After the hiring of Matt Bragga as their new head coach, Rice baseball continues to flush out their coaching staff. Assistant Cory Barton is the newest member of Bragga’s staff.
Matt Bragga has only been on the job for two weeks. In addition to getting situated in a new city and a new campus, he’s been hard at work assembling his staff. His first move was to bring back assistant coach and former Rice baseball player Paul Janish. Next, he went outside the walls of Reckling Park, hiring current Louisiana Tech assistant Cory Barton. The hire was first reported by D1 Baseball’s Kendall Rogers.
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Barton comes to Rice after a short stint as the pitching coach at Louisiana Tech. He joined the Bulldogs for the 2018 season following a successful career at McNeese State. His tenure, although brief, was effective. The Bulldogs posted their lowest team ERA of this century, 3.48. That led all of Conference USA and is much closer to the standard that Rice strives to achieve. Five of the pitchers on his staff had sub-3.00 ERAs and three of them pitched complete games.
In addition to what he’ll bring as far as wisdom on the mound, Barton is also an excellent recruiter. Ties to the south are going to be important for Bragga, and Barton certainly checks those boxes. He’s been making an impact on the recruiting trail since his days as the recruiting coordinator at Louisiana-Monroe and has elevated the level of talent at each of his steps along the way.
If Rice intends to put themselves back in the postseason conversation they’re going to need a continual influx of talent, and that takes good recruiters to get. Barton is one more piece to what continues to be a promising staff that Bragga is assembling so far.
