Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina sweeps Morehead State on Sunday

Following a 1-0 win over Morehead State on Sunday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke with the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Baseball is a unique game, isn’t it? Yesterday, 16-11. Couldn’t get anybody out. Today, 1-0. Show up and watch a baseball game, and you’ll see something that you’ve never seen before. That’s what I was told when I was a young boy. But, obviously, if you dwell on the positives, it was unbelievable pitching for us. If you dwell on the negatives, we didn’t swing the bats very well at all today. But we found a way to win the close one. At the end of the day, this guy sitting next to me, Tyler Pitzer, rose to the occasion and gave us a chance to win. Sweeney made it interesting, as he typically does, but then got the last out before they tied the game, which is what closers are supposed to do. So we won the ballgame, and we’re gonna go ahead and take it home before somebody can take it away from us.”

With Talmadge LeCroy, you put him back behind the plate today. What led you to that decision? Was it just the thumb feeling a little bit better, or anything like that?

“Well, the thumb is feeling better. I mean, he still has a fracture in there, and there’s going to be days when it’s really sore. It was all swollen. He couldn’t even grip a bat. That’s why he missed five games. But it’s progressively gotten better every day, and today was the best it’s felt. He took batting practice yesterday. We were going to wait until Wednesday, but it was ahead of schedule as far as how good he felt. And the trainer left it up to him. The doctors have left it up to him. I preferred that he get two games before we open up the SEC schedule. It’s a hard game to play if you don’t play it more. If you don’t play it frequently, it’s really difficult. So I thought getting two games in would be good for him before we played Oklahoma if he was capable of doing it.”

What made Pitzer so good today, and have you seen any difference in him at the last couple of outings versus the first few?

“The only real subpar outing he had was Opening Day when he walked the three batters in a row. I mean, nobody’s perfect. These other outings have not been, some of them have been perfect, but he’s found a way to get through them for the most part, or he’s pitched two good innings and maybe struggled in the third inning type of situation. But today, he was dialed in, and he was getting his breaking ball over, and he was getting his fastball over when he threw it. He was awesome when we brought him in. Sucie did a great job. And had to make the decision whether to send Sucie out for a third inning, because he pitched us out of that one jam, and he did a great job, but I knew we were facing the heart of their order that next inning, starting with Thomas, who’s their big home run hitter. I just thought that Pitzer’s stuff; I almost treated that inning like it was a save inning in the game. So he got us through that inning, and I felt good about it, but I didn’t know if we were going to need Sweeney for like, a two-inning save or have a bridge between Pitzer and Sweeney with either Garino or Palmer. I had them both ready out there, but Pitzer was pitching so well, I just decided to stay with them and get the third inning out of them, which allowed us to only have to use Sweeney for one inning, which makes him more effective.”

Didn’t get a ton of length out of your rotation this weekend, with Dylan Eskew only making it into the well into the fourth before you took him out. Does that concern you at all?

“Not really. We’re going to have to look at what we’re gonna do on Friday. And then Saturday’s game, we were up 12-1 after three innings. And I just think that long inning affected Jake. Not only did we score seven runs, but remember, their pitcher was hurt, and they didn’t have anybody warming up. So it took that extra long time. I tried to convince him to go out and play some catch during that time, but he didn’t want to. I just think he got, in his words, ‘I got lazy.’ He just lost his focus, which is easy to understand. So they got to him a little bit. But in the first three innings, Jake McCoy was phenomenal. And I think he would have continued to pitch that way had we not had that long inning and the game score being 12-1. Today, Eskew is Eskew. He’s just gonna battle you to the end. But he just walked too many leadoff hitters. He gave five free passes in three-plus innings — four walks and a hit batter. But to his credit, he never gives up. He just keeps battling, but then I just thought it was time to get a new arm in there that could throw the ball over the plate with more consistency and a different look.”

As you mentioned, baseball is a funny game, but what do you take away from having one run on Sunday?

“Well, we didn’t swing the bats at all very well. So Monte and I talked a little bit after the game that maybe we need to adjust our pregame routine. If the kids are a little bit tired, maybe we’re taking too much batting practice before the game. We’ll talk. We’ll figure it out. But our bats just seem slow today. I mean, (Morehead State) didn’t have good numbers coming in, so I thought we were going to bang them around. I won’t say it was a terrible hitters’ day, but obviously, it was different than yesterday. The wind was blowing in, and it was a little more chilly. And after a couple of days, you lose your focus a little bit, you know, a little bit of that edge. And the kid was running his sinker in on our right-handed hitter’s hands. I’ll give him credit for that, and then he dropped that little breaking ball in there when he wanted to. So we just didn’t have a lot of good swings. We only had two balls hard the whole day: The ball that JC got a base hit on, and then we didn’t execute a hit and run. And then Scobey crushed that ball in the ninth inning. That left fielder made an unbelievable play to save at least two runs. Who knows what would happen after that? But yeah, hitting comes and goes some days.”

Jordan Carrion turned some of those big double plays that got you guys out of some jams today. What have you seen, not just from his defense but overall today?

“Yeah, that double play got us out of the inning. That was huge. We got out of that jam, bases loaded. Nobody out. First guy popped up, then we got the double play ball. Jordan Carrion is just playing so well. I’m just so happy for him and proud of him. I’ve talked about him enough about the quality of the person he is. I think he’s really given our team a lift with his defense. He put a perfect bunt down today, and he got a base hit. He’s just playing really inspired baseball.”

You guys were able to handle Hunter Thomas, Morehead State’s three-hole hitter, pretty well this weekend. How important was that, and how much focus was on him, for you guys, from a scouting standpoint?

“Yeah, his numbers coming in, he had seven home runs, 25 RBIs, which was way more than anybody else on their team. And until he got a couple of singles yesterday in his last couple of at-bats, we had him 0-for the first game and a half, and then today, he was 0-for. So our pitchers really did a tremendous job on him. There was a lot of focus on him. And he’s an aggressive hitter and a good player all around. If there was a key in us winning the three games, it was being able to shut him down. But their whole lineup was a little bit scary. I mentioned that Germann kid, my goodness, he had two home runs yesterday, got another hit today, made that great catch last night on Blake Jackson’s ball. And then today, he made that catch. I don’t know how he caught that ball. I thought the ball was past him. So they’re scrappy and hard-nosed. The game of baseball is like that. Anybody can step up and play good. You’ve got to play to win. Nobody hands you anything.”

Spring break is this week. So, as far as I know, you can do whatever you want from a practice standpoint…

“Actually, no, we have to still give them a day off. I’m not going to deviate away from what we do. Now the last thing I want to do is, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s SEC time. Let’s change everything we’re doing.’ That wouldn’t be very wise of me, I don’t think. The practices will be what we’ve always done, and we’ll get them ready and keep them loose and hopefully meet the challenge. But we still got a game. I’m not looking ahead beyond Georgia State.”

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