Last time we visited, TCU had just lost assistant coach Todd Whitting to Houston and we speculated what the future may hold for the Frogs. While the future is still in question, what we do know is Coach Schlossnagle was able to hire one of the more respected assistant coaches in the country when he hired Tony Vitello.

To understand Vitello, one probably starts by knowing his father Greg, who has coached at DeSmet Jesuit High School in St. Louis, Missouri for over 40 years. The family was a baseball family that loved the sport and wanted nothing more than to be around the game. Greg described Tony as the proverbial coach's son who would live and die baseball. In fact, Tony was not considered an outstanding player at Missouri, but earned his way onto the field with hard work and playing the game the right way.

The reason I love this hire is he fits so well with what Coach Schlossnagle is all about. I remember when Schloss was hired, they asked him what he did in his free time. His response was something along the lines of I am a baseball coach and I would rather be there than on a golf course or anywhere else because I love baseball more than anything else.

I contacted a former player at Missouri who is now a collegiate baseball coach in his own right and asked him for an opinion on Vitello. The response - he is a good dude and will work his butt off. TCU is a lucky school to get him..

National pundits at Baseball America and Rivals, Aaron Fitt and Kendall Rogers , both lauded praise for the hire via twitter and on their site.

Bottom line, he passes the resume test and would appear to be a good hire.

However, I try not to simply write puff pieces and I think there are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered on this hire.

Vitello comes to TCU after spending most of his time at Missouri as a recruiting coordinator and pitching coach. His pitching staffs continually led the Big XII in pitching statistics and churned out top prospects. His no nonsense approach to pitching simplified the game by preaching throwing 3 strikes to every batter and it clearly worked.

However, his background is actually as a position player and it was this that earned him less favor with Missouri baseball fans. The Missouri coaching staff lacked a coach that had a background as a pitcher, and arm injuries were constant during his time at Mizzou. Pitchers such as Max Scherzer, Aaron Crow and Kyle Gibson each missed some time due to arm trouble and it became a point of contention as each were top draft picks in the Major League draft. So on one hand, he was considered the reason they were coming to school, but he was blamed for the mishandling of pitchers.

Then again, the same thing was once said about Coach Schlossnagle when he first arrived at TCU. Pitchers kept running into arm problems and it was the handling of pitchers that was continually blamed. However, major arm injuries have significantly decreased upon the arrival of Randy Mazey. And it will likely be Mazey who retains control over the pitching staff despite the fact that Vitello served as pitching coach for most of the last decade. So from a TCU perspective everything appears fine.

But one of the black eyes on Mazey is his recruiting effort while at East Carolina. Mazey took over as head coach of the Pirates in the early part of the decade at a time where East Carolina was increasing in national stature, similar to TCU, and had the ability to recruit beyond their typical jurisdiction. So as his recruiting arm reached outward, the University of North Carolina started picking up all the local kids that ECU was leaving behind. By the middle of the decade, North Carolina had passed ECU and was playing in the National Championship series in Omaha. I remember reading an article in a North Carolina newspaper calling Mazey to task and basically saying that North Carolina should write a thank you letter to Mazey for ignoring their local talent.

When TCU hired Mazey, this was not an issue because Todd Whitting was our recruiting coordinator and he had no intentions of looking beyond the Texas borders. But with Whitting gone and Vitello coming in, I wonder what our approach will be. As an institution, TCU has always had a good approach toward enrollment keeping a larger portion local from areas 3 to 4 hours away such as Houston, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Shreveport. Beyond that, they have made a large dent in cities that are 8 to 10 hours away and are a short flight such as New Orleans, Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver and even Omaha.

For the baseball program, it has always been about Houston and the Metroplex, but what about now? With the newfound success does TCU dare reach outside the Texas borders or do they continue to do what got them here? Vitello was very good at recruiting the Midwest and also very good at recruiting Texas and Louisiana from a school that was over 10 hours away.

I admit, I do not know whether it is a good or bad thing to expand our recruiting and I do not know if we will. But I know our coaching staff now consists of 3 guys from the east coast and 1 from the Midwest. However, Mazey has proven he can win on the east coast, Schloss proved he could win on the west coast at UNLV, and Vitello did an excellent job coaching in the Midwest. Clearly, things are still on a great path for TCU to succeed going forward so maybe this is a great recipe for success, but only time will tell.