Jack's Mailbag Ep. 41: Answering your latest South Carolina baseball questions

What else is there to say? It’s been a season to forget.

But here we are. South Carolina’s winning record is hanging by a thread with one more weekend series left in the regular season. The Gamecocks (27-26) will begin a three-game series with No. 1 LSU on Thursday (7 p.m., SECN) at Founders Park.

While I’ve probably already answered most of your questions throughout the season, there are still more to get to. It’s time to answer questions from you, the fans, in my weekly baseball Q&A series, Jack’s Mailbag. This week, we’ll be discussing more about the season as a whole, as well as getting into a few hypothetical questions about changes that could better the future of the program.

If you would like to have a question featured in the next episode, I’ll create a post on The Insiders Forum at the start of every week, and you can ask your question there. Without further ado, let’s get into the questions for this week.

yo-mans: What is your take on the posting of the players and coaching conflicts?

I don’t have much of a take on it. You can’t help but see it floating around on social media and message boards. It’s been a rough season, there’s no doubt about that. It wouldn’t shock me if some of what’s out there is true. It’s still hard to say with 100 percent certainty what’s actually going on. But it’s never a good thing when you read or hear about things like this.

WK: How do you expect PM to deploy pitching this weekend, knowing that Tuesday will be a bigger game than anything against LSU? Also, any updates on Petry’s availability for those 4 games?

Let’s start with Ethan Petry. He returned to the lineup on Tuesday and went 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts. He came up to bat in some critical spots late in the game but couldn’t come through. Then on Wednesday, Paul Mainieri said Petry is “very questionable” for this weekend’s series against LSU.

As for how Mainieri will deploy the pitching this weekend, he said Ashton Crowther will start on Thursday, Jake McCoy will start on Friday, and then TBA for Saturday. He hopes Dylan Eskew will be able to start on Saturday. It’s just a matter of how he’s feeling.

This weekend doesn’t have much bearing on the bigger picture, aside from whether the Gamecocks will be the 15th or 16th seed in the SEC Tournament. Next week in Hoover is what matters most since they need to win the tournament to make it to the NCAA Tournament. So Mainieri says he’s started to think about how he wants to set up his pitching for that first game next Tuesday, and it sounds like it will be a combination of Crowther and Brandon Stone.

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Gamecock14: If you were the AD for one day, what is the most significant thing you would do in regards to the baseball program? Money is not a problem here. Literally a dream (best-case) scenario.

That’s a good question. You could obviously say make staff changes. I think I would just put a bigger overall investment into the program. I know that’s probably going to sound crazy after the way this season has gone. But when I say overall investment, I’m also referring to other aspects aside from the team, like the ballpark and fan experience.

One big issue right now is a lack of interest from the fanbase. It makes sense given that the fans would rather spend their money elsewhere and their time doing other things. They don’t have much reason to get out to Founders Park. I mean, the crowds have been abysmal the last few weeks. So if I’m looking at that from an AD perspective, I’m doing everything I can to get people in the seats, because the fans are the ones that buy the tickets, the merchandise, the concessions, etc.

It starts with putting a better product on the field, but making updates to Founders is something I’ve seen fans bring up before. The stadium opened back in 2009 and doesn’t look much different from its inaugural season. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice ballpark. But there are better ones in the SEC, some that have received upgrades in recent years.

It may not seem like a smart idea to invest more into baseball, but that’s how it has to be nowadays. It’s not the early 2010s anymore. Every SEC team besides Missouri seems to be committed to baseball. That makes it tougher to win. We’ve seen that this season. More than anything, though, South Carolina needs to get fan interest and support back to the way it used to be. That’s just my opinion.

Hampton Rhodes: I am so flabbergasted by the baseball team, I am out of questions.

Nobody asks more questions than Hampton when I do these weekly Q&As. I totally understand it. We’re at that point in the year where a lot of the main questions have been asked. Maybe next week! I appreciate your questions as always.

wcrooster7: Does Mainieri make changes or does Donati?

Ultimately, I think it will be Mainieri making changes. As the current leader of this program, who has made it clear that he’s not going anywhere, he knows this year has been a major disappointment and that things need to improve for 2026. He and his staff have already been busy recruiting players for next year. When the media spoke with him on Wednesday, we were less than a minute into the interview when he had to take an important phone call regarding recruiting. So for him, it’s a constant process of trying to turn things around.

But the thing I do wonder about is if there will be any staff changes after the season ends. You don’t have to look too deep into the numbers to know how the pitching and hitting have performed. Specifically with the pitching, and I wrote about this in my weekend recap, what do you do about Terry Rooney? Sure, he’s the recruiting coordinator, but he’s also responsible for the pitching staff, and it’s been a disaster on that end. So I think whether it’s a change or an adjustment, something needs to look different there for next year.

1Mcreekcock: Jack, only 1 question left and no comments but…… Can you provide team ERA, team BA and team fielding % for both baseball and softball?

Baseball stats — ERA: 6.28, team batting average: .269, team fielding percentage: .975

Softball stats — ERA: 3.16, team batting average: .311, team fielding percentage: .978

Just for reference, these are the overall stats from the season so far. So these aren’t solely based on SEC play.

Discuss South Carolina baseball on The Insiders Forum!