South Carolina still weighing options in lineup as season approaches

During a busy week, Mark Kingston found time to listen to Miami baseball coach Gino DiMare speak about competition.

“He said, as (the players are) competing in the spring, in practice, it’s all great because they get to play every day,” Kingston said. “And they’re competing hard with and against each other.”

Less than 24 hours before opening day, Kingston is still tinkering with his roster and weighing options at a few positions. While South Carolina’s pitching staff for the first weekend has been revealed, the lineup remains a mystery.

“There’s obviously a lot of speculation and a lot of predictions. I will say a lot of the predictions are fairly accurate,” Kingston said about the opening day lineup. “But we still have a couple of positions where I would say that there could be some platoons. So I don’t think it’s fair to say this is our lineup when the lineup on Saturday could be a little bit different than the lineup on Friday.”

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There will plenty of opportunities to fine-tune the roster in the first week of the season. The Gamecocks will play eight games in 10 days. South Carolina has two weekend series scheduled with back-to-back midweek games stuffed in between.

Kingston will have a “balancing act” of handling his pitching staff during this long stretch.

“We know who’s starting the first three games. The midweek games after that will be dependent a lot upon how we use guys this weekend out of the bullpen,” he said. “Obviously, (James) Hicks is in contention there. (Eli) Jerzembeck is in contention there. (Matthew) Becker, (Eli) Jones, those guys are in contention as guys that could be swing type guys as key bullpen guys or midweek starters at this point.”

It’s a much deeper pitching staff than last year, and should help the Gamecocks navigate a game-packed start to the year.

“That’s kind of how we’ll approach it,” Kingston said. “And the guys that we think maybe are most likely to start Tuesday, Wednesday, we’ll probably try to get them in the game earlier in the weekend, if possible. But still, you can’t worry about Tuesday or Wednesday before you take care of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

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Then, there’s still the question of what the lineup will look like come Friday afternoon. The Gamecocks have most positions set with competition raging mostly at third base and in the outfield.

“Starting Friday, we have to split the roster in half and only half the guys get to be in the lineup,” Kingston said. “So I think that part of it will be a challenge just for the guys handling disappointment. Maybe they’re not playing as much as they want to right now. But what we hope is that they take the right attitude, and the guys that are playing continue to work to get in the lineups to push the guys that are getting that opportunity.”

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Still, the players have embraced the competition and position battles throughout the spring. Kingston said it’s “been very good” to see before the start of the season.

There’s a chance the Gamecocks could be platooning guys at different positions to figure out what works best.

“You could see some different things and a platoon is not necessarily always a one-for-one at a position,” Kingston said. “It’s this piece might affect three other pieces in the lineup. So that’s why as coaches we’re having conversations every day. If this happens, what does this move mean? It’s something we talk about all the time.”

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Kevin Madden, Michael Braswell and Talmadge LeCroy are duking things out at third while Dylan Brewer, Evan Stone, Carson Hornung and Caleb Denny are in the running for the outfield spots. Switch-hitting freshman Will Tippett can play third and every outfield spot defensively.

Regardless of who plays, there could be a lot of moving parts early in the season.

“In other words, let’s use (Dylan) Brewer in right field for example. He may be in a platoon with a different position rather than right field. Third base is a position where we have a number of guys trying to get that playing time,” Kingston said. “And so if we face a lefty or righty, that may determine we bring a lefty out, this guy goes to play third, which means if a Carson Hornung is at DH, he may go to the outfield, which may slide a guy there. So there are a lot of moving pieces.”

Kingston’s first lineup will be unveiled when South Carolina opens the season with UMass Lowell Friday afternoon. First pitch is slated for 4 p.m. at Founders Park.

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