Alabama Baseball: Is John Cohen a Candidate for Coaching Job?
By Chris Hale
With the tournament starting to get to the end stages, Alabama baseball has a new name that has popped up for their vacancy.
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After the resignation of former Alabama baseball coach Mitch Gaspard, many baseball fans were left wondering if athletic director Bill Battle would make the big hire or settle. From the looks of the information that is slowly coming out, it looks like he is going for the big hire.
Check out this tweet from Roger Patrick Myers. Yes, he would know.
Looking like Bill Battle is going for a home run hire in his Bama Baseball coaching search. A lot of interesting names in play
— Roger Patrick Myers (@rogerpatmyers) June 14, 2016
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The Clarion-Ledger reported on Tuesday that Alabama was interested in Mississippi head coach John Cohen. I’m not a fan of his antics that slows the game way down, but he wins. As a matter of fact, I will take up knitting to take care of my boredom if he is indeed hired.
There also seems to be some arguments between Cohen and LSU’s Paul Mainieri and that alone would be enough for the price of admission.
Cohen has done a great job with the Bulldogs. They hosted the Super Regional in Starkville for this season but was swept by Arizona in a pair of one-run losses. They do have a regular season conference title to show for it with a 44-18-1 overall record and a 21-9 in conference play. Cohen’s squad finished as the runner-up in the 2013 College World Series.
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Going back to 2012, the Bulldogs only missed the NCAA Tournament just one time (in 2015) when 13 players had to miss 260-plus games. In that time same time frame, Mississippi State has only posted an under .500 record one time and had 40-plus wins overall three times with one of those they missed being 39 games.
Under Cohen this season, the Bulldogs hit .316 in 438 total games, going 463 for 1464 with 241 RBIs, 86 doubles, 13 triples and 31 home runs. The pitching staff finished up with a 2.13 ERA in 292 innings with 251 strikeouts and a 1.15 WHIP.
Cohen was born in Tuscaloosa, AL but played college baseball at Mississippi State. He would have brand new facilities at the Capstone, but there are already plans for a $40 million complete rebuild for the Bulldogs Stadium. It could just come down to money. Alabama has a lot of that. It would be hard to step away from established program with things clicking right along for the Bulldogs.
The only contract information I could find was from 2013 and it shows Cohen making just over $100,000 less than the SEC highest paid in Paul Mainieri at his yearly guaranteed salary of $632,500. That contract expires this year. It could just be a little money whipping going on by agents, too. In comparison, Gaspard only made $300,000 a year according to those same figures.