Everything Paul Mainieri said ahead of South Carolina's series with Morehead State

Ahead of South Carolina’s three-game series with Morehead State, head coach Paul Mainieri met with the media on Thursday. Here’s everything he had to say.

Any updates on Gavin Braland, Dalton Mashore, or anything else with the injuries?

“Well, the news on Gavin Braland is good and bad. We don’t see a fracture, which is a very positive thing. Unfortunately, though, he’s going to be out for this weekend. Right now, we’re classifying it as a high ankle sprain, so I don’t know. I don’t have much experience with high ankle sprains, so I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for him to recover. And what a bummer, you know? I mean, the kid is, you know, I give him a chance, and he caught two great games. He’s really fearless, and he shows a lot of poise, and he gives you good at-bats too, and he puts a bat on the ball. I think the future is very bright for him, and this is just a little setback right now.

“Talmadge is also out this weekend. So we’re just going to really need Bakes and Kaufer to step it up and play at a high level and show us that they belong here and that they can be a positive on our team. Hopefully, nobody else will get hurt because I’m not really sure who the next backup would be after that. I’m going to do a little poll among the team to see who has any catching experience.

“With Mashore, the MRI was not great on him either. There are definitely some issues there. I think he is going to hope to try to play through it and see if he can with some different kind of treatment, as opposed to surgery. And we’ll just see how that plays out. It’s been sore for him. I don’t remember when it first started bothering him, but certainly this spring, it’s been bothering him the whole time. He’s such a good outfielder. That would be a big loss for us, too, defensively. He’s a better hitter than he’s been showing consistently, too, but I’m just wondering how much that hip has been affecting him. We’ll just have to play it by year and see if the alternative treatment is going to help him at all and if it’ll give him a chance to be able to play. We’ll see. But the news was not great on him, either.

“On a positive, I just watched Kennedy take some swings in the cages upstairs. That’s why I was down here a little late. He’s not going to hit on the field at all today (note: he did end up taking live batting practice with the team today), but just watching about 10 swings upstairs with just short toss pitching to him. He doesn’t feel any pain or any restriction, so he feels strongly that he’ll be ready to go tomorrow night.”

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Will you stick with the same starting rotation this weekend?

“Yeah, it’ll be Matthew Becker tomorrow night, Jake McCoy, and then Dylan Eskew.”

Are you fine with how that’s set up? Or would you like to get it in a specific order?

“I kind of like that order right now. I mean, it’s always a constant evaluation thing. I mean, based on just pure stuff, Jake McCoy is the more natural Friday night starter, but Becker’s got the experience, he’s got the repertoire of pitches. He’s got a lot of other qualities about him that I think will help him do a good job on Friday. My bigger concern is the end of the game bullpen for us. And I’m just hoping I don’t have to move Becker into the bullpen. I talked very confidently that Sweeney was going to be able to handle that, along with Marlatt and some other guys. The last performance by Sweeney was not good enough to save the game for us. But nobody’s perfect. Everybody can have a rough outing. So we’ll see how everything is after this weekend, and we’ll take a good, hard look at it all and hopefully put ourselves in the best position for the Oklahoma series.”

When you’re an SEC play, typically in your coaching career, do you like to keep things the same with the rotation, or is it kind of like a week-by-week, case-by-case basis?

“Yeah, no, I like to keep it the same. But things come up. Sometimes a guy strains a muscle in his back and needs a couple extra days, so you’ve got to bump guys up a day. They should be okay always bumping up a day if they ever have to. Because we have to do that when the SEC tells us to play a Thursday, Friday, Saturday series, and certainly when we get to the SEC tournament, that may end up having to happen as well, or Easter weekend. So that’s usually not a huge deal. But given a choice, I’d like to keep it in the same order for SEC play. But again, like I said, nothing is etched in stone. You’ve got to play it as it comes.”

Your freshmen bats are probably getting a lot more reps than you were expecting when the season started. What have you seen from those guys?

“I’ve been doing this a lot of years. I don’t know if I want to say I want to pat myself on the back or if I’m crazy, but I’ve got the guts of a burglar when it comes to playing freshmen. I’ve always said I don’t really care about what year they are. I just want the best players, the passionate gamers that come through. I think I talked to y’all before about when I talked specifically about Beau Hollins and maybe Gavin Braland. I don’t remember if I brought him into the discussion or not. Scobey’s been a starter right from the get-go.

“But I had a year way back in 2009 where I had three really good freshmen that didn’t start the season in the starting lineup. And after 20 games, I plugged in a new freshman third baseman. After 30 games, I plugged in the freshman outfielder, and after 40 games, I plugged in the freshman shortstop and moved DJ LeMahieu to second base. And those three players ended up playing the rest of the year. After I plugged in the shortstop, we went 28-5 the rest of the way and won the national championship. So what happens is, you ask, why do I try to get a lot of guys into the games? You’ll notice how quickly I’m willing to put guys into the games, even with it not being a huge lead. As long as they can play defense and they’re not going to give something to the other team to allow them to get back in the game, I feel confident putting the player out there. And the more times he gets out there, the more he gets used to the bright lights, he gets used to the speed of the game. And they can make a little mistake. It doesn’t cost us the game. But then, as time goes on, they get more and more comfortable. And then when you really give them a chance, like when I put Beau Hollins in on Tuesday, I was really giving him a chance because Mashore was hurt. I looked at different options. I could have put Jackson in right field and stone and left or whatever, but I decided to put Petry in right and let’s play Hollins and let’s see what the kid’s doing because he’s been doing good in those little brief moments when I put him in.

“Hey, for two games, the guy shows me like he really wants to play, you know, like he deserves to play. And I love that stuff. That’s the stuff that, even as I’m talking about it right now, my body goes numb because that’s the exciting thing for me as a coach, is to see a young kid that’s waited his turn, but he’s worked hard and he takes advantage of those little — that’s why I say don’t ever look at it as mop-up duty. Take advantage of those opportunities you get because you enlighten the coach about what your capabilities are. And when I put Beau in there Tuesday, I thought he played a good, solid game. And then last night, of course, between the three hits, he smashed that ball to center field. I didn’t even know he could hit a ball that hard against the wind. The deepest part of the field and almost got out. And then he made that tremendous diving stretch on the throw from Kaczmar when he made that great play. And I told you about his defense already. So yeah, I’m gonna keep playing him until he gives me a reason not to.”

What kind of benefit does it give you to have Hollins as a switch-hitter in the lineup?

“Yeah, that is a benefit, actually. Not many people, in fact, I don’t know if anyone’s brought that up, actually. But it is a benefit. I don’t have to look and see if it’s a lefty or righty throwing. Like with Woita, I have to look and see if it’s a lefty or righty. Maybe with Stone. I’ve got to look at that. But with him, it doesn’t make any difference. He’s a natural right handed hitter, actually. I mean, traditional thought would be that he’s a better right-handed hitter than left-handed. But he didn’t show that last night. He showed that he can really swing the bat left-handed. So, yeah, I’m gonna play him again tomorrow night and just kind of see how it keeps going.

“But you’ve got to be careful because you don’t want to make a kid think, ‘Oh, I got to get two hits to be in the lineup tomorrow.’ If he’s up there, and he’s having good at-bats, and he’s hitting the ball hard, even if they don’t fall, if he’s not just giving up with two strikes, and he’s showing that he can lay off bad pitches with two strikes and stuff like that. You might think I’m crazy when I say this. I learned this from my dad a long time ago. Sometimes guys hit pop ups, but there’s a difference between pop ups. Sometimes, they just missed, and they had a great cut at it. It’s a big league pop-up. Other times, they’re being very defensive, and it’s just like a little lazy pop-up to the opposite field. Well, those are things that I look at to see what I can see for the long term with a player. And if he’s got that competitive zeal, any player has that competitive zeal, I just have more of an inkling to continue to play that player.”

Do you look for anything in particular this weekend or try to figure out anything in particular before SEC play starts?

“Well, we’ve been kind of forced to do that because of these injuries. I can’t even tell you how disappointed I am about Gavin Braland. I swear I turned to Terry Rooney before the eighth inning started, and I said, ‘I really ought to get Braland out of there, just to not have any risk of injury in these last couple innings.’ But then, if I put Bakes in, I’d already hit for Kaufer, and Talmadge wasn’t available. Now I’ve got my last catcher in the game. What happens if he gets hit with a foul tip on his hand? Who’s gonna catch to finish the game? I don’t even know who on the team has ever even caught before. So I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna wait till the ninth inning and then just risk it for one inning.’ And then he gets hurt. I’m so angry at myself. You can’t get hurt when you’re over here sitting on the bench. I’m hard on myself, but, I mean, who could have forecasted that? The kid made an unbelievable play. It was an unbelievable hustle play. But that’s the kind of player that Gavin is. He’s a nice little player, I’m telling you. And now he’s gotten stronger. Somebody asked me a question when I pinch-hit him the other day against Clemson. He’s worked hard. He’s getting stronger. He’s been improving each passing day. And that little experience, even against Clemson, even though he hit into a double play, probably helped him catch great for these last two games.”

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