Texas baseball coach David Pierce has called for a changeup. He’s letting go of pitching coach Sean Allen.
The move couldn’t have been easy for Pierce. Allen has been on his staff for the past 11 seasons, moving with him from Sam Houston to Tulane and eventually to Austin. But if it wasn’t easy for Pierce, imagine how Allen feels? He started at UT as the batting coach before taking over for pitchers. He’s also UT’s recruiting coordinator. Thanks to the excellent reporting from @ZachattheDisch and @AaronLittleOB , we know he feels, “stunned and completely blindsided.”
Pierce is clearly putting the blame for what was ultimately a disappointing season on an unsettled pitching staff.
“Honestly, we’ve been fighting to get our roles set and it’s been a work in progress for literally three months,” explained Pierce after Texas lost to Texas A&M, 10-2, on Sunday. “You know, we pitch behind and when we got ahead we didn’t have a wipe out pitch to move to the next hitter.”
Texas (47-22) came into the season as the consensus number one team in the country. The expectations were that UT could ride a wave of solid starting pitching deep into Omaha, and potentially the College World Series title.
However, an injury to Tanner Witt shook up the starting staff. Tristan Stevens tried to fill the role but he struggled mightily before being relegated to the bullpen. Allen was never able to come up with the answers to who should be the Sunday starter or how to develop bullpen arms capable of not posting crooked numbers.
“Just overcoming big innings has been kind of the story of the last three months and it popped us today,” said Pierce following Sunday’s loss. “I think it just has worn on the position players and felt like at that point, you’re just constantly playing uphill. So maybe it just caught up to us, that feeling.”
Allen won D1Baseball’s Assistant Coach of the Year in 2021 when UT pitchers had a combined 2.93 ERA. That staff included an eventual first-round pick in Ty Madden, the 32nd overall pick in the 2021 MLB draft.
It has been interesting to see the reaction to Allen’s firing on the message board. About half of you are outraged that Pierce could can someone who has done a lot for Texas the past couple of seasons. The other half seem to think this was a well-earned move and applaud Pierce for making it.
As I stated on the thread announcing his firing, I really thought Allen would get a head coaching job before he got fired. And if he had landed another gig after last season, there would have been plenty of hand wringing and gnashing of teeth over his loss.
I don’t know if moving on from Allen was the right move. He certainly is well respected and you would think he would have earned some grace for his previous work. But I do know this, if Texas had any kind of bullpen at all then this season would have been much, much different.
TULO’S TA-TA? (IT MEANS ADIOS)
Troy Tulowitzki may be the next coach out the door. The California native is in Los Angeles interviewing for the USC job.
Tulowitzki is actually a “volunteer” coach for Texas … which is a word that should be scrapped from the position title because it is incredibly misleading. He is, in reality, Texas’ infield and hitting coach. Incidentally, those are two areas where Texas really shined this year.
Texas may have been to Omaha more than any other team, but USC has won more titles than anyone else.
However, USC is not the job it used to be. The Trojans haven’t won it all since 1998, and they haven’t even been to Omaha since 2001. But ask any scout and they’ll tell you once you see a player put a skill on tape, then you know he can do it again. USC can do it again.
The Trojans need to invest some serious capital in upgrading their infrastructure. They also need NIL money to help boost recruiting. But they are a tradition-rich school right smack dab in the middle of one of the most fertile baseball territories in the world. One out of every five U.S.-born players in the Major Leagues last year was born in California. Tulowitzki, with his MLB experience and local knowledge, can do very well recruiting home-grown talent to USC.
If Sean Allen is respected in the business, Troy Tulowitztki is a star in the making. If the Trojans hire Tulo, it’s hard to imagine him not being successful.
WHAT ABOUT PIERCE?
There were plenty of you questioning whether Pierce is the answer at UT on the message boards Sunday evening and I get it. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with you, for now, but the question isn’t exactly crazy.
Pierce provided a pretty good defense for himself during the postgame press conference following the loss to A&M (it still pains me to write that).
“This group has been to Omaha three out of the last four years,” said Pierce. “Even at the University of Texas, you can't take that for granted. It's hard to get here. Definitely harder to win, but it's really tough to sustain what our program has sustained.”
He’s right. Going to Omaha three out of the last four years is definitely an accomplishment. Of course, just getting to Omaha may be celebration worthy at many schools, but at Texas, it’s the expectation. In two of those appearances, Texas went two-and-que. That doesn’t exactly cut the mustard at UT.
But that quote also provides a pretty good argument for those asking if he’s the right man for the job.
The group he’s talking about being to Omaha three out of the last four years is gone, or likely will be gone.
Pete Hansen, Trey Faltine, Skyler Messinger, Silas Ardoin and Eric Kennedy are all leaving (or will likely leave).
Oh, and there’s a guy named Ivan Melendez who will not be sending balls over the batter’s eye in center field next year. I swear some of those baseballs are still orbiting the earth as we speak. Who is going to replace him? (Hint, nobody can replace Melendez.)
So Pierce is going to be breaking in basically an entirely new roster – and he’ll be doing it with almost an entirely new coaching staff. No pressure there.
Pierce also talks about sustaining the program. If I’m being brutally honest (and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be), then I think it’s fair to question whether he really has sustained the program.
In addition to two out of three trips to Omaha ending in a two-and-que scenario, Texas has also struggled to win the Big 12 conference. Pierce does have two conference titles on his resume, but he also has a sixth, a ninth and tied for fifth this season. Is this the sustainability anyone is looking for? If he’s struggling to win the Big 12, what is it going to be like when UT moves to the SEC?
Pierce’s decision to fire Allen actually reminds me a little bit of Charlie Strong and Tom Herman (not exactly the two names you want to be invoking while talking about Texas coaches).
The first time I questioned Charlie Strong was when he put together his initial coaching staff. The names he brought in didn’t inspire confidence, and they lived up to their reputations. As Strong’s tenure progressed (is that the right word?) he was forced to make coaching changes to try to solve the problems on the field. The problem with that is, you can only go to that well once. After that, people start thinking the real problem isn’t the assistants, it’s the man in charge.
Tom Herman followed in Strong’s footsteps and made the same mistakes. He was given cart blanche to hire whomever he wanted for his staff and chose to stick with the guys he had in Houston, despite the fact that many of those guys didn’t have experience at UT’s level. Like Strong before him, Herman made staff changes, but the problems persisted.
Will staff changes in the baseball program make this team better? I have no idea. I hope so. The truth is, I always cheer for coaches to succeed. These people’s livelihoods depend on 18-22-year-olds. That’s hardly an enviable position.
But now that Pierce has made the change, he better hope he succeeds because if not, the next time a change needs to be made, it may be his nameplate being removed from the head coach’s office.
