Gavin Casas is improving as a player in his second year with South Carolina
Gavin Casas said he’s a better player than he was in his first season for South Carolina, even if the stat sheet doesn’t agree.
He hit .259 and recorded 19 home runs and 56 RBIs in 2023 as a junior. Nine games into this season, Casas is batting .217 and has 10 RBIs to kick off his senior season.
“I feel like every year you have the opportunity to develop and you have the opportunity to get better,” Casas said. “I feel like this year I’ve worked really hard to improve myself, improve my game and unfortunately, the numbers don’t really show it.”
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He hit his first home run of the season against Gardner-Webb on Tuesday night. It brought home three runs and he said it was because he knew what pitch was coming.
In his previous at-bat, Casas struck out swinging. Once he got back to the plate, he thought they might try to get him with that same pitch again.
“I feel like I’ve been having solid contact but not much results so it’s a little disheartening, but that’s baseball, you got to go through it,” Casas said. “In this game, you fail seven out of 10 times and somehow you’re good. It’s a daily grind so you just keep going.”
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He hammered the same pitch that beat him in the last inning over the right field wall. It traveled a whopping 429 feet.
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“He’s really been swinging the bat well, probably for his last 12 at-bats I would say,” head coach Mark Kingston said. “You kind of saw the light go on recently.”
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Casas said he knows he got off to a slow start this year. He struggled mightily at the start of the season. Over the last few games, he had been hitting the ball hard, but nothing out of the park until Tuesday night.
“Baseball is a very difficult game,” Casas said. “As far as what changed, not much has changed, just luck honestly. You go up there, you try to put together good at-bats, put together quality ABs and hope for the best.”
Despite his early season struggles, Kingston said Casas has been the player that he proved himself to be last year. Casas said he’s a better version of that player.
“As far as myself, I feel like I’ve improved, I feel like I’ve done the work,” Casas said. “I’ve done everything I could to put myself in a good position in order to succeed and whatever happens out there is what happens.”
