Who will get the ball for South Carolina baseball to start SEC tournament

South Carolina baseball has its first piece in place for its run in the SEC tournament.

“(Carmen) Mlodzinski on Game 1,” Gamecocks baseball coach Mark Kingston said.

After that?

“TBA from there,” Kingston said.

So USC (32-33, 17-13 SEC) at least knows it’s most used midweek starter of late will go against Missouri when they open in Hoover at 9 p.m. Tuesday. He’s started the past four midweek games.

But those games haven’t been the smoothest sailing.

In four starts, he’s allowed 11 earned runs in 20 1/3 innings. He fared well against the Citadel and Furman, allowing only two of those runs, but allowed four in the loss to Presbyterian and got chased after 3 1/3 innings against College of Charleston.

“He’s had some ups and downs, obviously,” Kingston said. “So we need to have him have an up this week, and we’ll also evaluate. If we need to get the bullpen in quick, we’ll do that. It makes the most sense for him to throw just because he has been doing it. He has some experience, and I think this will be really good for his development as well.”

For the season, Mlodzinski is 2-5 with a 4.93 ERA.

Other non-weekend starters USC has tried include John Gilreath and Ridge Chapman, who is nursing an injury which Kingston said was day-to-day.

A deep run could mean four, five or six games across six days.

Kingston said his staff will wait on the starters who pitched over the weekend and see when they feel up to going this week. He also pointed out going earlier now means more rest on the back end as they look forward.

When they need to be at their best.

“We’re going to evaluate as we go, see how they feel,” Kingston said. “We want to play really well in this tournament, but we have the NCAA Tournament to think about also. We’ll factor in everything as we go.”

This story was originally published May 21, 2018 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Who will get the ball for South Carolina baseball to start SEC tournament."