The Michigan baseball team is coming off the worst two-year stretch in the history of its program, with a combined winning percentage of just .355.

The only other time the Wolverines have posted even one season that poor came in 1880, when they went 2-4.

Yet, Michigan apparently remains an attractive place for prospective coaches.

The school and baseball coach Rich Maloney parted ways after this past season, and athletic director Dave Brandon said the interest in the opening has been robust.

"We have a deep pool of candidates -- much deeper than I would have expected," he said this past week at the Wolverine Caucus in Lansing. "And, frankly, deeper than any search we’ve done. It shows there’s a high level of interest in Michigan athletics right now."

Michigan did not renew the contract of baseball coach Rich Maloney, center, after last season.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Brandon said Michigan's facilities have boosted the appeal of the position. The school poured $9 million into renovating Ray Fisher Stadium in 2008.

Tradition also has helped. Although the Wolverines went 22-34 last season and 17-37 in 2011, they have historically been one of the strongest Big Ten programs.

Michigan won at least 30 games each season from 2003-10, qualified for the NCAA regionals from 2005-08 and won national championships in 1953 and 1962. Their berth into the College World Series in 1984 remains the last appearance by a Big Ten school.

But, that also helps illustrate the difficulties of this job.

The Big Ten is not a power conference in baseball, due mostly to the geography of the league. The cold weather forces teams to open the season on the road for weeks, and they often finish the season playing close to two-thirds of their games away from home.

Michigan played 60 percent of its games away from Ann Arbor last year.

It can also be difficult to recruit big-time prospects into the Big Ten footprint because of the cold, competition from Southern and West Coast teams and also the allure of Major League Baseball.

Still, Brandon says he is receiving broad interest in the job.

"I get the feeling there are a lot of people who are interested," he said. "We have a long, long list of sitting head coaches from D-1 programs that are really interested in that job. So, we’re in the enviable position of being able to look at that and identify those we think will be the best fit."

Brandon also is in the midst searching for a women's swimming coach, after Jim Richardson retired following 27 years at the school.

In fact, Michigan has changed coaches in five sports since last summer: Women's basketball (hiring Kim Barnes Arico), men's golf (Chris Whitten), men's soccer (Chaka Daley), baseball and women's swimming.

Brandon also has hired coaches for men's cross country, football and diving since taking over as Michigan's athletic director in January 2010. That's eight head coaching hires -- nearly a third of the entire varsity staff -- in two-and-a-half years.

How tough is it to have so much turnover?

"It’s only tough if you don’t hire the right people," he said. "The challenge is making sure you make really good decisions, and bring in people who are going to take the program to the next level."

Kyle Meinke covers Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at 734-623-2588, by email at kylemeinke@annarbor.com and followed on Twitter @kmeinke.