Future of Texas Baseball Coach David Pierce: Criticism Warranted? What's Next?

A deep dive into the statistics of David Pierce and Texas Baseball's rocky 2024 season, and what needs to change before its too late in Austin

June 1, 2024; College Station, TX, USA; Texas Longhorns head coach David Pierce (22) and assistant coach Steve Rodriguez (7) leave the field following a 2-4 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies in the second round of the NCAA baseball College Station Regional at Olsen Field College Station. Mandatory Credit: Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports / Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports

AUSTIN - David Pierce’s hot seat rumors have officially hit national headlines, but for many who follow the team closely in Austin, this doesn’t feel new. 

Texas head coach David Pierce was bluntly asked after a super regional exit loss to Lousiana what his future looked like in Texas after the disappointing end to the season.

"That decision is not in my hands,” was what the head coach said.

In a recent radio interview with D1 Baseball managing editor Kendall Rogers, a top notable analyst and personality in the college baseball world, has said that Pierce’s job truly is up in the air and that it's possible the Longhorns are already searching elsewhere.

Throughout the whole season, fans close to the team have been split down the middle, with many coming to the side of the coach who had led the team for eight seasons. After all, Pierce had a .647 winning percentage as the manager and had taken the team to three College World Series appearances. 

June 1, 2024; College Station, TX, USA; Texas Longhorns assistant coach Steve Rodriguez (7) and head coach David Pierce (22) alert umpires of a clock violation by a Texas A&M Aggies batter during the second round in the NCAA baseball College Station Regional at Olsen Field College Station. Mandatory Credit: Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports / Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports

But another side had been calling for his head since the start of the season, with many of the complaints stemming from a few key issues. The majority of critiques can be narrowed down to four categories.

1. Pierce has not been able to adapt to the transfer portal and isn’t taking advantage of it enough.
2. Pierce will not be able to compete with the superior SEC opponents
3. Pierce cannot win in neutral fields
4. Appointing himself as the pitching coach has not worked as planned

Given that many fans tend to make reactionary statements, it can be important to step back and look at the issue holistically. Are any of these problems true? And if so how many? 

Transfer Portal

When discussing Pierce and Texas, expectations need to be made clear first. Texas is one of the best programs in college baseball history and is currently the best athletic program in the nation, having just secured the 2024 Directors Cup. This team should always be competing to be one of the best in the nation, but at worst, they should be competitive in the SEC.

With that being said, it’s only fair to compare Pierce to the coaches he will have to face. In this exercise, Texas’ portal production in 2024 will be compared to the following teams. Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

The first seven teams represent the top seven SEC schools from this past season, while the two Oklahoma schools represent the best from the Big 12 last year, as well as Texas’ main rivals. With the inclusion of Texas, that is 10 teams’ transfer portal usage in total. 

Longhorns Country looked at every transfer from the 10 schools in 2024, whether they transferred to the school this offseason or in one prior, to see how much the players contributed to the overall offensive and pitching production. With hitting, all teams were compared by the percentage of at-bats, runs, RBI, and total bases the transfer players produced. For pitching, the players were judged on their ERA, innings pitched, strikeouts, and total earned runs given up. 

Of the nine non-Texas teams, the programs averaged 17 transfers on their team or 43% of the overall 40-man roster. Right away, Texas fell behind, only having 11 total transfers on the roster. But that doesn’t mean the transfers weren’t impactful, right?

Well, wrong.

Texas saw 21% of its offensive production come from transfer players, mostly from former Texas A&M catcher Kimble Schuessler. The average for the nine other teams was a whopping 48% of all offensive production. Teams averaged more than double the amount of runs, RBIs, total bases, and at-bats from transferred players as compared to Texas.

June 1, 2024; College Station, TX, USA; Texas Longhorns catcher Kimble Schuessler (10) hits against Texas A&M Aggies during the second round in the NCAA baseball College Station Regional at Olsen Field College Station. Mandatory Credit: Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports / Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports

The only other team to have less than 30% of its production come from transfers was Oklahoma State, the only team that won’t compete in the SEC next year. Five of nine teams saw 50-60% of their offensive production come from transfers, which seems to be the sweet spot for college baseball. When it comes to bringing in bats, Texas fell short mightily.

On the pitching side of things, Texas upped the numbers with 25% of its production coming from transfers. It’s important to note that Will Mercer, a Notre Dame transfer, was expected to be a key piece in the rotation in 2024, but was sidelined by a year-long injury. 

Even so, the average team blew the Longhorns away, with 49% of innings pitched and strikeouts coming from transfers for the other ball clubs. Texas saw its ERA increase when transfers were pitching, mostly from disappointing innings by 2023 USC transfer Charlie Hurley. 

On average, the other teams saw their ERA go down .13 points when transfers were pitching, a testament to the ability to not only bring in strong arms but use them correctly. This is only the case when Arkansas is left out of the conversation, whose 1.14 added ERA from transfers was double that of the next teams, such an anomaly it is likely an outlier.

Arkansas as a program was generally an outlier. A whopping 90%, yes NINETY PERCENT, of all innings pitched, and runs given up came from transfers, while the Razorbacks also topped the transfer-hitting group with two-thirds of all production coming from the portal. Though the team's season came to an end in a similar fate to that of Texas, a 44-16 overall record with almost all of your team coming from the portal is a massive achievement.

It’s pretty clear that Pierce just isn’t using the portal enough. Though Pierce got unlucky with injuries to Mercer and a surprise retirement from Duke transfer Luke Storm before the season, there is no reason Pierce and Texas should be getting doubled in transfer production by other teams.

While Texas A&M trots out a lineup of six high-impact transfers, Pierce was forced to start true freshman Dee Kennedy at second base while also having minimal lineup protection and outfield depth behind B12 Player of the Year Max Belyeu. Texas had just two high-impact transfers in 2024 with Schuessler and closer Gage Boehm, while the other teams on average had seven of its top 20 players coming from the portal. The results weren’t acceptable.

Versus The SEC

Pierce took over as head coach in 2017 and has since coached over 550 games of baseball, the majority against Big 12 opponents. The SEC, however, is a different beast. Five of the last six national champions have come from the conference, and four of the final eight super regionals this year were hosted by SEC schools. This is the best conference in college baseball, without question.

So how has Pierce faired in games against these teams?

Well since 2017, Texas has played 43 times, roughly a conference regular season’s worth of games. Of those 43 games, Texas won just 16 of them, good for a 37% winning percentage. If an SEC team won 37% of its conference games in 2024, it would be ranked 11th out of 14 teams and missed the postseason. David Pierce-led Texas teams have struggled mightly against SEC competition, and concerns of them facing off against the best of the best in 2024 are valid.

Neutral Field

In the past few years, Pierce has received a lot of flack for how he performs on neutral territory. In 2024, Texas was 24-12 at home, a stellar record, but just 1-7 on neutral fields. 

Since joining the team, Texas has played 61 neutral field games. Pierce has won just 24 of them, another sub-40% winning percentage. Texas has won just eight of its 20 B12 tournament games, played in Arlington, under Pierce, and is exactly .500 in postseason games not played at UFCU Disch Falk Field. Pierce has done well getting his team to Omaha before, but when his team struggles in the regular season and he isn’t awarded a home-field advantage, it's hard to expect phenomenal results.

Pitching Coach Decision

The fourth and final critique came in form just in the 2023-24 season. After the disappointing end to the Stanford Super Regional in 2023, Pierce made the surprising decision of firing first-year pitching coach Woody Williams and appointing himself. Many were skeptical, and matters only got worse when the team started March 1-5, with former Big 12 Pitcher of the Year Lebarron Johnson Jr. struggling. 

In 2024, the team had an ERA of 4.91, with an opponent batting average of .261. That was far from the worst on the list of teams Texas was compared to earlier, but it still wasn’t ideal. Just how bad was it, though?

From 2017-23, with a pitching coach in the dugout, Pierce’s Longhorns had a team ERA of 3.68 and an opponents against batting average of .234. Texas was giving up one less run per game over the entire season, and opponents were getting on much less. Texas had the 48th-best ERA in the nation this season, but a 3.68 ERA would’ve ranked as the best in the country. Even if you take just the two seasons prior, the third and fifth-highest ERA years under Pierce, Texas would’ve still had a top-20 pitching staff.

So after all of this, is it fair to criticize what Pierce has done? Almost assuredly. Texas is not using the portal to its advantage, struggles to beat SEC competition, and has turned an elite pitching program into one that is just average. But does this mean Pierce should be fired?

Probably not. Texas still has one of the better recruiting classes in the nation heading into next year, and as said earlier, Pierce still wins 65% of his games. He’s a two-time Big 12 Coach of the Year and has made three out of seven possible World Series’ without ever missing the postseason. It is fair to be skeptical, and to put him on the hot seat, heading into 2025, but hopefully, 2024 gave Pierce a lot to work on.

Texas needs to hit the portal to replace the likely departures of Jalin Flores, and Jared Thomas, and seniors such as Peyton Powell and Porter Brown, and Pierce needs help in the staff. He can’t expect to turn around this disappointing rotation by himself. But he should be given a season to prove he can beat the odds in the SEC with a full schedule of games. 

Texas fans just need to temper their expectations. If Texas truly is the 11th-best team in the SEC then Pierce probably needs to go. But if Texas places seventh in the league and doesn’t host a regional, are fans still going to be up in arms? The move to the SEC mostly came because of football, so baseball will need some time to adjust to the consistently tough schedule. Even if you have doubts about Pierce, it’s going to be a lot harder to do so with a first-year head coach, even if it is of the caliber of LSU’s Jay Johnson or another top skipper.

Pierce’s future is completely in the hands of athletic director Chris Del Conte, and whatever decision he makes is bound to upset some fans. Whether Pierce is the right person for the job in Austin, its important to respect whatever decision Del Conte makes, even if that means rooting for a new head coach in the UFCU Disch Falk dugouts.