FSU Baseball: Clock ticking on Mike Martin to turn around final year
By Jason Parker
FSU baseball is in real danger of not making the NCAA Tournament if they can’t turn things around quickly – and it all goes back to their longtime coach.
It was just March 9th of this year that the FSU baseball team was sitting pretty as a team ranked in the top six nationally with a 13-1 record that included a victory over Virginia Tech that allowed longtime head coach Mike Martin, in his final season, to become the first coach in any sport with 2,000 wins in a career.
Exactly one month later, the Seminoles dropped their 11th straight game to the Florida Gators – part of a 1-16 record against their rivals that includes being swept in the regular season the last four years – that has seen the Noles lose 12 of their last 18 games during the 2019 season that is going downhill fast.
It has led to recent predictions for the upcoming NCAA Tournament having the Seminoles traveling for the postseason (like Baseball America sending them to Starkville) – with others wondering if this could end up being the first time the Noles don’t make the postseason since the 1977 campaign, which was three years before Martin started his tenure as head coach.
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For longtime fans of the Seminoles, this is just the continuing story of late with Martin behind the wheel of the ship – a hot start is met by a collapse when they face real competition and the hope that things can turn around in time for the postseason.
As I wrote last summer when it was announced that Martin would be given a final season and a chance to get that elusive wins record, it hurts personally to be critical about the longtime skipper of my alma mater because what he has done in the sport will not be matched and what he has done to make the Noles an elite program in college baseball should be praised.
But, the recent slide further proves that the current game of college baseball has passed him by and that he was given this season to get a record for wins that wasn’t about the team but about etching his name in the history books at the risk of again not bringing home a national championship that has eluded the Noles since he took over in 1980.
The recent 6-12 record includes a somewhat understandable series loss to a ranked N.C. State team, but also includes the the following:
- That previously mentioned sweep against a Gators team that had a losing record (7-8) since beating the Seminoles back on March 12th heading into Tuesday’s game
- Losing two out of three to a Miami team that had losses to FAU, Columbia and ACC Coastal last place team Pittsburgh in the week and a half before playing the Noles
- Dropping two out of three to ACC Atlantic last place Boston College and needing extra innings to win the series against next to last place Notre Dame along with midweek losses to Jacksonville and UCF
Now, Martin defenders will point out that he isn’t the one on the field making the plays during the FSU baseball losses and they would be right – but as the old cliche goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results…and this is literally the same story we have been seeing for the better part of a decade now.
Can FSU baseball turn things around like they have in seasons before ahead of the postseason? Of course they can – and for the record, I would love to be incredibly wrong and watch the Seminoles finally make it to Omaha and finish things off with the first College World Series title in program history.
But history shows that more likely than not, it will end again with the Seminoles coming up empty handed – and for Martin to get that extra season as a goodwill gesture to get an individual milestone (or to make up for the Bobby Bowden fiasco) was the wrong thing to do.
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Martin’s legacy will forever place him as one of the best, if not the best, to ever run a college baseball team – but that reason alone should not have given him a free ride for another season of subpar work at this point.