How Hunter Taylor transformed himself to anchor South Carolina behind the plate

Over the past month or so, South Carolina baseball coach Mark Kingston has kept his lineup virtually the same, outside of an injury to junior outfielder TJ Hopkins.

And nowhere is that consistency more evident than at catcher, a physically grueling position where even the best will often take a game off every series or two to recharge. For the Gamecocks, senior Hunter Taylor has started behind the plate in 11 consecutive games, and 13 of the past 14.

Those games have come in 95-degree heat, at 2 a.m., on short rest and in all sorts of high-leverage situations — 96 innings over 11 starts.

USC has another catcher in junior Chris Cullen, but the reason Kingston continues to go with Taylor is simple, he said.

"He's playing such good baseball at this point that we need to play him," Kingston said on May 13. "It's not that Chris Cullen is not a very good player too, and I sat down with Chris and explained it to him — at this point Hunter's playing so well, we have to play him."

The reason Taylor has been able to handle that load with seemingly no strain — anytime over the past month he has been asked how he feels, he has insisted he feels great — is a little more complicated.

"Hunter has totally transformed himself as a player," Kingston said. "He lost 30 pounds because we told him, 'If you're ever going to have any impact in this game and this program in your last year, you need to get in the best shape of your life.'"

Taylor said he dropped the weight mostly by giving up one of his favorite foods, cheeseburgers, and sticking to a more regular eating schedule.

"Mainly eating better, exercising a little bit more, doing a little bit extra in the weight room every day. Stuff like that. Mainly eating better though," he said. "I didn't really give up anything, I just ate a good breakfast, a good lunch and a good dinner instead of maybe skipping breakfast and having a big lunch and a big dinner."

The difference has been dramatic. Even as he slimmed down, his power numbers have skyrocketed; Coming into this season, he had two career home runs, 10 career doubles and a .300 slugging percentage over three years. In 2018, he's slugging .497 and has eight homers and eight doubles.

He's also thrown out 18 of 40 potential base-stealers and worked to become a better blocker behind the plate.

"I got a little bit quicker, a little bit easier to do a lot more stuff, I can get a lot more swings in without getting as tired," Taylor said of the difference between this year and last. "I worked on my defense a lot. That was a big thing I wanted to improve on from last year and the year before. Hitting just kinda filled in with what we do every day in practice."

As for the sheer number of innings he's spent as the team's backstop, Taylor said Tuesday that "Hunter Taylor last year" could not handle the load he's carrying now.

"He would have had a little bit extra weight dragging him down," Taylor said of the younger version of himself. "The last three weeks of the season were big for us, so I felt fine, I wanted to be in there every game, and I felt good. My body never felt like it was tearing or (there was) too much wear on me."

Now, as the Gamecocks prepare to face Ohio State in their NCAA Tournament regional hosted by East Carolina, Taylor is locked in on the goal he's had since he first arrived at USC from Onley, Virginia — the College World Series in Omaha.

It's a far cry from where he was almost two years ago, when he announced he would transfer to another program to get more playing time. A little over a month later, he reversed course, returning to the Gamecocks, then splitting time throughout 2017 with Cullen.

This year, however, he's taken the lead, and while his time in Columbia didn't go quite the way he originally envisioned it, he said he's still happy with how it's ended up.

"I look at it in the long run as it was supposed to happen, and here we are in a good spot, so hopefully it's a good thing, and I'm glad I came back," Taylor said.

Friday schedule

Game 1: South Carolina (33-24) vs. Ohio State (36-22), 2 p.m. (ESPN2)

Game 2: East Carolina (43-16) vs. UNC Wilmington (37-21), 7 p.m. (WatchESPN)

Ticket info: All-session ticket books are available for $90, $72 and $60 depending on seat locations, while tickets for single sessions (games) — priced at $15, $12 and $10 — will go on sale Friday at 11 a.m. Tickets can be purchased in person or over the phone by calling (800) DIAL-ECU or (252) 737-4500 during normal business hours through Thursday.

This story was originally published May 30, 2018 at 6:39 PM with the headline "How Hunter Taylor transformed himself to anchor South Carolina behind the plate."