Four things to watch for as South Carolina travels to Charleston for fall baseball scrimmage

You may not believe it, but Opening Day is officially 100 days away. That’s not a typo.

South Carolina baseball will kick off the 2025 season on Friday, Feb. 14 at Founders Park. But the Gamecocks still have some work to do before wrapping up their fall practice slate.

The team will head to the Lowcountry where it will take on the Charleston Cougars in a nine-inning scrimmage on Thursday. Weather permitting, first pitch will be at 6 p.m. from Riley Park, home of the Charleston RiverDogs.

Here are four things to watch for as fall ball starts to come to an end.

An old friend

Just like when South Carolina scheduled an exhibition game with Air Force, it’s not a random coincidence the Gamecocks will also play Charleston this fall. Besides the obvious fact these are two in-state teams, Charleston head coach Chad Holbrook is a name Gamecock fans are all too familiar with.

After legendary head coach Ray Tanner stepped down in 2012, Holbrook, who was on Tanner’s staff from 2009-12 and helped the Gamecocks win a pair of national championships, became his successor and coached the program over the next five seasons.

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In his time as South Carolina’s skipper, he went 200-106 (.654) with two NCAA Super Regional appearances. But after the 2017 season, the two sides parted ways, which led him to Charleston, where he remains to this day.

“We are so excited to be hosting the Gamecocks at Patriots Point this fall. I’ve always thought the world of Coach Mainieri and personally, I’ve had some amazing experiences as a Gamecock as well,” Holbrook said in July. “This will make for one great night of baseball and our players couldn’t be more excited.  I’m sure both Cougar and Gamecock fans will have this date circled!”

Since becoming the head coach at Charleston, Holbrook has led the Cougars to a 225-122 (.648) record. Charleston finished atop the CAA in both 2022 and 2024. However, they were notably left out of the NCAA Tournament field last season after losing to UNC Wilmington in the conference championship game.

Charleston will be coming off its best season to date under Holbrook after finishing 41-14 overall in 2024.

What can you expect to see from this team?

It’s been a few weeks since the Gamecocks played their first exhibition game of the fall against Air Force on Oct. 26. Since then, they’ve been back to their regularly scheduled programming, which is playing inter-squad scrimmages at Founders Park every week.

For those who haven’t been able to see the team play at all this fall, here’s a subjective take on how South Carolina has looked from what we’ve seen on the field. There are a lot of new faces with a lot of them doing well. Some of the main names you should know are Henry Kaczmar and Nathan Hall, who will probably end up being starters come Opening Day.

There’s also a laundry list of new pitchers on staff who have shown a lot of good stuff this fall. From a returnee standpoint, Kennedy Jones and Ethan Petry have been swinging the bat well. Blake Jackson has been back in the lineup over the last few weeks after missing some action early in the fall. There’s been a lot of good.

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But with the good comes a little bit of bad. The defense has been far from perfect. From what we’ve watched, there have been some errors made in the field. Some of them are bang bang, others shouldn’t have been made. Take it with a grain of salt, though. It’s not overly concerning as they’ve had stretches where the defense has been fine. And it’s only the fall.

In the same breath, this group seems to be very active on the base paths. When Paul Mainieri had his first fall press conference, he said the players would have the green light to run as they please. At first, maybe it seemed like guys were just taking advantage of that opportunity. But as the fall has gone on, it feels like this could be a part of their identity next year.

If you like seeing South Carolina hit a lot of home runs, you might not like this next piece of news. Don’t be surprised to see this team play more small ball. Will they hit their homers? Sure. But there seems to be more of an emphasis on doing the little things right that brings runs across.

Where will Ethan Petry be playing?

This is somewhat of an extension of what you can expect to see from this team. But if you haven’t been to a game since the end of last season, you might remember seeing Petry play a lot of first base for the Gamecocks. In fact, he was the regular starter over there at the tail end of the 2024 season.

In his first two years at South Carolina, Petry played a lot of right field, which was his primary position before moving to first base for 22 games. So far this fall, he’s been playing a little bit of everywhere. Of course, he’s been in right field some. But lately, he’s been playing a lot of the corner infield spots.

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As recently as this week, Petry has been playing in the infield for each half inning. For example, he’ll spend the top of an inning at third base. Then in the home half of the frame, he’ll go back out and play first base, even if it’s with the other team.

This makes sense since the fall is the best time to experiment and see what works. Now, will this be the case again on Thursday? Probably not from the sense of he’s not going to be taking the field with the rest of Charleston’s starters. But in what will be a nine-inning game, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Petry play multiple positions like he has been doing.

Bring down the walks

A lot of teams seem to have this issue, but South Carolina, especially. The Gamecocks gave up a lot of walks in their last exhibition against the Falcons. On that day, the pitching staff walked 11 batters but also struck out 22.

It’s just a one-game sample size to look at, so that’s not much to go off of. However, when watching this team regularly in their weekly scrimmages, they do have a tendency to issue some free passes. The last thing you want to do is put more runners on the base paths, especially via walks.

As we enter the final week of the fall, it would be good to see as many strikeouts as last time, if not more. At the same time, there needs to be more command when pitchers take the mound. This isn’t an issue every pitcher is having, and the numbers are a little skewed because so many arms have been throwing. But it’s still something to think about.

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