South Carolina shaking up weekend rotation amidst strange injury situation

Nobody can explain it, not even Paul Mainieri. It’s just been that type of season for South Carolina.

“Craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” the first-year head coach said.

During batting practice last Saturday, Dylan Eskew was working on pitching drills in the bullpen, throwing a weighted ball into the wall. That’s when a long flyball, hit far enough for a home run, struck the right-hander in the head, forcing him to miss his Sunday start against Arkansas.

Eskew cleared concussion protocol on Wednesday and had a chance to make it back for his next start. Then came some more unfortunate yet strange news. According to Mainieri, he’s now “got an oblique problem.”

“He was starting to have some problems with his side a little bit when I noticed it,” Mainieri said. “He was playing catch a couple of days earlier. And he was just doing some stretching. I said, ‘You have any problems?’ He said, ‘No, just a little tight. I’m just stretching.’ But when that ball hit him, the way his body reacted to it, I think it irritated him.”

With No. 1 Tennessee coming into town, Eskew won’t pitch this weekend. Mainieri doesn’t expect him to be available “for the foreseeable future.” Because of this, South Carolina’s rotation will look much different.

Jake McCoy will move up a spot and get his first Friday nod after opening the season as the team’s No. 3 starter. Jarvis Evans Jr., who filled in for Eskew last Sunday, will start Saturday. Mainieri hasn’t decided what he’ll do for Sunday yet.

“Unfortunately, we just got rushed into moving Jarvis into the rotation last weekend, and now with Eskew’s injury, Jarvis moves up a spot,” he said. “… So now we’re McCoy, Jarvis and famous TBA on Sunday. We’ll see where we are when Sunday rolls around.”

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Even before Eskew’s injury, Mainieri already had plans to shift his rotation around. He wanted to move Brandon Stone, who had started the last two series openers, back to the bullpen. In those two starts, Stone went 0-2 and gave up eight runs with six strikeouts and five walks. Before that, when he pitched as a long reliever, he owned a sub-2.00 ERA over 18.2 innings.

“He was lights out coming out of the bullpen for us, and he was a great weapon,” Mainieri said. “And then we bumped him into that Friday night start, and those two starts didn’t go as planned either. But I think there was some reasons for that as well.”

Mainieri planned to start McCoy, Eskew and Evans in that order for this weekend’s series. The only thing that hasn’t changed at all with his initial plan is starting McCoy on Friday. It’s something he knew could happen at some point with the left-hander’s high ceiling and potential.

“He’s the best arm we have. I’ve always thought that Jake was a Friday night starter. He just wasn’t ready to be a Friday night starter yet,” Mainieri said. “… But I’ve always felt that Jake was capable of being the Friday night starter, just because of his stuff and the athlete that he is, and so forth.”

Evans, who had been South Carolina’s go-to midweek starter before Eskew went down, pitched three innings and gave up two home runs in his first weekend start at Arkansas. So far this year, he’s 3-0 with a 3.42 ERA and 27 strikeouts to six walks over 26.1 innings.

Between him and McCoy, Evans feels good about their chances of getting the Gamecocks back on track amid a four-game losing streak.

“(McCoy’s) proven himself to be a legit arm in the SEC. I think tomorrow he’ll definitely show that. And then I think that I’ll follow up,” Evans said. “(I’m) gonna come out there and compete, give it all I got. Whatever happens, happens.”

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