Was this season a Success or Failure? Start off by stating one or the other, then tell why.

Failure:
(1) We finished 9th in SEC 2013, finished 10th in SEC 2014. Went backwards.

(2) Went to somebody else's Regional and did not advance to Supers.

(3) Final 2014 Top 25 Poll:
1. Vanderbilt - CWS Champs
3. Texas - CWS team
4. Ole Miss - CWS team
5. TCU - CWS team
8. Texas Tech - CWS team
11. Houston
16. LSU
22. South Carolina
24. Florida
25. Rice

I would say neither.

But if I had to pick one, I'd say failure, though not rock bottom by any means.

10th in the conference and finishing outside the top 25 is not a "successful" season











[This message has been edited by Captain Pablo (edited 6/26/2014 3:46p).]

What CP said


Edit

After thinking about it: Failure. Absolute. This was supposed to be a "good" season we had been building toward. We've had the new facilities for a few years, so that should have paid off by now. We still had the same ever present issues we always have. And having our season ended by "them" really solidifies the season as a failure.

[This message has been edited by Rocco s (edited 6/26/2014 7:05p).]

Failure

I agree with CP - failure when you examine it.

Time to look to 2015.

The past is the past, looking forward to a good 2015.

It depends on what the preseason outlook was. For me, I had 3 phases and 2 metrics.

Pitching- null. I expected mengden to be better but didnt know about his back injury. Closer fell from strength to weakness. Gandy is a stud though and I didnt see that coming.

Offense- bad situational hitting and 3rd base coach Mismanagement cost us some runs. Batting average wasnt bad and there was more power this year than I expected but less than I hoped for. Overall fixable and id actually say success. Need more consistency with the offense.

Defense- failure. How was the middle of our infield that bad a double plays?!? And errors seemed like a nightly to twice per night deal. ugh.

Overall- average and neither successful or failure.

2 metrics:
seasonal play- 10th in sec aint cutting it. Failure.

Postseason- successful based on seasonal play results and one game from supers, failure based on expectations of advancement.

Overall- average and neither failure or success. Worst kind of season for fans already upset with lack of true success. Neither improved nor fell behind. Next season, particularly if we stay healthy, will tell my overall opinion for program direction. If status quo, then that is a failure.

Overall - failure.

Barely made the post-season, which should be a given every year, hosting more often than not.

Had a decent run in the regional tournament but ultimately were eliminated.

Edited and changed my response to failure

A better question (IMHO)

The 2014 Texas Aggie baseball season was an overall success:

A) - Strongly disagree
B) - Disagree
C) - Neither agree nor disagree
D) - Agree
E) - Strongly agree

I considered the season an absolute failure until we went on our month long tear in early April. Going into the Arkansas series, I was feeling like these guys might well salvage the season.

Then more disappointment, peaking when we didn't show up against arch-rival tu for the first game of a regional.

Then these guys go on a tear in the loser's bracket at Rice and end Rice's season in doing so. Even with losing to the Whorns in the final, I am going with 'B' instead of 'A'.

"Why did this group fail to show up so often?" is probably an even better question.


[This message has been edited by dabo man (edited 6/26/2014 9:25p).]

Blue Bell Magic made a pretty strong case. I would tend to agree with said post.

I almost get a headache trying to figure out the 2014 season. Consider this:

A&M went 10-4 vs:

Vanderbilt - national champ
LSU - regional host
Florida - east division champ & regional host
Mississippi State - 2013 CWS runner-up
Rice - C-USA champ, regional host, and long-time nemesis

that is remarkable, phenomenal, etc..,

but it's countered by A&M going 3-9 vs:

Fresno State - missed postseason
Auburn - missed postseason
Georgia - missed postseason
t.u. - eliminated by rival

really hard to understand.

I think 2014 was better than 2013. The 2013 team didn't have a resume of accomplishments anywhere close to the 2014 team's

for a football comparison...it reminds me of the 2002 team that beat #1 OU but managed to finish just 6-6

The fact that tech finished 8th is almost laughable. Tired of the 'just because you made the CWS, you deserve a top 10 spot' argument. Tech was not a top 10 team this year. I would argue they were top 25, but to say they were the 8th best team in the nation is stretching it a bit.

I would count this year as a failure simply because A&M failed to meet any sort of expectation. Two pitchers taken in the top 5 rounds, and we still finished 10th?

Utter failure


This was Rob's 9th season at A&M and the program has yet to continually show growth. Throw in his second with his new palace in Blue Bell Park and 2md year in the SEC and we regressed. We barely got in the tourney and while we beat annually overrated Rice that was the high point. Rob has not grown the program in his 9 years and to take a step back was failure.

They were OK. We need to get much better, Win a Super Regional and go Win in Omaha.

It was neither. It was another ok season. Hopefully we improve next year.

Not horrible, not great. Just so. Won't get you where you want to go. I did not mean that to rhyme, it just came out that way. "Wait till next year", will be written on our baseball grave. Watched what can happen to programs when the right coach is at the helm. UV and Vanderbilt have never been relevant until their present coaches came to their respective universities. I can only imagine what we could do with a coach like those two.

Gig'em, Ole Army Class of '70

Expectations where managed. Pass out the champain

Next year should give a better indication of which way this team is going to head.

Go Aggies. Let head to Omaha and win some games there.

>-------------<
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Typical RC season...we have seen 9 years of this and we will see the same next year, and the next year, and the next year and so on and so on until change happens.

The word for the team would be disappointing.

The word for the coaches would be failure.

I know this is supposed to be about the coaches, but failure would have been hanging your head and letting your February and March become your whole season. There was a point in the season with about 7 weeks left that the team was looking at 7 straight weekends against ranked teams, a few on the road against tough competition, and some tough Tuesdays to boot and beat the odds to make the postseason while playing some of the best teams in college baseball.

The team played some good baseball toward the end of the year, and we got some great performances on both sides of the ball. Not failure by any means, though I'm certain everyone involved would have liked to play for a few more weekends.

[This message has been edited by Lance Uppercut (edited 6/30/2014 6:23p).]

W,

Excellent comparison. That 2002 football team had a tonof talent. I think 6 draft picks in that senior class. Also had Reggie, TMurph, Greg Porter, etc. Yet they struggled and only went on a run because of an internal coaching change (Sumlin taking over for Babers after a rough start offensively that year). Despite the turnaround and a team that showed a good bit of young promise with Reggie as a freshman, our administration made the right move and forced that RC to retire after a long stretch of winning seasons but continually coming up just short. The 3 or so years of downward trending performance was enough despite having a new promising star quarterback.

Then we have the 2014 aggie baseball team. The only difference is this RC has been here just 9 years instead of ~13. The other difference is this RC coaches baseball, not football. If this was football, RC would be gone...

quote:

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Not failure by any means,

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Yeah. Yeah it was

season was a D +
which on a pass fail basis is a
Fail

quote:

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our administration made the right move and forced that RC to retire after a long stretch of winning seasons but continually coming up just short

---

So you think our football program under Fran was better than it would have been under RC. The results don't agree with you. Hypothetically we would have been better to keep RC and groom Sumlin to take over around 2005. But I don't see how anyone can say that replacing RC with Fran was the "right move". Of course hindsight is 20/20.

Slocum isn't technically retired. He still has a position making, I think, 6 figures annually at A&M.

Jeff, no where did I say we hired the right guy, but please continue to put words in my mouth. As for replacing this RC, we will have the same challenge of replacing him with the right fit...

You said we made the right move but history shows you don't know that. In fact we went downhill for a long time after firing RC.

Some firings are easy because there is lots of upside and little downside (Watkins) while others aren't as easy (Slocum). Your opinion doesn't get to determine if a firing was right or not, only history decides.

Given that you have an incomplete look at history, I would certainly disagree. Hiring and firing are two different acts. Just because you get one wrong does not mean that other was wrong. And you are right, I am stating an opinion. In my opinion, it was time for RC to go. If he couldn't field an above .500 team with that roster (starting defense was something like: Ty Warren, Marcus Jasmin, Johnny Jolly, Terrence Kiel, Sammy Davis, Sean Weston, Jaxson Appell, Brian Gamble, Jerrod Penright, Jared Morris, Randall Webb, Jesse Hunnicutt (can't remember which 4 linebackers typically started) - throw in a WR corps of Bethel Johnson, Jamaar Taylor, Terrence Murphy, and Greg Porter). To top it off, that roster was almost all graduating with just a few exceptions in terms of key contributors. We had 6 draft picks from that senior class. Key contributors from those I listed above that returned in 2003? Jaxson Appell, TMurph, Johnny Jolly (who did not start technically because Linnis Smith, a senior, did I believe) and Jared Morris?

So yeah, if a coach stacks a team with quality seniors and can't win more than 6 games and he is as old as RC was, it was time to go. Oh and by the way, here were our wins that year: Ulala, La Tech, Pitt, Baylor, Kansas, and OU. So 1 good team, 1 average team, and 4 bad teams. We were thumped by Texas by 30, only scored 3 points against VaTech, and lost to unranked Tech, OSU, Nebraska and Mizzou. In 2001, we were 0-3 against ranked teams. In 2000 we were 1-2 against ranked teams. So in a 3 year span where we played a grand total of just 9 ranked teams, we went 21-15 and 2-7 against ranked teams (beat OU in 2002 and Kstate in 2000).

Given our resources, it was not a good season IMO.