Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's 11-7 loss to Tennessee on Friday

Following an 11-7 loss to No. 1 Tennessee on Friday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“That was, I want to say it’s been a long time since I coached a game where we lost by four runs, but it didn’t feel like you lost by four runs. I thought we played our hearts out tonight and made a couple of mistakes. I thought that Jake McCoy was really letting it rip tonight, and he was throwing the ball gooAnd, you know, we turn that double play, you don’t know if they’re going to score. And not only do they score five runs, and then Jake ends up having to throw probably 30 more pitches, which had its effect on him. Then, in the what was it the fifth inning, when he walked two guys and then fell behind 2-0, we had to take him out. Nobody feels worse than Jordan Carrion. But that was a tailor-made double play. And it’s hard to make mistakes like that against a team of this caliber, because when you make those mistakes, good teams will pounce on that. To their credit, they did. And they ended up making it tough on Jake that inning, and it was hard for him to get us off the field. And then he started to get a little bit tired there. I think he didn’t, you know, he didn’t admit that he was getting tired, but he was, you know, it had to have taken its toll on him.

“And then Tyler comes in, and we’re one strike away from getting out of the inning. He’s doing a great job. And then with two strikes, the kid slaps the ball down the left field line, opposite field and and then we can’t, couldn’t get off the field again. And, you know, dug ourselves a big hole there. But Caleb came in and really gave us a real boost. You know, I’m so, just so proud of Caleb, you know, he he hadn’t been getting a lot of opportunities, and now two times in a row, he’s pitched great and can’t get his chance.d, and the kid ambushed a fastball and hit the home run in the first inning. And then in the second inning, you know, we got a guy on base, but he gets a double-play ball. Man, we kept fighting back, and Stone hit that ball. I thought it was gone. It was going to be a two-run game, and still had a chance. And then Scobey hit three balls tonight right on the screws and had nothing to show for it, including the last out of the game. So, you know, we out-hit them. We didn’t pitch that badly, really. We made one bad defensive play. But I think the guys played pretty well. The number one team in the country just took advantage of the few mistakes that we made.”

You mentioned out-hitting Tennessee, 13 hits. How do you feel about the approach overall, to the way the guys are going up to the plate?

“I mean, you know, think the approach has been good. You know that kid was throwing the ball really hard at left left-hander, and it’ll have first pitch hits against him. I think, if I’m not mistaken, you know, several guys swung at the first pitch and got base hits. When they don’t get base hits, everybody’s second guess is that they’ll make a pitcher work enough, so it works both ways. Probably the difference in the game is that they had two balls out of the park, and we only hit one. You can’t hit them out of the park if you don’t swing. In this league, when you’re facing these guys that throw so hard you just hate to give take signs to kids and put them in a hole and then tell them. They’ve got to try to hit a ball out of the ballpark when you’re taking the bat out of their hands. So, you know, it’s easy to second-guess and say, we should have made the kid throw more pitches. Well, you know, there’s no, there’s no for sure that he was going to walk batters, and even if he walked batters, who was going to drive him in? You know, it’s a mindset that you’ve got to be aggressive up there at the plate to be able to drive in the runs. And we had some clutch hits tonight.

“Nate got us a good start, and then Ethan hit that ball out. But then later on, you know, that one inning, we had two or three hits with runners in scoring position. I think Kaczmar had one. Carry on, had one. Somebody else had one. I remember, but, you know, and then Kaczmar hit the home run. I thought Kacz played a great game tonight. You know, he’s been struggling a little bit, both at the plate early in the year and then lately, defensively. But today, he was very aggressive coming to get the ball. And, you know, played short stuff the way I want him to play short stuff, really. You know, he was making, making good hops for himself and turning what could be difficult plays into routine-looking plays. Now I’ve got to get Jordan to charge the ball. If he charges that ball, I think that turns into an easy double play, but he hung back on and let the ball play him. And you know, outside of that, Jordan played great. He had four hits. But I think if he was sitting up here right now, he’d tell you how badly he feels about not making that play, but he’s been playing great baseball, and you know, he just got to learn from that mistake, and next time he gets that ball, be more aggressive to come and get it. But in answer to your question. I mean, I think we competed hard at the plate. Tonight. We had quite a few strikeouts, but this kid averages like two strikeouts in any or more, you know. So we’re not the only team that has struck out against them. We hit a lot of balls hard, I thought. And unfortunately, you know, they made some good plays, and we probably should, could have had a few more hits, and maybe would have been different.”

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What did you kind of see in McCoy’s stuff there in that second inning after the error?

“I really didn’t see his stuff any different. I thought he was competing hard out there. And sometimes you’ve got to tip your hat to the other team. I mean, look at their hitting numbers. I mean, they do that to a lot of teams, you know. Jake was competing hard out there. I really felt like he was giving it his all and wasn’t backing down. And, you know, they got good hitters. And, you know, couple the hits they got, you know, weren’t, weren’t, you know, scorched. They just found holes, you know. And you know, the home run ball really hurt us. I think they have over 70 home runs. So, you know, we held them to two home runs tonight, one was a solo, and one was a two-run homer. But they got a few clutch hits. And, you know, sometimes you give credit to the other team. They like, like I said earlier, you know, we made a mistake, and they pounced on it, you know, took advantage of it. That’s what good teams do.”

Not to keep harping on that air in the second, but does that show in this league how small the margin of error is for you guys?

“Well, there’s no question about it. When you play a team of this caliber, and you know, we’re in a transition in the program, and, you know, we have some really good players, and we have some areas that we could improve in. There’s no question. But when the other team is so talented and you make a mistake, it gets blown up. They just take advantage of it. And that’s what top teams in the country do, and you and you got to give them credit, you know, they took advantage of that mistake. And it wasn’t that Jake wasn’t competing hard. He was, you know, they had some good at-bats against him, and I think if Jordan had another chance to make that play, he would be more aggressive, come in, make his own hop, flip it to Kacz, and we’d have a nice double play. Nobody on base with two outs. And, I mean, we’ll never know what would have happened, but you know now it’s first and second, nobody out, and a lot of pressure on Jake and their hitters came through against him.”

Caleb Jones, what have you found in him? Is there something different about him, or was it just a matter of getting an opportunity to go out there?

“I think it’s just that he’s taking advantage of his opportunity. When you have X amount of pictures on the team, you can’t pitch everybody all the time. And this past week, because of the injury to Dylan Eskew, we had to bump Jarvis to Sunday, which meant Tuesday, we didn’t have a typical starting pitcher against North Carolina, so we tried to match it all together. And at one point I knew Caleb Jones was going to get in the game. He was one of the few guys who really rose up earlier this week against North Carolina. Pitched great. So today, we brought him in and he was just awesome. I mean, he was mixing his pitches. He was throwing both the slider and his fastball for strikes. He was throwing some change-ups. And you know, we played good defense behind him. You know, Beau Hollins made a really nice play on a smash. And you know, you know, when they hit it hard, so a couple times they hit it at our guys, which was good. And you know, there’s no defense against the base on balls. If you throw strikes once in a while, they’re going to hit one hard. And hopefully it’s right at somebody, you know, they have pitchers through strikes, and we hit a lot of balls. It seemed hard that they caught. The kid made a diving catch in right field. The game ended. Scobey hit that ball to left center. I thought was gone, you know? So it was just sometimes, sometimes you get the breaks, and sometimes you don’t, just the way it works.”

You mentioned something to us yesterday about Talmadge LeCroy having a little hip problem. Do you think he’s out for the weekend?

“It’s definitely more serious than a little hip ache. It’s something that Talmadge is going to try to rehab through therapy, and if it doesn’t work, then he’s going to have a procedure done and probably knock him out for the rest of the year. So there’s no use having a procedure done right now, because he’d be out for the year. So he’s going to try to rehab it and see if he can feel better. But I don’t know if Talmadge being in there would have made a difference tonight. Obviously, Max had a tough day at the plate. And then Ryan Bakes, when I put him in, too. So that position struck out four times tonight. And maybe Talmadge would have struck out four times, who knows? But you play with the guys that are healthy enough to play and do the best you can. And I’m more concerned about Talmadge’s health than us not having him.”

Henry Kaczmar has been looking a lot more comfortable in general out there. Would you agree with that?

“Yeah, I thought Henry played a great game tonight, and I told him that. I’ve been trying to get him to play more in an aggressive way at shortstop, where he comes and gets and charges the ball and makes good hops for himself. He’s played up in the Big 10, and all those fields are artificial turf, so you have a tendency to hang back on the ball because you’re not going to get a bad hop. The transition has been a little bit more difficult than I thought it would be for him, like, you know, the other day against North Carolina, he’s back on the ball I thought was a double play ball against Arkansas. You had two plays in that first inning when Jake McCoy couldn’t get out of the inning. I just had to become more stern with him about trying to get him to play attacking the ball. And tonight, he did. I thought he played, even catching that little soft line drive, because he had the mindset of playing aggressively. He was able to catch that ball, but he made other plays. I mean, he struck out a couple of times tonight, but that’s a tough pitcher for a left-handed hitter. And he got the base hit against him with two strikes. He knocked in a run, and then he hit the home run. I thought he played a great game, Henry, you know, even though he had a couple of strikeouts. I take that from him every day.”

How much closer do you feel like you guys are to finally getting over that hump and maybe knocking the wall down a little bit?

“We’ve got to stop the other team. Pitching is so important, you know, it’s, you know, and we just haven’t pitched great, you know, good enough to win. I mean, we scored, maybe runs time with seven, seven, yeah, no, you know, the other day we scored eight. And we’re just not, you know, doing quite like, you know, like I thought Jake McCoy pitched well tonight, like his numbers are not indicative of the way he pitched, and that’s been the case with a couple of his outings, really. And, you know, our bullpen has been up and down, you know, and mostly down during the street, quite frankly, you know. And part of that is because the quality of the opposition is really good. We’ve played in some small ballparks. We’ve had played with wind blowing out. You know, I can make a lot of excuses for him, but at the same time, you know, early in the year, our pitching staff was carrying our team, and I told them that yesterday at practice. I said, you know, you guys have been carrying the team. You carried the team early in the year, and now you’ve it feels like you’re a little bit shell-shocked. But honestly, even tonight, I thought Jake McCoy’s lost stat line was very misleading. I thought he threw the ball really well. Pitcher came in and threw the ball really well. Got a couple outs. He was one pitch away from getting us out of the jam. Look what I put him in, first and second. Nobody out in a two and O, count on the hitter. He got the hitter, then he got another out, and he gets two strikes on the next guy. And he makes a pretty good pitch, a breakable ball in the outside corner. And you gotta tip your head to the kid.

“He went with the pitch. I thought Scobey had caught it at first. He came close to catching the line drive and getting us out of the inning, but the ball ends up in the left field corner, and then they get another hit or two, and next thing you know, it’s a big crooked number up there on the board. You know, too much to overcome. So and then Caleb Jones came in and pitched great. So it’s close. You know what? I mean, we’re the kids are doing the best that they can. You know, we don’t have a lot of overpowering arms coming out of the bullpen, and these are things we have to address in recruiting going forward. But right now, you know, I can’t make trades in the middle of the year. You know, you play, you do the best with the guys that you have, and the kids are trying really hard there. I got no, no problem with what these kids’ effort has been, you know, just that sometimes it hasn’t worked out quite the way we’ve wanted it to. And we’re, yeah, I mean, arguably, who’s had a tougher stretch of games in the country than what we’ve had the last, you know, last weekend, midweek game, and then this weekend, you’re playing the number one and two teams in the country, and the team we played on Tuesday was no Humpty Dumpty either, you know. So it’s a tough stretch, and unfortunately, the teams have played a little bit better than us each day.”

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