I think you are looking through things in too negative of a light. I agree that Earley is still learning how to be a head coach, but I also think he has the ability to learn a lot of things with what went wrong last season and adjust.
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Earley still had plenty of fire power in Jace, Henseler, Kent, Bear, Royo, Kiel, Kash.
Here you state two transfers that weren't expected to start in Bear and Royo, and a true freshman in Kiel. I would not consider that fire power. Also Kash was battling back and hamstring injuries all season. Now, I do think each guy mentioned could improve at the plate with discipline, but the 3 returning guys were most definitely not stars entering last year.
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Next it took Earley forever to figure out who his guys were. The first base experiment was a mess and why did it take so long to find a C. Not to mention the love affair with Frescorn and the underdevelopment or poor management of Kaeden Wilson and Luke Jackson who seem to get put in the game when they had to be perfect.
Here you mention areas that I don't think are fair to knock Earley. Most teams have some sort of positional battles in the year and don't forget Schloss started Bindy the year prior as well before benching him. Freshcorn was reportedly looking good entering the year and its not like we had all that much depth in the bullpen. As for Kaiden and Luke, Kaiden did improve from the previous year but was still inconsistent as a sophomore and Luke never had great command. If anything there was improvement for Luke from the year before as a RS Freshman under Weiner.
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After turning a corner against TN, SC, and Arky last years players were going to show the pie hole in Austin what was up. The problem is it did not look like Earley had a game plan. t.u. was super thin a P and our guys did not try to work counts and chew through the few P that t.u. had.
I agree that it appeared like we turned a corner. We were abysmal in the start and it felt like things were looking up. I'd very much argue that tu wasn't where it went wrong. Even after losing Jared Spencer, that team had a lot of depth at pitching. They were 6th in the nation and 1st in the SEC in ERA. It's a shame we got swept, but they were rolling at the time and we barely lost each game by a run on the road. We were outplayed and probably out coached, but by the smallest of margins. That was not the same poor play that we had when we got swept by Bama and Vandy.
Where everything went wrong was Mizzou. I still can't wrap my head around that series. It's why I was fine if we moved on from Earley at the end of the season. That being said, the team had fight after that series. I had no issue losing 2/3 to a good Georgia team on the road and in the SEC tournament we beat Miss St and Auburn without Sorrell, and forced a fresh LSU to burn Anderson and Eyanson to beat us with a broken hand Jace and depleted pitching staff.
Its one of those things where you can look at the midseason improvement in Tenn, Arky and LSU series and the amount of injuries last year to see an optimistic point of view where things can head, or you can see the #1 preseason ranking, start of the year, and Mizzou series to declare Earley a bust. The truth is this year will be much more of a determinate to his future. Earley has reported to make changes, we will see if he grows or its status quo and the job is just too much for him at this time.
