Assessing Mike Gambino and the 2014 baseball season

BC just finished another disappointing Baseball season and yet there doesn't seem to be much talk about the future of Head Coach Mike Gambino. After four seasons the team remains one of the worst in the ACC and failed to qualify for the ACC Tournament. While the showed signs of improvement this season and there is renewed hope about facilities, we have to continue to ask if we have the right staff in place. I am an outside observer so I asked Brian Foley from College Baseball Daily for his opinion. My questions and his answers follow.

1. BC looked better and was more competitive but still had a terrible record. Was the improvement real? 

Foley: The improvement was far from real. They played several of the have-nots this year with NC State being a complete failure while they still ended up losing a series to old friend Mik Aoki’s Notre Dame squad which finished with a 9-21 record.

2. Who or what was the biggest surprise of the season and biggest disappointment? 

Foley: The biggest surprise to me was the development of Chris Shaw into an upper echelon ACC player. He finished the year with a .329 average and a team high six homers which was the same amount that the rest of the team combined for. Shaw was a disaster as a freshman when he hit .165 with six homers and 19 RBI.

The biggest disappointment continues to be the pitching staff which had a 4.27 ERA which is high seeing as about half BC’s games are against weak northern competition in midweek play and on the Spring Trip.

3. Would you fire Gambino? If no, what are the expectations for next year. If yes, who are potential replacements?

Foley: Would I fire Gambino? I don’t know if the school cares enough to actually fire him. I was attending the America East Tournament this week when one of his former players in Anthony Italiano got a key double to lead the Seawolves to a victory. This was a kid that was not good enough to play at BC but has had a solid little career at the Long Island school.

My first phone call would be to Justin Blood at Hartford. He has made that program into a respectable team which plays hard throughout the game. There were trailing a game by nine runs but wouldn’t give up in the ninth inning when they ended up losing only by four. This is the toughness that is missing right now with the BC program.

My second phone call after Blood would be to Steve Owens at Bryant. He made the NCAA tournament last year for the Smithfield RI school and had a successful run at Lemoyne before heading to the Bulldogs. Lemoyne would be an absolute pain back in the day for schools and Bryant is becoming a new Lemoyne.