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Mark Kingston breaks down how he makes his starting lineups

imageby:Jack Veltri•02/28/24•

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Mark Kingston (Katie Dugan/GamecockCentral)

Coming into this season, the offense wasn’t going to be a big question mark for South Carolina. There was already so much talent from top to bottom.

With all that talent comes a hard decision: figuring out the best starting nine. And for head coach Mark Kingston, that hasn’t been the easiest process. He’s still switching and shuffling spots in the order nine games into the new season.

But for Kingston, there are multiple factors that go into his decision-making when creating his lineups.

“Sometimes you go with the hot hitter, regardless of whether it’s versus a righty or lefty,” Kingston said. “Sometimes you go with the left-right matchups and you platoon.”

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Through five of the first six games of the year, Kingston ran out the same starting nine. His only change was flipping Gavin Casas and Tyler Causey’s spots after Opening Day. He also slotted in Ryan Bakes behind the plate and moved Cole Messina over to first base against Queens.

The typical South Carolina lineup has featured five left-handed hitters, a switch-hitter and three righties. But over the last two games, Kingston has made some noticeable changes, and it’s not done by accident.

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On Sunday and Tuesday, South Carolina faced starting pitchers that both threw left-handed. As a result, Kingston wanted to get more righties in the lineup to counteract this. So he opted to start Kennedy Jones and Bakes in place of Blake Jackson and Causey. With this in mind, the Gamecocks now had a lineup that featured five righties and a switch-hitter.

“Some lefty pitchers, just lefties have an impossible task against them, so you stack the lineup with all righties,” Kingston said. “Some righties crush lefties and so you’ve got to get them in the lineup. There’s a lot of different layers to it.”

However, once Gardner-Webb’s southpaw starter came out of the game on Tuesday and put in a righty reliever, Kingston quickly decided to pinch-hit Causey for Bakes in the fourth inning. It was a decision that worked out as Causey proceeded to work a four-pitch walk then drove home a run via sacrifice fly in the fifth.

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Despite making some decisions purely based on matchups, Kingston will have to play his best players at some point, regardless of which side they hit from. And he’s already well-aware of this.

“At the end of the day, you try to go with who gives you the best chance to win that day based on how they hit that type of pitcher, how that pitcher does against your type of hitters. And then you try to stack your lineup with as many of the hitters that will make it tougher on the pitcher as possible,” he said.

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