Pitt baseball and Joe Jordano

[OriginalEther]

First let me say I think it is a little unfair to post negatively about Joe Jordano. He isn't making enough money and isnt enough of a public figure to be talked about on message boards. When you throw in their teacher salaries, there are probably WPIAL baseball coaches who make more money and have higher home attendance than Jordano.

Also, let me say, I am no expert in college baseball. I go to a few Pitt games a year and watch a few online. Sadly, that probably makes me one of the program's biggest fans, but that is another problem.

When I watch Jordano's teams, they never appear to be poorly coached. I don't think actual coaching is the problem. Its purely a talent issue. Pitt has gone from a mid-major baseball league to the #1 league in America (this year, at least), and the talent level is roughly the same.

Pity, in my estimation, has only 3 ACC level players in Leblanc, Yarnall, and Zeuch. You can swap the rest of the team with any mid-major player from the MAC, Horizon League, etc and there would be no difference. Penn State, who is not a good program, who plays in a very mediocre league is better than us. They have better players and that is embarrassing. Using basketball as a comparison, Big Ten baseball equals Atlantic 10 basketball. An OK league, not bad, not great. There should be no reason for an ACC program like Pitt to be at a talent disadvantage when playing Big Ten schools.

This season will mark 21 straight years without an NCAAT appearance, 18 of those with Jordano. If Pitt is OK with "just having a team," that is fine. Even if Pitt hired a big-time coach, its hard to believe attendance will increase any given the March-May weather in Pittsburgh and the competition with the Pirates and Penguins, so maybe it is smart to continuously spending the bare minimim on baseball. I'm not sure I'd want a few hundred thousand taken out of the football or basketball budget to spend on baseball........but we did that for soccer. For some reason, Scott Barnes made a huge investment in men's soccer and hired a coach who will have Pitt playing at a Final Four level in due time. Whether that is smart financially, I dont know but I have to wonder if Barnes may look to do the same in baseball.

View, saw a little while ago that Louisville is paying their baseball coach a million a year.
Obviously Pitt isn't paying Jordano that, but there's a reference point for you.

 

[QuitCallingMeWanny]

The funny thing is that Jordano plays small ball way too much to be a good manager, not way to little. In a run scoring environment like there is in college baseball a good hitter should basically never sacrifice bunt. And yet earlier this season we saw Jordano have one of Pitt's best hitters sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the first inning of a 0-0 game with runners on first and second and no outs. That decision shows such a complete and utter lack of understanding of what wins baseball games that it would be nearly incomprehensible if a person managing their first game ever did it, let alone a guy who has been managing college baseball teams for decades.

Squeezing, bunting, double steals, etc. make sense in game that you expect to be low scoring. In 2016 you should never expect a college baseball game to be low scoring. Look at yesterday's Pitt - Miami game. The number one starter for the 4th ranked team in the country was pitching against a guy who may be a first round draft pick next month. The game ended 7-6. In college baseball you (usually) need to score a lot of runs to win. Jordano to often chases one run at the expense of attempting to score a lot more than one run.

Mark Jackson was the same way

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

In the second game of the World Series tonight Arizona gets two singles to lead off the game. First and second, no one one. And their coach has the number three hitter bunt. Not once. Not twice. Three times. So when he fouls off the third bunt he is out. The game announcers literally could not talk, they thought the decision was so moronic. So the number four hitter walks, bases loaded, one out, the guy coming to the plate is a guy who last year participated in the home run hitters contest at the World Series. The coach calls for a squeeze bunt. The pitch is way outside and almost bounces in the dirt. It's so far outside that the batter doesn't even bother to try to hit it. A mistake to be sure, but he couldn't have hit the pitch without throwing his bat at it. At first the catcher doesn't realize that it was a squeeze play, but he recovers in time to throw out the runner from third going back to the base. The third baseman then throws the ball to second and the runner there was safe only because the throw was a little off line.

You could tell the game announcers were trying not to explicitly say it, but they found these to be just about the dumbest managerial decisions ever. Saying things like "maybe someone missed a sign or something" to try to excuse the calls. They also wondered what sort of message that sends to your number three hitter (a kid from Norwin, by the way) that you didn't even let him try to hit the ball even with an 0-2 count on him. If you think so little of a guy as a hitter then why is he your designated hitter and why is he batting third?

So I guess the point of all this is that Jordano isn't the only college baseball coach that does moronic things on a regular basis. Far from it.