Geoff Collins was 24-35 overall as a head coach and 9-25 at Georgia Tech when we needed to hire a new offensive coordinator. He was on the hot seat because we were losing to FCS and G5 teams, and getting blown out of the stadium every time we played somebody half-decent.
Danny Hall is going to retire as one of the top 20 winningest head coaches in college baseball history, and one of the top 2 coaches in Georgia Tech history, arguably #1. People want CDH to step down because he hasn’t had success recently in the post-season. Post-season baseball has some of the most random outcomes of any athletic tournament format.
Those 2 scenarios are drastically different. We just hired the assistant pitching coordinator of the Atlanta Braves. An organization that has been scouting and developing some of the best young arm talent in the world for the past several years. Matt Taylor has also been in and around the Atlanta area for a good portion of his coaching career. He’s seen all of the local talent and how they get recruited
I’m really not sure what else some of y’all could’ve wanted or expected.
A few things here:
1. You've missed the ENTIRE point of my post. This isn't a Collins vs Hall comparison, but more a comparison of where the coaches were when making a hire. I'm not defending nor advocating for this hire. The truth is, I don't follow college baseball enough to know whether this was a good or bad hire. I'm simply putting out a possibility of why this coach was hired as some of our fans seem disappointed in it and expected a more impressive resume. If anything, we're both in agreement about giving Hall the benefit of the doubt with this hire.
2. Regardless of anyone's gold tinted glasses about Hall, to say that an established assistant coach shouldn't worry about their future if they were to make to move to GT baseball is just ignoring the reality of what's going on with GT baseball these days. First, J Batt had to release the dreaded statement of public support for Hall after releasing Borrell. Any coach who had to make a personnel change that was accompanied by public support by the AD means there are some outstanding questions about the program. GTSwarm isn't the only place where retaining Hall has been questioned. Baseball isn't in the forefront of donors concerns like GT football and basketball, but there have been grumblings about moving on from Hall. As long as Big Tex wants Hall at GT, Hall will be at GT. The other side of this is Hall is creeping towards the end of his distinguished career. Even if GT would have made it to the NCAA baseball tournament this year, there would still be questions of how much longer Hall would remain at GT. That also means a good pitching coach (or any assistant coach for that matter) would be hesitant to come here because if Hall were to retire next year, pretty much all coaches on the staff would be at the mercy of the new coach. Assistant coaches, similar to any employee for any job, likes stability.
3. Your use of the Braves organization is a false equivalence. He was there for a season working with pitchers on a minor league team...he was an assistant pitching coordinator at that. To say that the Braves successes with pitchers translates to Matt Taylor being successful at GT is being quite hopeful. Compare that to Danny Borrell who coordinated the pitching program for the ENTIRE farm system of the Yankees. I'm not sure it gets much more impressive than that for a college pitching coach...but we all know how that turned out. If anything, I'd say Taylor's time before GA State working with the Pirates as a scout and his time with the Orioles working on player development would be more in tune with what he'll do at GT scouting prospects for GT and working with them on a day to day basis.
Hall is clearly a Hall of Fame coach, but his issues over that past decade plus are not solely some random bad luck in the postseason.
