Chris Lemonis: Will He Return Next Season?

With an overall record of 24-23 and 6-18 conference record, many have to be wondering about what's coming next for Chris Lemonis and the Bulldogs.

While people can blame players, talent, better teams, umpires, and refs, it trickles down to one major factor -- the coaching.

This season, the team welcomed back Lemonis once more as the head coach, not far removed from leading the team to the first national title victory in school history.

And after practices and the anticipation leading up to the new season, fans and players expected to see good things come from how they were expected to play. However, that wasn't exactly the case.

A coach that fails to win in this manner is simply not doing what they're paid to do, that's all it boils down to. A 6-18 conference equals out to just a quarter of SEC contests won, and a 4-9 away record shows that the team failed to win even a third of their away games.

It's not the standard of Mississippi State baseball.

Currently, MSU is tied for sixth with Ole Miss in the SEC West for baseball, and by the looks about the condition of the team, it's not expected to get any better.

So the question still remains -- should Lemonis be fired?

The team already parted ways with one coach this season in Scott Foxhall, so it's easy to see a route where MSU athletic director Zac Selmon should take into consideration completely restructuring the coaching staff for the team.

The better part of the staff seems to have been a notable factor in why baseball failed to do well this past season in addition to egregious issues on the mound for the majority of the year, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to introduce a new coach next year given the historic level of underperformance in 2023 and the lackluster results of 2022.

There's some room for the argument to be made that the team could try Lemonis for one more season for continuity's sake, but given the downward trend and the fact this seems to be an issue not related to pure talent -- something MSU definitely has on roster -- making major changes feels warranted.