Mike Pelfrey speaks out on Wichita State baseball coaching change, calls for fan support
In a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with ESPN Wichita radio host Shane Dennis, Wichita State pitching coach Mike Pelfrey gave his thoughts on the recent coaching change for Shockers baseball Monday afternoon.
Pelfrey just completed his fifth season as pitching coach for the Shockers, most recently under interim head coach Loren Hibbs, who guided WSU to a 30-25 record and a third-place finish in the American Athletic Conference.
WSU athletic director Kevin Saal made the decision not to retain Hibbs, who was voted the AAC Coach of the Year, last Tuesday and ultimately hired Washington State head coach Brian Green, who was officially announced on Monday.
The decision to let Hibbs go has been criticized by some in the WSU fan base, upset to see a program alumni not retained after a nine-win improvement from the previous season under challenging circumstances.
While Pelfrey said WSU did improve under Hibbs, he pushed back on the notion that the progress was acceptable by program standards.
“I know our program hasn’t been to a regional in 10 years, but for me, that’s got to be the floor for this program every single year,” Pelfrey said. “I’ve never gone away from thinking that.
“I thought we had a regional team, to be honest with you. I thought we under-performed. At the end of the day, 30-25 is not acceptable for this program. I hope that hasn’t become the standard. I lived it every single day and I’m 100% not OK with it.”
Pelfrey also told Dennis that he had “zero issue” with Saal’s decision not to retain Hibbs and thought a lot of the criticism heaped on Saal was “unfair.” It is possible for Pelfrey to retain his job as pitching coach under the new head coach, although the decision is ultimately up to Green.
“Kevin Saal did everything he told us he was going to do,” Pelfrey said. “He told us in the beginning that he wanted to keep us through the spring. He did that. He told us that he was going to reevaluate us at the end of the year. He did that. At the end of the year, he thought the best thing for the direction of this program was to go in a different way. He has every right to make that decision.
“He’s got a really good heart and I think he really cares about this program and he ultimately wants to do what’s best. At the end of the day, Kevin Saal wants the Wichita State baseball program to do well and I want the same exact thing. I want Wichita State to get back to being something we can all be proud of again.”
In his most candid moments, Pelfrey spoke about how the interim tag on the coaching staff affected the WSU locker room, Hibbs’ coaching style and why the Shockers had a disappointing 3-8 close to the season.
Much like the men’s basketball interim staff told The Eagle during the 2020-21 season, Pelfrey said every member of the baseball staff felt daily pressure in the role.
“When there’s an interim tag, it comes with a lot of pressure,” Pelfrey said. “Obviously we talked about that a lot as a staff. We had daily coaches meetings before games, before practices and that stuff got brought up because it involves lives, people’s families, people’s kids.”
When WSU committed five total errors and lost both games at Houston, in a crucial conference series that all but eliminated the Shockers from title contention, Hibbs’ frustration about the situation spilled over to the locker room, according to Pelfrey, following a 4-1 loss to Oral Roberts, the team’s third straight, at Eck Stadium on May 9.
“We had a team meeting after that game and there wasn’t a lot said about the game,” Pelfrey said. “The frustration, I think, of the lack of contract extension, it did boil over into the locker room.”
Pelfrey said Hibbs had an “old-school” coaching style, much like Stephenson and Wedge, which included little praise for good plays and criticism for poor ones. It’s a style that worked in Wichita in the past, but Pelfrey said he wasn’t sure it worked anymore with the current generation of baseball players.
“Guys nowadays, they want to be praised, they want to be built up,” Pelfrey said. “I’ve had to learn this too as a coach because I’m an in-your-face, intense type of guy and I had to adjust. This is maybe the first year I fully did it. (Players) tell you they want the truth, that’s until you give them the truth and then they realize that’s not what they wanted to hear so they go in the opposite direction. So maybe that coaching style didn’t fully sit well with the whole team.”
Pelfrey also claimed that a player had told the coach during the UCF series (the regular-season finale) that a mass exodus was happening even if Hibbs was made permanent coach.
Pelfrey also mentioned one of WSU’s players had been promised “a full ride to a Big 12 team” during the season and another had a handler who was already putting feelers out to schools before the end of the season.
“I heard the number was six, that there were going to be six people left on this roster either way,” Pelfrey said. “We’re at four now. I don’t know if it would have got to six, but it might have been in the 10, 12 range, somewhere in there.”
A total of 28 players have publicly entered the transfer portal since the end of the season, leaving seven players currently on WSU’s roster. Several key players cited the coaching change as their reason for entering the transfer portal in their social media posts.
With more than two dozen players in the portal, it’s impossible to pinpoint the same reason why so many decided to explore other options. It is likely a chunk were leaving anyway to seek more playing time or a better fit, but multiple sources with knowledge of the program told The Eagle that the coaching change did play a significant role in why several of the top WSU players entered the portal.
When reached by The Eagle seeking a response to Pelfrey’s claims, Hibbs declined to talk in specifics but did issue a statement.
“I question the timing and comments,” Hibbs texted The Eagle. “I have no agenda. Every decision I made during my time as interim head coach was for the betterment of our student-athletes and our program, period. I value honesty, integrity and treating others with respect. It is obvious my core values do not align with the current administration and some involved with Shocker baseball.”
Pelfrey also detailed the timeline following the season when Saal made the final decision.
Saal met with the staff on Monday, May 29 when everyone had returned from the conference tournament in Clearwater, Florida, Pelfrey said, with no final decision being made. The next morning, according to Pelfrey, Saal and WSU senior associate athletic director Kent Hegenauer met with Hibbs, then the staff to inform them of the decision to conduct a national search.
“I can tell you from being in that meeting, his heart was telling him that we were really good people and he was very appreciative of the way we handled the Wedge situation, but his brain was telling him that something was off,” Pelfrey said. “Something was not quite right with this program. He mentioned that this program deserves a national search because he said there was something not right, there was something missing. I can 100% tell you... this was really bogging him down, really, really bothering him in that meeting.”
A Zoom call was set up to inform the current WSU players and after Saal finished, Hibbs was allowed a parting message, according to Pelfrey.
“I think Scooter let some of his frustration out again about the lack of coaching decision at the time (at end of Zoom call),” Pelfrey said. “I’m pretty sure (the administration) heard that as well.”
At the time of the interview, Green’s hire had been reported but not officially announced. When asked by Dennis if Pelfrey, a former WSU star pitcher himself, would be fine to see someone outside of the Gene Stephenson tree lead the Shockers, the Wichita Heights graduate did not hesitate.
“If the best thing for this program is to go outside the family and we get back to being a regional team every year and that’s the floor and we get back to being successful, I’m all for it,” Pelfrey said. “I want to be a part of (the program still), but if I’m not, I’m 100% OK with that. I just want to be proud again when people bring up Wichita State baseball.”
Pelfrey was disappointed to see so much negativity online surrounding the Shocker baseball program in the past week and wondered if Green even “has a chance in the community” due to the pessimism.
“One thing that has been bothering me for the last week is I feel like the Shocker program is getting torn down on social media,” Pelfrey said. “We’re talking about four decades of blood, sweat, tears and hard work that we’ve all put into it and to see it get torn down in four or five days, I’m really disappointed. I’ve seen a lot of people on social media say things and make comments and I’ll tell you if half of those people showed up to the games, we would have played in front of 3 or 4,000 people.”
Pelfrey’s message to Shocker fans was to band together to support the new head coach and give WSU players the same special experience that he received during his time with the Shockers.
“What really made (his experience) was the fans, the energy, the enthusiasm, getting to play in front of 5,000 people every day,” Pelfrey said. “I think that’s what gets lost in all of this. You talk about supporting a program, building relationships with the players, interacting with them, that’s what is missing.
“I feel bad for some of these players now because they don’t have those relationships in the community. They don’t get the same support.”
This story was originally published June 7, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
.jpg)