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The Roanoke Times is reporting that Pat Mason is staying in the Skipper's end of the Virginia Tech Hokie Baseball dugout. There hasn't been an official announcement from Hokie Sports, but we'll probably see it sometime soon.
There are lots of things sort of left dangling about this particular move. We here at Gobbler Country like Pat Mason and look forward to covering the continuing rebuilding effort for the team. The question continues to be begged though, after three subpar seasons (of which this last with only 19 wins) how is there not more fire under this particular pile of logs. Mason has two years left on his contract, and there doesn't seem to be an urgent search for new baseball head coaching talent being detected among the thin grapevine that is college baseball so it might be as simple as that. He has two years left, last season was crippled by critical pitching losses that halted an otherwise promising season, and the new talent that was just beginning to show some offensive promise is still the result of Mason's recruiting. This is just speculation on my part. Most major programs just wouldn't have put up with a third losing season, and one that included the worse W-L ratio in the history of the sport at the school.
Well, that will definitely put any of the residual drama away for the remainder of the recruiting season, and certainly for a couple of semesters. Maybe, ultimately that's what Whit Babcock is looking for; a lack of drama as he rebuilds the facility and program.
Baseball "breakout seasons" are rare, and baseball is a slow developing sport, so I guess we all just mind our tongues and park our opinions for a while. We'll start to develop some recruiting information as we have availability. Hokie Baseball will be back in 2017 (2016 tune ups will be on the reporting agenda this year.) and so will we.
Good Luck to Coach Mason and the Virginia Tech Hokie Baseball Team.