Well when I have a baseball coach who's finished under .500 the last two seasons with all his own players and coaches in a high school baseball hotbed and couldn't even make his own conference tournament last season, I know the first thing I want to do is run out and sign him to a three-year extension.

Wait, that's not what I want to do at all. But that's what Doug Woolard did. Lelo Prado is with us through 2014. At least 2014.

There is some disagreement about this move. Toro can't believe Lelo got three more years. I can't believe he got one more year, after last season. You have a new baseball stadium that you spent a lot of money on, and a bunch of fancy $500 season ticket seats to move. Eventually the buzz will wear off and attendance will again be driven by how good you are. Why in the hell would you bring Lelo back for more based on past results, or lack thereof? And for three years, which implies that we have faith in him when the program is in no better shape than it was when he started in 2007.

Last year's team was painful to watch. They had pitching, but just an anemic offense (slash line of .262/.345/.338, no power, not much speed, required a ton of effort to score runs). It's boring baseball, which would be fine if you were winning, but it's not winning baseball either. And there's a limit to the excuse about how bad the old facilities were, because why would the team be getting worse even after the new stadium is under construction and recruits know they'll get a chance to play in it before long?

It doesn't make any sense to me. But I did come up with one good reason why Lelo would get an extension for doing such a thoroughly mediocre job: Because Doug Woolard hired him, and Doug Woolard can't admit his mistakes.

It's not like you had to buy him out of an expensive contract. It's not like you wouldn't have people interested in an opening. It's not like you aren't surrounded by a gold mine of baseball talent, playing in a weak conference, and in a brand-new stadium. We don't think we have unrealistic expectations on this site. But what sport on campus is set up to succeed better than baseball? USF should be a Big East title contender in baseball every year. Not finishing below .500 in consecutive years and missing the conference tournament completely and bombing out by Thursday in the years it does qualify. This isn't men's basketball, with all its inherent problems. Coaching baseball at USF is not even close to being the toughest job in America. How many positives are being squandered here?

Ah, but maybe Woolard thinks replacing Lelo would be held against him and make him look weak. No, it would make you look like you care about this actually becoming the best athletic department in the Big East like you keep saying, instead of being one that settles for below average. You could decide to make a move and tell everyone, "We want to be better than this," and no one would bat an eye. In fact, you'd get credit from people for striving to be better. But just like so many of USF's other problems, it looks like it's being punted down the road so hopefully it will go away, or someone else will deal with it.

Yes, USF Baseball has performed poorly all season. A seven game conference losing streak that was finally snapped yesterday is why they were in this position in the first place. But what happened to them today seemed almost to be just mean.

The Bulls needed just one of the trio of Big East Champion Connecticut, Louisville, or Georgetown to win today, combined with a win themselves to make the conference tournament in Clearwater. Down 3-1 heading into the 9th, it seemed irrelevant what happened everywhere else. But they load the bases with no one out without the ball leaving the infield, and all of a sudden there's life. After a walk by Todd Brazeal and a fielders choice, Luis Llerena lays down a bunt that's scored as a single, which scores Brazeal and gives the Bulls the miracle win.

A wild celebration ensues on the field, but it goes for naught as all three other games break the wrong way, and USF will be sitting at home instead of across the bay in Clearwater next week.

For sure the Bulls have no one to blame but themselves. They went from 12-6 in the league to 14-13 in three weeks, and haven't shown much offensive punch all season. But to think you just pulled off a miracle win to keep your season alive, only then to find out it was worthless, is just cruel and unusual punishment.

As Adam Adkins reported yesterday, all indications are that Lelo Prado will return next season, but the seven seniors honored before the game today shall not. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors whether that involves baseball or not (check out this piece from Adkins on third basenan Jonathan Koscso to see that sometimes student-athletes indeed go pro in something other than sports), and hope they remain active members of the Bulls family.

USF baseball was in a must win situation tonight against Pitt, and the Bulls came through big time defeating the Panthers 7-2 at the New Red McEwen Field in Tampa. Starting pitcher Kyle Eastham was fantastic on the mound, only giving up a 2-run home run to David Chester in 7 innings of work tonight.

The Bulls once again opened the scoring, as James Ramsey's RBI triple knocked in Jonathan Koscso in the bottom of the 3rd. USF tacked 3 more runs in the bottom of the 4th after Alex Mendez' 2-run home run was followed up by a Koscso RBI single.

After Pitt got it back to 4-2, the Bulls tacked on 3 runs in the 7th and 8th to put it away. With the bases loaded and one out in the 7th, Daniel Rockhold lifted a sac-fly and Junior Carlin's 2-run RBI single in the 8th finished off the scoring.

USF still has a couple of ways to get into the Big East Tournament next week in Clearwater. The Bulls must win to have any chance, but a win plus a loss by either Seton Hall, Notre Dame (ND trails Louisville 7-5 in bottom of the 8th), or Cincinnati will push Coach Prado's club through to next week.

CHAOS ALERT: After Louisville's win over Notre Dame tonight, there is no chance for a 4-way tie this year. However, there can still be a 3-way tie for 7th if USF and Notre Dame win, and both Seton Hall and Cincinnati lose tomorrow.

- PRADO WILL RETURN: Surprised it hear it that early, but Adam Adkins of the Tampa Tribune tweeted that Lelo Prado will return to USF next year after talking to Athletic Director Doug Woolard. I'm sure we will go more in depth on this topic later.

The USF Bulls baseball team could not hold on to an early 4-0 lead, as the Pittsburgh Panthers came back to win 6-5 in the series opener at the USF Baseball Stadium.

The Bulls scored four in the first inning on two-run home runs by Sam Mende and James Ramsay (an inside-the-park homer). Pittsburgh started chipping away at the lead in the second, when Travis Whitmore launched a solo home run over the fence to make it 4-1. After an RBI single by David Chester made it 4-2, Pittsburgh tied the game in the fifth after two more solo home runs by Chester and Kevan Smith, and then took the lead after Daniel Rockhold's errant throw let a Panther score all the way from second.

The Bulls tied the game right back in the bottom of the 5th as Jonathan Koscso hit an RBI double down the left-field line to score Chad Taylor. But Pitt scored the game winning run in the 7th inning off starter Randy Fontanez, when Casey Roche laced an two-out RBI single.

The Bulls are now one game out of 8th place in the Big East standings after Seton Hall came back from a 2-0 deficit in the 9th inning and beat Georgetown 3-2 in 11 innings. In order to qualify for the Big East tournament in Clearwater next week, USF will now have to win one more game than Seton Hall the rest of the weekend, or win the remaining two games and hope for Notre Dame to be swept by Louisville.

CHAOS ALERT: The four-team tie for 7th is still viable after Rutgers defeated West Virginia tonight.

With the Big East baseball tournament just a week away, three teams have already punched their ticket to Clearwater, while seven teams battle for the last five positions. UConn, St. John's and Pittsburgh are all guaranteed a spot in the tournament, and every team except Villanova and Georgetown can still make the eight-team field. Here are the current Big East standings, with the tiebreakers included:

• Rutgers owns the tiebreaker over Seton Hall.
  
• Seton Hall owns the tiebreaker over Louisville.
• USF owns the tiebreaker over Seton Hall and Rutgers.
• Louisville owns the tiebreaker over USF, Rutgers, West Virginia, and Cincinnati.
• Notre Dame owns tiebreaker over USF, Seton Hall, and Rutgers.
• West Virginia owns the tiebreaker over USF, Notre Dame, Seton Hall, and Cincinnati.
• Cincinnati owns the tiebreaker over Seton Hall.
  

After the jump, a look at the weekend matchups and see what each team has to do to make the Big East tournament.

Continue reading this post »

USF baseball continues their freefall down the Big East standings after being swept by Notre Dame over the weekend.

The Bulls lost the opener to the Fighting Irish 8-0 on Friday. Randy Fontanez could only go two innings before being pulled due to an illness. He was shaky early on, giving up a two-run homer to Eric Jagielo in the bottom of the 1st, but retired the next five batters before being pulled. Zack Pietrzyk did a good job in relief of Fontanez, going scoreless for the next five innings. But Pietrzyk and Andrew Loynaz gave up a 6 spot in the 8th inning as the game got away.

The Bulls did not fare any better in the doubleheader on Saturday. USF had their best shot for victory in the first game, as they had a 5-4 lead going into the bottom of the 6th. Matt Reed and Jimmy Moran gave up five runs in the inning, including a monster three-run shot by Trey Mancini to give Notre Dame an insurmountable 9-5 lead. The Fighting Irish tacked on another run in the 7th to claim game one of the doubleheader 10-5. In the finale, the Irish busted out to a 6-1 lead and the Bulls could not get it any closer than 6-3.

Going into the final weekend of the season, the Bulls are in 9th place in the Big East standings, a half-game behind 8th-place Seton Hall and a full game behind 7th-place Louisville. USF will play a red-hot Pitt at the New Red, but will need to at least win the series against the Panthers, plus get some help from either Georgetown (playing Seton Hall) or Notre Dame (against Louisville) to have any chance to play in the Big East Tournament that USF is hosting over in Clearwater.

If they miss the conference tournament, this will probably be the end of the Lelo Prado era at USF.

FROM: Voodoo 5
TO: Ken DeCelles, GarySJ

I read Toro's post about our offensively inept baseball team, and noticed he stopped short of making any conclusions other than it will take a Big East tournament run to get into the NCAAs. (Of course, that's assuming they actually qualify for that tournament, and since they're 7-5 and haven't faced any of the top teams in the league yet, even that might be in question.)

There's also this uncomfortable stat. According to CollegeSplits.com, who has their own power ranking system, as of April 21 USF is the 10th best baseball team... in Florida. Every public university in the state that plays Division I baseball is ranked higher than USF except for Florida A&M and Florida Gulf Coast, who kicked our asses twice already this year. Jacksonville and Stetson are also ahead of the Bulls, and Bethune-Cookman isn't very far behind. We're just barely the top-ranked school that's abbreviated USF -- San Francisco is only two spots behind. That's horrible, even with the inferior facilities that existed before this year. Is it time for a change?

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FROM: Ken DeCelles
TO: Voodoo 5, GarySJ

It could be time for a change. It might be different if this was a young team going through some growing pains, but as Toro pointed out, there are a lot of upperclassmen in the everyday lineup.

And the fact that we are the 10th best team in the state is horrible.

I would have been happy with Lelo getting one more season if the team showed improvement earlier, but now I'm ready for a change. Some coach from a smaller program around the state will see a gold mine with the new facilities and the amount of talent in the Bay area.

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FROM: Voodoo 5
TO: Ken DeCelles, GarySJ

He's been here five years, so these are all his players. The offense is so bad that he's resorted to bunting in just about any late-inning comeback situation instead of having his hitters swing away and try to get more than one run across. There's no telling how much damage he let Lazer do to the current pitchers when he was the pitching coach (and to the prospects of getting top-flight college pitching prospects to sign here as long as Lelo's still in charge). Louisville got substantially better after he left. And who's to say that the kids he's recruiting (who are at least somewhat highly thought of) don't take a look at this team and its historical struggle to get players into pro baseball and decide, "You know what, I think I'll just go ahead and get drafted and sign"?

Continue reading this post »

WP: Pietzryk (3-1)    LP: Griffin (1-1)

The USF Bulls baseball team kept its momentum from their series victory at Seton Hall over the weekend with a quality non-conference win over the 18th ranked Stetson Hatters tonight at the New Red McEwen Field in Tampa. USF was able to get to Griffin quickly in the first inning to take a 2-0 lead. After leadoff man Jonathan Koscso was hit by a pitch to start things off for the Bulls, Junior Carlin followed up with a nice opposite field double to put men on 2nd and 3rd with no outs. Sam Mende came up next, and hit a grounder up the middle that was able to get through the infield for a 2-RBI single.

The Bulls grabbed 1 run in the 2nd off of an error by Stetson 3B Ben Carhart, and brought in 2 more in the 3rd inning after James Ramsay's 2-RBI double brought home Chad Taylor and Jimmy Falla to give the Bulls a 5-0 lead.

This was more than enough for the Bulls pitching staff tonight, led by converted reliever Zach Pietzryk. In his first start of the season, Pietzryk went 3 innings, giving up 2 hits and striking out 2 Hatters. Kyle Parker, Andrew Loynaz, Junior Carlin, and Kevin Quackenbush all chipped in out of the bullpen and help secure one of the best wins of the season for Coach Lelo Prado's club.

The Bulls travel to Kentucky to start a 3 game series with Louisville on Thursday.