Terry Rooney shares what could benefit South Carolina's pitching staff most in 2025

Terry Rooney’s job has been nothing short of hectic since he joined Paul Mainieri’s coaching staff at South Carolina. From the time he arrived in Columbia last summer, he’s had his work cut out for him in getting everything in order.

Rooney, in his first season as the Gamecocks’ pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, had to start by figuring out what his pitching staff would look like going into 2025. South Carolina lost many core pieces after the 2024 season, including two weekend starters and multiple bullpen arms.

Eight pitchers decided to return for another season, while the rest of the staff was filled out in recruiting between high school, transfer and JUCO players. It’s a group that looks much more complete now than it did at the start.

But that was only the first step of Rooney’s work from a pitching standpoint. As South Carolina begins preseason work on Friday, the next step is putting the pieces into place and finding the best roles for each pitcher.

“I told them what I care about most is this: that we create the best version of you, however we do have to get there,” Rooney said on the “On The Clock” podcast. “And individually, you’ll get yours, so to speak. You’ll have your opportunity and then the program will get theirs, so to speak, because the better you do, the better we’ll all be.”

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After being middle of the pack in the SEC a season ago, there are many questions as to what to expect from this year’s pitching staff. While the season playing out will give the best indication of how they will do, Rooney believes their collective experience will serve them well.

“There’s a great foundation. But we have some experience. I think if you maybe just look at us on paper, it’s an experienced club in a lot of ways,” Rooney said. “We do have some, even some of our kids that we think will make an impact, some of our portal guys and junior college kids, they’re still older.”

Between all the returning pitchers, they accounted for nearly half of the 532.2 total innings pitched last season. Dylan Eskew, Matthew Becker and Roman Kimball serve as the main veterans with prior starting experience at South Carolina.

Eli Jerzembeck, who could end up being the team’s Friday night starter, is back from Tommy John surgery. Tyler Pitzer, Jake McCoy, Eddie Copper and Parker Marlatt, who each saw plenty of innings as freshmen in 2024, will have a chance to do more in their sophomore seasons.

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Then there’s some unknown with the rest of the pitching staff, mostly considering they are made up of unfamiliar faces in their first year with the program. Brandon Stone is perhaps the best and most experienced pitcher coming in after he went 14-1 with 113 strikeouts in 104.1 innings pitched for Johnson County Community College (KS) in 2024.

Transfers Jarvis Evans Jr. and Wyatt Evans have played in the SEC before at their prior schools. But there’s still a lot to learn about who could take on a bigger workload as the season begins.

“The one thing I wanted to make sure amongst the experienced guys and let them know, you’ve all had experience. You’ve all had success. We don’t have to go from here to here. We just need to go right there,” Rooney said.

“So how do we get you right there? And I wanted to them to understand maybe it’s a one to two mile an hour click in the velo. Maybe it’s a little bit different pitch. Maybe it’s just moving you over on the rubber and we decrease some hits with the ankle. Those kinds of things.”

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