It has now been four seasons since the USC baseball team has eclipsed .500 or qualified for the NCAA Tournament. For a program with 12 national titles, that’s absolutely unacceptable.
Though the stars of the Trojan offense underperformed this year, in order for the team to generate significant improvement, the pitching staff needs to step it up. That falls largely on manager Dan Hubbs, a former College World Series champion pitcher as a Trojan and later a pitching coach at Cal, Berkeley.
Hubbs made some strong midseason moves, bringing Solomon Bates and John Beller among others from the bullpen into the rotation, and the Trojans as a team graduated just one senior, so there’s reason for promise heading into 2019.