(07-01-2019 05:00 PM)CatMom Wrote:  We didn't win with freshmen, RS freshmen and sophomores. (he wasn't in charge of recruiting until 2018) So, we'll see how he does going forward.

We've always recruited JUCO heavy too so don't forget about all the JUCO guys/transfers we've brought in over the past 2 seasons.

Jaxon Williams, Skyler Valentine, Will Hollis, John Wuthrich, and Dalton Shuffield were all brought in under Trout as recruiting coordinator. That's 5/9 of the every day lineup this year.

Hunter McMahon (9th round draft pick), Garrett Herrmann, Kyle Bradford, Brent Hebert, Dontae Woodard all pitchers who contributed a lot this year recruited under Trout.

I'd say he had his fingerprints all over the 2019 championship.

That's all well and good and it got us an SBC title but it's not a good practice to rely on that many JUCOs (see football). I'll reserve total judgement until we see what happens in the next few years. As I said in my OP........we'll see.

I will say, most of our fans expected this season to be a rebuilding year and with those JUCOS we won the Sun Belt regular season. Long term, I agree, but identifying a gap in talent and addressing it with JUCOS in order to have a successful season is what good coaches do.

I don’t have a problem with using JUCOs . . . sometimes it’s what you gotta do to fill in the gaps. Besides, how many recruits have we lost the past few years to JUCOs, who later went on to play for a P5 program?
Seems like a knife that cuts both ways . . .

Anyone who's read my posts over the years knows I'm not a huge fan of going the JUCO route other than the rare can't miss prospect or to fill immediate needs. I've said for years baseball has over-relied on JUCO prospects, but truth is they've panned out at a far better rate than our HS recruits have over the last decade or so. Part of that has been striking out on too many HS kids, particularly in the 2012-2016 timeframe.

Not the point of that post above though, just pointing out that many of our contributors to the 2019 championship were brought on while Trout had the title of recruiting coordinator.

I think this move is a win for recruiting by the way. I don't think Harrington has had a huge hand in recruiting in recent years. Trout has already said that he plans to continue to play a huge role in recruiting which means as the head coach he will be on the road recruiting in the offseason unlike Harrington. I'd imagine whoever is brought in to replace Trout will also be out there recruiting too along with Massengale (who I'm assuming we plan to keep on?). We basically added another primary recruiter with this move and that makes me optimistic that recruiting will improve under Trout.