As the Missouri Tiger baseball team hurtles toward the worst season in program history, a lot of questions have been brought up about second-year coach Kerrick Jackson and the future of the program.
The Tigers were swept once again over the weekend, moving them to 0-24 in SEC play and placing them two losses short of the program’s single-season record of 36 losses set in 2021.
Missouri baseball hasn’t been a competitive SEC program since joining the conference in 2013, even coming off a Big 12 Tournament championship in 2012, in fact, they haven’t been over .500 in conference play in any year and haven’t come close to .400 in conference play the past four.
But now, they are staring at a zero in the SEC win column and it doesn’t look like there’s much hope with six games remaining against Texas A&M and Mississippi State.
“It’s a challenge right? (Baseball) is an incredibly competitive sport in this league,” Missouri athletic director Laird Veatch said at the Zou to You Tour stop in St. Charles last week. “... We’ve got to continue to do that, continue to support our coach and help him be successful and that’s a process … It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Jackson isn’t the first Tiger coach to stare a winless conference season in the face. He isn’t even the first second-year coach to suffer the fate in the past two years.
Jackson doesn’t have the first-year success of Dennis Gates and the Tiger basketball program to lean back on though.
“We talk all the time,” Jackson said. “... He’s just kind of like, ‘Hey man, I understand what you’re going through and if you need anybody to talk to, let me know.’ And it’s similar situations, right? There was, he had some key injuries.”
It’s hard to argue the futility of the Missouri baseball team is Jackson’s fault. He came in as the lowest paid SEC head coach, had the lowest total investment among the SEC public schools that have to report their financial distributions and works in a stadium that only now is finally moving toward no longer being half turf, half grass.
But recently there have been moves to increase that funding, starting with taking bids to fully turf the field as well as comments from Veatch about sticking with and supporting Jackson.
“I can’t do anything but, you know, admire (Veatch) for that, and be appreciative of him of recognizing, ‘The baseball program isn’t having the success we wanted to have, but we also haven’t done what we need to do to assist them in that,’” Jackson said. “That’s always a good thing. I knew what the job was when I took it and I knew where we were when I took the job.”
All those issues with the program come before you even start to talk about the injury situation the Tigers have dealt with in Jackson’s two seasons.
Just this year, the Tigers lost two position players to Tommy John surgery, a rarity for non pitchers that struck Jackson’s expected shortstop before the season and a freshman outfielder who had been a surprise piece for the Tiger lineup.
Let alone the pitching staff.
Sam Horn missed the majority of the season recovering from his own TJ surgery, Ian Lohse missed significant time, as did Josh Kirchoff, James Vaughn, Daniel Wissler, Nic Smith, Javyn Pimental, Tony Neubeck, Jaylen Merchant, Josh McDevitt and Seth McCartney.
“If you can’t pitch, specifically in this league, it becomes, obviously, really, really tough,” Jackson said.
One of the main issues with college baseball to begin with is there aren’t enough quality pitchers to staff the amount of teams in Division I, and there isn’t a single team that could withstand injuries to 11 pitchers holding them each out for a minimun of a few weeks, while taking others out for months or the full season.
“I’ll be checking to see if you have any eligibility left,” Jackson said to reporters after Lohse’s injury against Texas.
The injury argument only goes so far though, especially in baseball, the sport where, famously, anyone can win any given game.
And the Tigers have been on the losing end of every SEC game they have played so far with only six more SEC games to play, all against tough opponents.
This year has been a failure, there’s no denying it, but as Jackson has liked to say, a full rebuild doesn’t happen in a year or two, the question is whether the administration has bought into his long-term view the way the Tiger players have bought into him as a person.
“I still am very, very confident that we’re going to be successful,” Jackson said.
Stay up to date on all the Mizzou news with your premium subscription.
Talk about this story in the story thread and discuss so much more in The Tiger Walk.
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines.
