The Wolverines made some news this Independence Day weekend, inking a new head coach in Tracy Smith: 

Tracy Smith Announced as Michigan Baseball Coachhttps://t.co/e1JRl6liwV #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/CHP0OMyw2k

— Michigan Baseball (@umichbaseball) July 3, 2022

This was a bit of a curveball, as Smith's name wasn't mentioned much at all during the search until the end. Rumors popped up that he had been interviewed, and within a day or so, he was the favorite. It wasn't long after that Smith was hired. 

In contrast to many of the coaches Michigan interviewed, Tracy Smith is older and grizzled. At age 56, he's seen his fair share of glories and failures, and the number of NCAA games coached by Smith dwarfed that of any other coach interviewed. Smith played college baseball at Miami (OH) in the mid-80s, then spent a few years in minor league baseball, before going into coaching. He returned to Miami to shadow for a couple seasons, then was an assistant at Indiana under Bob Morgan, before heading back to Miami to take the top job. Smith coached the RedHawks for nine seasons from 1997-2005, finishing every year with a winning conference record (and a winning record overall in all but one). Smith made the NCAA Tournament twice at Miami, in 2000 and 2005 after winning the MAC Tournament.

Following his stellar 2005 campaign (45-18), Smith was hired to return to Bloomington and coach the Hoosiers, after Bob Morgan's retirement. Indiana had trailed off in Morgan's later years, going 65-112 in the B1G over the final six years of his tenure. Smith was in charge of rebuilding the program and after a rough first few seasons, he built Indiana into a squad that generally was among the best in the conference. Smith's Hoosiers finished top five in the conference in five of his last six years at Indiana, including a 2nd, 1st, and 1st place finish in his final three seasons. He won two B1G regular season titles and two B1G Tournament titles in his nine seasons in Bloomington, the last two being particular highs. In 2013, he took Indiana to the College World Series, the first B1G team to do so since 1984, and in 2014 the Hoosiers were so good that they managed to be the #4 national seed (although they were heartbreakingly upset in the regional). 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More on Smith and some thoughts]

The spectacular seasons of 2013-14 put Smith on national radars, and he was snapped up by Arizona State, a proud program looking to return to the top of the PAC-12. Smith's tenure with the Sun Devils could best be described as "very disappointing" as the team never improved over the course of his six year reign, and consistently underwhelmed expectations despite delivering good recruiting classes. Smith proved himself to be an excellent national recruiter in Tempe, reeling in future first round picks Alika Williams, Hunter Bishop, and (future first overall pick) Spencer Torkelson, not to mention the guys who never made it to campus because of the MLB Draft, a list that included Toronto Blue Jays star Bo Bichette. In the 2020 Draft alone, five of the first 114 picks were ASU players, and they boasted the most selections of any college in that draft.

Yet despite all this talent, Smith's Sun Devils never finished higher than third in the PAC-12 (finishing 7th, 5th, and 5th in his final three full seasons) and never advanced past the regional. ASU fans were growing frustrated with Smith's on-field performance and then administration used rumors of disharmony inside the locker room as reason to cut ties with Smith after last season, even though there were two years remaining on his contract. Athletic Director Red Anderson said at the time: 

"We’re going to look for a leader who will come in here and really do an assessment, look to instill discipline and focus and accountability. Really kind of an intensity that we think is necessary to win and meet the expectations we have for ASU baseball. Someone who will re-energize ASU baseball, our donors, our alums and fan base."

That is... not great! For what it's worth, Brandon Justice of Rivals said that "the majority of my baseball sources reacted negatively when I reached out asking for their opinions" ($). Clearly, Smith's time in Tempe left a bad taste in the mouth of people around college baseball, and it is unusual that a guy who has won as many games as Smith has to sit out the entire 2022 season without a coaching job. 

For the reasons stated above, Smith was pretty low on my list of candidates, but it's important to be clear-eyed about this hire. If Smith can replicate what he was able to do at Indiana, he will be a good coach for Michigan. In winning two B1G regular season crowns, Smith achieved something that Erik Bakich was never able to do at Michigan. He equaled Bakich's mark with two B1G Tournament titles, and by hosting two regionals, he also surpassed Bakich. Bakich was a great postseason coach at Michigan, but Smith achieved essentially as much postseason success as Bakich did during his time at Indiana, while being a better regular season coach.

The Tracy Smith that existed at Indiana in the early 2010s was a coach everyone in college baseball wanted to hire, just as Bakich is now. What happened at Arizona State was enough of a red flag for me to be very weary of Smith, but perhaps running a big time college baseball program was biting off more than Smith could chew and the B1G is more his vibe. Anecdotal rumors suggest that managing the personalities that come with recruiting elite national talent was the source of some of the issues inside the ASU clubhouse ($), something that likely will not be as much of an issue at a Michigan or at Indiana.

To Smith's credit, what he built at Indiana was robust enough to sustain itself; the team wasn't as good without him, but they remained a consistent tournament team under Chris Lemonis (poached in 2018 by Mississippi State) and then won the B1G in 2019 during the first year of Jeff Mercer, five years after Smith had departed. Indiana was the best B1G program of the 2010s after winning just one regular season title in the 22 seasons of Bob Morgan from 1984-2005. Tracy Smith deserves credit for building that and it was undoubtedly the biggest reason why Warde Manuel tabbed Smith for the job. 

We should be frank about the nature of the hire: Smith was not one of the top options. Michigan had several high priority choices pull their names out of the running (Jim Penders and Chris Fetter in particular), which forced them further down the list to names like Tracy Smith. Given that the program has seen many current players enter the portal, as well as most of the upcoming vaunted recruiting classes that Bakich had assembled decommit, this is not a job that top coaches are clamoring to take. The publicized battles between Bakich and Manuel over greater funding to the baseball program (ones that Bakich didn't win) didn't help, either. A tremendous amount of damage has been done by Bakich's exit (only natural in modern college sports though), and so taking on this job will require a reboot of sorts. A coach in Smith's mold, someone who much of the industry has given the cold shoulder to and is looking for redemption, is a good match for a program that will require a rebuild and has seen its reputation damaged some in the past month. 

I personally would have preferred CMU's Jordan Bischel, a much younger coach with a cleaner past absent a giant blinking red light saying "THIS IS RISKY". That said, Bischel, too, has interviewed for many jobs recently and has not gotten any, so I can't say if there is something lurking under the surface giving ADs pause. Smith boasts far more projectable attributes and has an infinitely greater number of B1G wins than Bischel. For Warde & Co., that made sense. There definitely feels like a wide range of scenarios here, everything from Smith exporting the same culture problems that existed at ASU and plunging Michigan back into the dark ages, all the way to Smith having learned his lessons and Tempe and building an even greater version of what existed at Indiana. Only time will tell. The next steps for Smith will be filling out his coaching staff and then hitting the road nabbing players out of the portal so that Michigan actually has a roster for next season and then moving on to try and restock the 2023/24 recruiting classes. It should be a busy offseason.