14:10:04 GMT -6
Yes. I did make it sound like it was all about grades but that wasn't my intent. My intent was to show how time consuming baseball is compared to other sports thus creating a disconnect between baseball athletes and university culture. Baseball players are the least visible and least engaged athletes on campus as far as I can tell. It's hard to build up support when no one has any idea who is even on the team. And so we come full circle with the revolving door.
By the way, I'm guessing that $$ has a lot to do with players leaving. We only give 10 or so scholarships. Not sure exactly.
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Post by wildcatter on Oct 31, 2017 14:19:23 GMT -6
Now I can see money being more of an issue for sure. Maybe guys come in thinking they will receive more scholarship money after their first year and that doesn't happen. ACU isn't cheap like state schools. That coupled with lots of losing could make someone want to leave. Makes you wonder about schools like Rice and Baylor, private schools with a history of success, and how they balanced scholarships with retention and consistency.
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Post by wildcatter on Oct 31, 2017 14:27:12 GMT -6
Looks like Div 1 gets a max of 11.7 and Div 2 gets a max of 9. Not really much change but I guess roster size isn't always that big either. But by comparison, basketball gets 13.
So basketball gets almost 3x the number of scholarships as there are players on the court at a time compared to a sport that has 9 in the field at a time barely just having enough to field a starting lineup. I understand the conditioning difference etc, but factoring in pitchers, baseball is spread thin.
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