YESKI - IT BEGS THE QUESTION . . . .

It's a valid question to which we prolly won't know the answer to for a few more seasons. Based on our upcoming recruiting classes, we should be competitive in conference moving forward. I'd say if we aren't finishing near the top of the PAC and making postseason most years, then we can question player development, or the coaching approach, in general.

Oregon State's slugging percentage this year was .422.  That is the second-highest since 2008.  (Oregon State obviously hit better in 2018.)  Oregon State won a National Championship slugging .415 in 2007 back with the juiced bats.  The batters struck out less often per game than in 2019 or 2020.  Strikeouts are still high but trending in the right direction.  I am not buying that hitting was not there.

Kevin Abel was not 2019 Kevin Abel.  Cooper Hjerpe was worse statistically than Abel, except in HBPs.   I mean, you never want your 1-2 starters to go 6-11.  That is terrible.

Andrew Susac was great.  In 2011, everyone expected him to be great.  But Sam Gaviglio was a Sunday starter for most of the year (he became the Saturday starter after Tanner Robles went down) with a 5.60 ERA in 2010.  Everyone thought that, unless someone else stepped up, Oregon State's pitching would be toast.  Matt Boyd was a sophomore reliever.  Osich was great but was coming off Tommy John surgery and had missed all of 2010.  Tyler Smith was a sophomore who had hit .247 his freshman year.  And he hit .221 in 2011.  And those were Oregon State's five most talented players.

Nate Esposito was still in high school in 2011.

Cam Booser, Kavin Keyes, Jake Rodriguez and Scott Schultz were all incoming freshmen in 2011.  Only Rodriguez was really highly-regarded.  Booser and Schultz were mentioned as having potential.  Getting anything out of Keyes was a bonus.  Booser had two starts but then got hurt and transferred out.  Ryan Dunn and Brian Stamps were junior college transfers.  Stamps hit .237 in junior college.  Dunn was even less highly-regarded.  

James Nygren had a 7.53 ERA in 2010.  After Booser's arm started to go, Nygren took over the fourth pitching spot, occasionally fielding the third pitching spot, depending on how Ben Wetzler was pitching.

Ryan Gorton had a 5.30 ERA and was also a .231 hitter in 2010.  Gorton was even worse in 2011.  Part of the reason was that he was the emergency back-up catcher after both Rodriguez and Susac broke their hands.

I disagree that anyone who thought that Oregon State would finish eighth was a fool.  They underestimated how big of a jump that Gaviglio and Nygren would take and underestimated how good Dunn, Keyes, Rodrigues, Schultz and Stamps would play that is for sure.

Five major leaguers in 2011, but the only ones that played like it were Gaviglio and Susac.  Matt Boyd got out-pitched by Tony Bryant.  Boyd obviously had potential but the question was whether he would take the next step or not.  Josh Osich pitched great one game but had a very up-and-down year and looked like he was pitching hurt, which he was.  Tyler Smith hit .221.  Smith was All-Pac-12 First Team in 2012.  The potential was there, Smith just had not put it together yet. 

There is no way that you look at 2011 and say definitively that Boyd, Osich and Smith do what they do thereafter.  Booser, Gorton and Wetzler also did not play like surefire future pros.  Gorton's hitting came on in 2012, and he was drafted as a catcher.  Gorton transitioned back into a pitcher in 2014 and made it to AA.

This is a great point, and it gets to the crux of why I disagree with the point made by Henry Skrimshander  

To me, it looks like we had a very talented squad.  Oregon State's slugging percentage was the second highest in 2021 (behind 2018) in the last 13 years.  Oregon State was a better-hitting baseball team than the 2007 team that won the National Championship with juiced bats.

To me, it looks like Canham has done a great job at recruiting and developing players.  My issue is that it does not seem to me like he has not done a good job at evaluating players that he has and use them in a way that makes sense.  The whole switching lineups every single game until settling on one on the final game of the season.  Using Mully as a one-size-fits-all bullpen solution as often as we did and as early in games as he was often used.  The use (or general lack-of-use and overuse of certain pitchers) of one of the deepest and best bullpens in Oregon State history in the manner in which we did.  Abel did not bounce back the way that we hoped. It would have been nice for there to be a plan for that possibility, but there never was one.  I would like for there to be a method to the madness, but the results seem to point to the more probably conclusion that the problem was too much madness and too little method.

To some extent, I am hopeful that getting a new catcher and letting some of the pitchers, who were recruited by Yeskie, out of the program helps to right the staff.  The Oregon State that we saw in the last four wins was the Oregon State that we should have seen all year long and with Melton added to a very potent mix.  Instead, we saw a lot of great baseball that resulted in far too many losses for the level of talent and effort that I saw on this team.

There is a lot of reasons for optimism in 2022, but there should be at least some reason for concerns about the growing pains with Canham seemingly learning on the job.