South Carolina entering pivotal stretch shaking up pitching rotation
South Carolina will hit the road for an incredibly pivotal stretch with another shake up to the pitching staff.
The Gamecocks will start Brett Thomas Friday night at Auburn, Mark Kingston announced Thursday.
It’ll be Thomas’s first-career SEC start after coming out of the bullpen the last few weeks.
“It’s a big opportunity, no question,” Kingston said. “This is a big opportunity for him. We picked him because his development since coming back from injury has been pretty impressive.”
Thomas has been slow to return to the staff after an offseason procedure, but he’s been back since March and making incremental progress.
The right-hander who turned down good money to enroll at South Carolina out of high school has made five appearances this season, 6.2 total innings.
He’s allowed five runs, all earned, with five walks and nine strikeouts. When he’s operating at full capacity it’s a fastball operating in the low-90s and a really good curveball.
His last outing came against North Florida where he threw 11 pitches, seven for strikes, in a scoreless inning and pitched around a walk.
“Last time out he was throwing his breaking ball for strikes, which is a plus pitch. His fastball was in that 92 to 93 range and he was throwing strikes. We think at this point he’s the best move. We’ll take a look at it and see how it goes. We’ll evaluate from there.”
Noah Hall and Will Sanders will follow on the weekend.
And they’ll need good outings from both in what is an incredibly vital stretch for South Carolina.
The Gamecocks are still playing and fighting to get into the NCAA Tournament, on the outside looking in at the moment.
They need to finish strong, and a major boost to the RPI could be taking a series on the road against a top 20 RPI team in Auburn.
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South Carolina has six straight games against SEC teams—at Auburn and at home against Alabama—with both teams projected currently to make the NCAA Tournament.
Faltering down the stretch could cement the Gamecocks being left out of the tournament in June.
“Every game at this point feels very important to us. Even last night felt like an important game. we’ve lost a lot of our room for error at this point. Every game feels important, SEC Games even more so. If you’re a player, you love to play in important baseball games. We talked about that before game three against Ole Miss,” Kingston said.
“When you’re the right kind of player, those games get you more excited. That’s how we’re going to embrace it.”
The pitching staff is vital to South Carolina’s success and has seemingly found a formula now with Hall and Sanders paired with another pitcher in the rotation and Matthew Becker as the team’s stopper late.
“Our job now is to continue to be creative, be resilient and try and find the best ways to win the most amount of games. I think we have a pretty decent formula and think it’s the best formula for this team in 2022. We just need to keep rolling with it.”
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