Thoughts on Esposito hire?
“Coach Esposito’s duties will include serving as the hitting and catching coach, coach third base and assist Coach Rooney with our recruiting efforts.”
Esposito is a familiar name in The American Athletic Conference, coming over from Wichita State, where he spent the 2018 and 2019 seasons as the hitting coach and recruiting coordinator.
I think it’s a solid hire for who we are able to bring in. He’s supposedly a very strong recruiter going back to his days at South Carolina and they did have great success when he was there.
I posted this in another thread, but it applies here:
True, South Carolina’s strength during his years as hitting coach was their pitching. In his 5 years there as hitting coach, only 2 of them saw the team score more than 330 runs (around 5.5 runs per game); both years they did, they made the super regionals. They did make the NCAA tourney one other year he was there when they managed 330 runs in 62 games on the season, but that was mainly due to their pitching which was giving up less than 3 runs per game.
In Couch’s 1st season there, they scored 390 runs in 63 games…last year that fell to 308
Looking at Esposito’s Wichita State’s years, they scored 375 runs in his 1st year there, which was the highest total they’d had since 2013 when they scored 376 runs and was the last time they went to the NCAA tourney. Last year, that total fell to 331 which is about what they averaged during the Todd Butler years.
But, scoring 330 runs in a season would probably mean that we’re going to the NCAA tourney. Every year under Whiting (not counting the 1st one) that we scored over 320 runs in a season ended up in an NCAA tourney berth. The two recent years that we missed the tourney: 2016 - 289 runs in 59 games and 2019 - 278 runs in 56 games.
So, on the surface, I don’t think this is a home run hire, but it’s not a bad hire. We’ll have to wait and see.
I also find it a little funny that we now have the guy that Trip Couch replaced at South Carolina (albeit with a completely new staff).