In my recent article about the Southern University Thunderbirds, it was announced by the NCAA, as well as Southern Utah University, that the school was discontinuing the baseball program following the completion of the 2012 baseball season.                 

With a lengthy history and with over 13 players drafted since 1974, a move like this doesn’t make much sense, especially to those looking from the outside. 

I did reach out to Mr. Ken Beazer, SUU’s Athletic Director who took the time to answer some of my questions. 

First was to obviously ask “why would the school move to the Big Sky Conference when they are not a sponsor of baseball as a sport?” 

Ken Beazer:

Southern Utah University's baseball program did move to NCAA Division I status in 1988; however, its baseball history is more robust, dating back to its junior college days in the 60s. 

Our current conference affiliation, The Summit League, is a midwestern conference, making travel extremely difficult and expensive.  Within the Summit League, our closest conference opponent is Oral Roberts located in Tulsa, OK, which is nearly 1,300 miles away from Cedar City, UT. 

The Big Sky Conference provides a much better fit geographically for our programs, which greatly reduces the rigor of travel on our student-athletes and lowers travel costs.  Furthermore, SUU now has geographic rivals within Utah and bordering states, substantially increases fan interest amongst our community. Admission into the Big Sky Conference has been the focus of the University for nearly 20 years. 

It was mentioned in NCAA press release that this move, “puts the University in a better position to advance its intercollegiate athletics programs.” With the basketball and football programs not really outshining the baseball program in any way, how would this move benefit the school?” 

Redirecting the funding resources from baseball into other programs allows the University to bolster current structural weaknesses within the athletics department and definitely provides a stronger financial foundation for academic and athletic success.

Finally, when it comes to collegiate athletics, did the change have anything to with finances or the baseball program losing too much money? 

The decision to discontinue baseball had nothing to do with the baseball program losing too much money.  The decision was weighed extensively over the past year with regards to many factors, such as: conference affiliation, facilities, support staff and limited financial resources.

When it comes down to it, sports is business and sometimes these decisions are very difficult. I greatly appreciate the assistance of Mr. Beazer in understanding this process. It must have been an extremely arduous decision, but one that ultimately had to be made. 

I wish all the best to the Thunderbirds in their final season and wish all the best to Southern Utah and the future of their athletics department in their new journey.

Devon is the founder of The GM’s Perspective

Devon is a former professional baseball player with the River City Rascals and Gateway Grizzlies, and is now an independent scout.

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After the Hogs finished the 2011 season 40-22, ranked No. 14, and winners of the SEC West Division, they were voted preseason No. 4 this week by Baseball America.

With 19 lettermen returning, including 10 pitchers with game experience, all eyes will be on how head coach Dave Van Horn handles his deep rotation and talented team.

Aiding the Hogs' preseason No. 4 ranking are three Arkansas players listed on College Baseball Daily’s Top 100—right-handed junior pitcher DJ Baxendale is ranked No. 25, RHP sophomore pitcher Ryne Stanek No. 57 and 3B/1B sophomore slugger Dominic Ficociello rated No. 75.

Stanek (Overland Park, KS) finished the 2011 season 4-2 with one save while posting a 3.94 ERA. He saved his best stuff for last throwing a complete game against Nevada in regional play and shut down Alabama in the SEC tournament, earning a win for the Hogs.

Ficociello (Fullerton, CA) was awarded a spot on the 2011 freshman All-American team after finishing the season with a .335 batting average and 50 RBI. He led the Razorbacks in several major hitting categories last season including RBIs, doubles (15), and hits (75).

“Fic” was a 2010 draft pick of the Detroit Tigers.

Baxendale (Sylvan Hills High School, AR) was the Friday starter for the Hogs much of last season. He finished the year 10-2 with a 1.58 ERA and earned All-SEC honors.

The scouting report on Baxendale is a great fastball with a lot of movement while mixing in a great breaking ball.

Contributing to the Arkansas No. 27 ranked 2011 pitching staff (3.20 ERA) were two more freshmen All-Americans—Nolan Sanburn and Barrett Astin.

Sanburn worked as a closer for the Hogs earning eight saves and compiling a 2-4 record with a 3.62 ERA. Astin appeared in 27 games, starting three, and finished with a 5-2 record with a 2.71 ERA.

The Hogs will face an uphill challenge in the SEC as always. Seven SEC teams are preseason Top 25 including No. 1 Florida and No. 3 South Carolina. Stanford is ranked No. 2.

Other SEC teams in the Top 25: No. 8 LSU, No. 10 Vanderbilt, No. 11 Georgia and No. 22 Mississippi

Arkansas opens their baseball season Feb. 17 against Villanova at Baum Stadium. 

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The Southern Utah Thunderbirds will cancel their program before the move to the Big Sky Conference in 2012-2013 academic year. 

“The University's pending move to the Big Sky Conference, coupled with the need to redirect resources to add men's tennis, precipitated the decision to eliminate baseball," SUU Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Ken Beazer said in a press release.

It should be mentioned that baseball is not a sponsored sport by the Big Sky Conference, but does require men’s tennis “as a core sport for the 2012-13 academic year.” 

This is not the first team to lose its programs within recent years. Other teams to cut programs in recent years include Cleveland State, Duquesne, Northern Iowa and Vermont.

It’s not as if this is a stumbling first-year program. The program which grew from its junior college days has been in the NCAA since 1988. Southern Utah never advanced past the conference tournament, had above-average seasons for the past five years and had 13 players drafted since 1974.

However, a move to a new conference following the end of this season blows my mind. 

Higher powers are involved, and many factors, no doubt, went in to the decision, but for the moment the program is still alive. Let’s hope the Thunderbirds go out on a high note and give their fans something to remember.

Devon is the founder of The GM’s Perspective

Devon is a former professional baseball player with the River City Rascals and Gateway Grizzlies. He is now an independent scout.

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Erstad, who has to rank in the Top Five on anyone's list of baseball players from North Dakota, is the poster boy for of toughness. In high school he played football, hockey and competed in track and field at Jamestown High School. He played on the Jamestown American Legion baseball team because his high school didn't sponsor a team. Records, state championships and awards, including the AP North Dakota Athlete of the Year in 1992, were hallmarks of Erstad's high school career.

Going on to star in both football and baseball at the University of Nebraska, Erstad was the punter on the 1994 National Championship football team and a 1995 finalist for baseball's Golden Spikes Award. Later that same year he was the No.1 overall pick by the California Angels in the 1995 Major League Baseball amateur draft.

Following a 14-year MLB career with the Angels, including a key role on their 2002 World Championship team, Erstad played for the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros before retiring and returning to Nebraska as a volunteer assistant coach and hitting coach.

The Huskers Big Ten schedule kicks off on February 17 in Peoria, Ariz. against Gonzaga and will feature 31 home games at Hawks Field and 13 games against teams appearing in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, including a series against College World Series-qualifier California. The schedule will feature a full slate against conference foes such as Ohio State, Minnesota and Purdue as well as non-conference opponents.

There is no question that under Erstad, the Huskers baseball squad will work hard, play hard and be aggressive on the base paths in their quest to return to the College World Series.

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Professional coaches commonly refer to players as either "prospects" or "suspects"—there is nothing in between.

As I stood behind a batting cage in 1999, watching rookie professional baseball players take their first rounds of batting practice, the frustration was overwhelming.

Players who had been "sluggers" in college—hitting 15-20 home runs per year, crushing balls 400 feet and driving in scores of runs—were reduced to can-of-corn fly balls and warning track long outs.

Most were left holding a shattered bat in their hands. They walked out of the cage muttering and frustrated. They quickly learned that they could no longer pull a pitch thrown in on their hands. That is the effect an aluminum bat can have on a player.

Aluminum bats were originally adopted by college baseball as a cost-saving measure to replace expensive wood bats. The extra runs and excitement they added were also pluses for the college game.

Aluminum-bat madness peaked during the 1998 season, when the Trojans of Southern California defeated the Arizona State Sun Devils by a unworldly score of 21-14 in the College World Series. Players hit a whopping 62 home runs during the series—including seven in the championship game—and had an astonishing 39 hits.

At that point, the NCAA started to rein in scoring and created rules that would require aluminum bats to perform more like wood. In 2011, they may have finally reached their goal. 

In his article for Kettering University, Dr. David Russell notes that, when metal bats were initially implemented, college batting averages were approximately .265. By 1986, when strict weight limits were put in place, they were .305.

By 1998, when bat performance measures were put in place, averages once again returned to the .300 level. By midseason 2011, averages hovered around .280.

As Russell notes, home runs also swelled with metal bat use. In 1974, teams averaged .450 per game, but that number was over 1.00 by 1998. The new performance standards have brought that number back down to the .450 level again.

On the pitching side, strikeouts over nine innings rose from 5.5 in 1974, to over 7 in 1998. Some of that rise was due, in part, to hitters looking to hit the long ball rather than hitting for average.

ERA's rose from around 3.40 to over 6.00 in 1998. They have since fallen back to 4.50.

The level of "pop" in the bats is controlled by a complicated formula called the BBCOR, or Ball-Bat Coefficient of Restitution. That effectively reduces the speed of the ball coming off a metal bat and increases safety while decreasing the balls' flight distance.

As Dave Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, told the NCAA's Gary Brown:

"Good hitters are still good hitters...Guys coaches don't consider to be good hitters but could still hit for average with the old bats aren't hitting for average anymore." 

Coaches are being forced to take a "wood-bat approach" to the game again—even while continuing to play with metal. That seems to suit the small-ball coaches just fine while frustrating the long-ball coaches.

Coaches still argue about the economic positives of playing with metal versus wood. As reported by the Associated Press, coaches say that "a $300 aluminum bat can last an entire 56-game season, while $100 wooden bats can break at any time." 

There are also vast amounts of money put into programs by bat manufacturers such as Louisville Slugger and Easton Baseball.

The AP reported that manufacturers such as Louisville Slugger and Easton provide free bats and other gear to elite programs. The companies pay coaches up to six figures for agreeing to use their products.

Most of those professional players I saw eventually learned to hit with wood. Many never again hit home runs—particularly not at the pace they did in college. Others struggled, refused to adapt and were out of the game of baseball at the end of the season. 

Prospects will always be prospects. But suspects now don't stand a chance.

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Harvey's move recalls Bryce Harper—the most famous baseball player to skip his final year of high school to expedite his college, and then professional, career.

In 2009, at age 16, Harper earned his GED and skipped his last two years at Las Vegas High School to enroll early at the College of Southern Nevada. The move allowed Bryce to enter the 2010 MLB Amateur Draft.

In 2008, a year before Harper, Levi Michael, of the University of North Carolina, and Trevor Bauer, of UCLA, made the jump. They now have company.

Chris Harvey, the 6'4", 220-pound catcher from Norristown, Pennsylvania, is hoping to be the starting catcher for Tim Corbin's Vanderbilt Commodores this spring.

Harvey would have certainly been a first-round draft choice in the 2012 amateur draft. But the road for catchers, moving from high school to the professional ranks, is often long and bumpy.

Harvey appears to have made a wise investment in committing to the Commodores for the next three years.

Experience in the hyper-competitive SEC will surely develop Harvey's game-calling skills and allow him to mature a bit more physically.

Both will come in very handy in a few years when he does finally make the move from college to professional baseball.

Rather than being a low-round selection who toils in the minor leagues for a few years, Harvey will be close to major-league ready right after he signs his contract.

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ASU was originally notified of the infractions in December of 2010 and ultimately cost Coach Pat Murphy his job. The NCAA Division I Infractions Appeals Committee upheld the infractions they received last year., along with the most of the appealed findings. Two of Arizona State's major infractions were upheld, while a third was reduced from a major to a secondary infraction.

The violations by the ASU baseball program occurred over a five-year period and involved coaching-staff limits, paying student athletes for work they didn't perform, using an impermissible recruiter, and lack of institutional control. 

Penalties, including those that were self-imposed by the school, include a three-year probation, a ban on postseason appearances for three seasons, vacating wins, recruiting restrictions and coaching activity limitations during practice. All are significant penalties for a highly-competitive program like the Sun Devils. 

ASU appealed the violations, claiming that several of the major violations were secondary, meaning they were isolated or inadvertent incidents that provided only a minimal competitive advantage and did not include a recruiting advantage. All of the other violations were considered major. The Sun Devils argued that the penalties were excessive and were overly damaging to the program.

While the committee upheld two of the infractions and reduced the third, the penalties were upheld because the penalties fit the violations. Penalties can be set aside if they are found to be excessive and/or they do not fit with the severity of the infraction. The committee did not feel that any of these were the case. This is a definite blow to the Arizona State program for the next three years.

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The Summit League includes Oral Roberts, Nebraska-Omaha, Missouri-Kansas City, North Dakota State, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Western Illinois, Southern Utah, Oakland, Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and Indiana-Purdue Indianapolis.

It stretches from Utah in the West, Michigan in the East and Oklahoma in the South. As you can well imagine, travel is extensive.

The ORU Golden Eagles have been dominant in the conference, winning 134 conference and tournament championships during their league tenure.

With its emphasis on football, the Summit League hasn't been a great fit for ORU a non-football school, whose emphasis has always been on baseball and basketball, which fits perfectly with Southland Conference programs.

Oral Roberts' admission to the Southland Conference will add another state to the conference that is currently limited to Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

But because of the schools' proximity to one another it won't stretch the travel budget of any school to a great degree.

Current Southland schools include Stephen F. Austin, Texas State, Texas-Arlington, Lamar, Sam Houston, Texas-San Antonio, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, McNeese State, Nicholls State, Central Arkansas, Northwestern Louisiana and Southwestern Louisiana.

Oral Roberts certainly will be a terrific addition to the conference.

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True baseball fans should despise aluminum bats, and here is why.

First and foremost, let me say this.  There are many things that will prevent the NCAA from ever converting 100 percent to wooden bats. 

Sponsorships, contracts, lawsuits…blah blah blah.

Those topics can be covered somewhere else, by someone else. 

Let’s focus on why the “lumber” should be just that, lumber. 

Obviously the No. 1 reason is safety.  Speaking from personal experience, getting hit by a baseball coming off an aluminum bat, or a wooden bat for that matter, does not feel very good. 

Then there are those horror stories of young athletes who were killed by line drives after getting struck by balls that were hit by aluminum bats. 

Would those young men have survived if the hitters were swinging wood? Obviously we will never know. 

But we definitely know, at that level of baseball, those balls would not have the same speed coming off of a wooden bat, as they did off of aluminum.  And yes I realize most of those stories were below the NCAA level, but getting wood in the hands of even younger athletes is whole other topic within itself. 

If wood can make its way into the NCAA, perhaps down the road it can find its way into high schools as well. 

The NCAA likes to argue by saying that all sports have their injury risks.  Well, this is one risk that could be avoided while at the same time improving the sport all together. 

At the college level, the speed of a batted ball is much higher coming off aluminum when compared to wood.  I don’t want to go into the science of it because there is way too much info but, simply put, aluminum bats are much more forgiving and have that nice “trampoline” effect. 

And yes, there have been new regulations made to the specifications pertaining to the aluminum bats that help reduce the trampoline effect and limit the speed of the ball coming off the bat. This in turn reduces the ping sound and makes the bat seem more like wood. 

But if you are going to make such an adjustment, why not just convert to wood all together? 

Don’t you think hitters getting use to wood at a younger age would be better for the game? 

Beyond pitchers, why do you think the draft is such a crapshoot?  Tons and tons of athletes who are regarded as good hitters have flamed out in the minor leagues because of the transition to wood. 

Personally, I would love to see young ball players get some lumber in their hands and hone their skills before teams risk draft picks and tons of money on them. 

It would be good for all levels of the game, especially the MLB. 

Plus, from a pitcher’s perspective, there is nothing more satisfying then sawing off some meat head, watching him pick up the barrel and walk back to the dugout. 

There are many pros and cons as well as many arguments for and against wooden bats below the Major League level. 

Let me hear yours.  

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The seven recruits drafted that will join the 2012 team are:

• OF Joe Serrano, Cincinnati Reds—12th round, 385th overall
• RHP Connor Costello, Cincinnati Reds—16th round, 505th overall
• RHP Brian Anderson, Minnesota Twins—20th round, 628th overall
• RHP Chris Oliver, Baltimore Orioles—27th round, 815th overall
• RHP Greg Milhorn, Detroit Tigers—29th round, 917th overall
• LHP Mark Reyes, Baltimore Orioles—46th round, 1,385th overall
• INF David Masters, Arizona Diamondbacks—50th round, 1,504th overall

Current Players Unsigned: 

• Trent Daniel, a junior left-handed pitcher, was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 23rd round, but will return to play for the Hogs.

2010 Razorbacks Who Signed Professional Contracts: 

• James McCann, Detroit Tigers
• Collin Kuhn, Chicago White Sox
• Kyle Robinson, Chicago White Sox
• Geoffrey Davenport, Cleveland Indians

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