3/26/2023 baseball Edit

Column: FSU baseball fix going to be tougher than expected for Link Jarrett

Curt Weiler • TheOsceola

Senior Writer

I didn't have championship aspirations for Link Jarrett in year one atop the Florida State baseball program.

I just felt I had to start this story there to bring the proper perspective. All one had to do was look at the two teams the Seminoles played this week to see that this FSU team, even at its very best, wasn't a likely championship contender.

But 24 games into the Link Jarrett era, I think it's fair to say that everybody expected more than this. Jarrett didn't shy away from why he was brought here in his introductory press conference at his alma mater, outright saying he came back here to bring a championship to Tallahassee.

And yet, with Sunday's 15-4 loss at No. 8 Virginia, the Seminoles are now 12-12 this season. In an unfortunate bit of program history, this is the furthest into a season that FSU has ever been .500 or below.

That's right. FSU, which started playing baseball in 1948, has never before been .500 or worse 24 games or more into a season. That's what a stretch like the one the Seminoles are in the middle of, losing nine of the last 10 games, will do.

While the Seminoles' 6-0 start and series win on the road against a ranked TCU team were promising signs of what things could look like long-term under Jarrett, it seems now they were a mirage.

It doesn't appear that Jarrett will be the miracle worker here that he was at both UNC Greensboro and Notre Dame. There, he brought with him remarkable, immediate improvements both at the plate and in the field. Here, FSU's hot offensive start is looking more and more like the anomaly and the fielding hasn't improved.

The fielding percentage has actually marginally dropped early this season. It was .964 entering Sunday's game after FSU posted .966 and .968 fielding percentages the last two seasons.

Let me say that nothing I've seen through 24 games has dissuaded me from the notion that Jarrett can have great success in Tallahassee and lead the Seminoles to that elusive national title. In fact, not much of what has gone wrong this season is attributable to him or his staff, in my opinion.

While FSU's 44-year NCAA Tournament streak -- tied for the NCAA record -- remains alive, it's been hanging on by a string for a few years now dating back to the end of Mike Martin Sr.'s tenure.

In 2017, FSU was at one point 21-15. In 2019, FSU was at one point 18-12. Both years, there were real doubts if those teams would even make the postseason and both somehow made it to the College World Series. In the 2022 season, FSU was one of the final four teams selected to the NCAA Tournament.

FSU hasn't been a top 16 team and hosted an NCAA Regional since 2018. That's a far cry from what was expected to be essentially an annual occurrence not that long ago.

The program fell off near the end of Martin Sr.'s tenure and got worse instead of better under Martin Jr. It's fairly similar to the FSU football world, where things declined near the end of Jimbo Fisher's tenure and got worse under Willie Taggart.

While it was believed entering the season that Jarrett inherited a better situation than FSU football coach Mike Norvell did, the way the season has played out indicates the two may be more similar than anyone realized.

The state of the roster, one Jarrett inherited far more than built, has been a major hindrance to his debut season at his alma mater. While there are a few pieces to like and build around, the number of obvious issues that would have to be worked around exceeded those positives.

Jarrett has talked candidly about FSU's razor-thin pitching depth and that was before top pitcher Wyatt Crowell went down with an injury, which has forced him to miss the last two weeks with an unclear timeline as to when he could return.

Pair that with a few key injuries in the lineup early this season and it's hard not to feel that Jarrett and the Seminoles have been badly snake-bit during his first season.

Another hindrance was the sizable freshman class that was already on campus by the time he arrived. Many of these incoming freshmen were in attendance at Jarrett's introductory press conference and there are 17 of them in all on FSU's current roster, accounting for nearly half of the 38-man roster.

This FSU roster is about as far on the other end of the spectrum as possible from Jarrett's last Notre Dame team, a veteran-laden group that he and his staff meticulously assembled and developed in their desired image.

This team, simply put, is not that. And its utter lack of upperclassmen, of which there are only eight on the roster, is an indictment of the previous coaching staff.

Jarrett will definitely get plenty of time to turn this around. And his track record of success at less prominent programs would lead you to believe he will.

But snapping the program's illustrious postseason streak would be a tough way for the Tallahassee native to start out at his dream job. As things currently stand with a tough schedule ahead, a lot will have to improve to keep that from happening.