West Virginia baseball coach calls out Clemson’s ‘bogus’ visiting bullpen setup
The opposing coach of a team that visited Clemson baseball for an NCAA regional last week is pushing back against what he called a “bogus” visitors’ bullpen setup.
Speaking Friday, West Virginia baseball coach Steve Sabins took issue with Clemson’s new visiting bullpen setup at Doug Kingsmore Stadium — which lets fans gather about 5-7 feet away from opposing pitchers and talk trash to them from behind a net in a standing room-only beer garden area — and said it shouldn’t be allowed.
WVU, the No. 2 seed in Clemson’s regional, upset the No. 11 national seeded Tigers 9-6 on May 31 and ultimately advanced to the NCAA super regional round.
Ahead of West Virginia’s opening super regional game at LSU on Saturday, Sabins was asked about the “issues” his Mountaineers’ bullpen faced against Clemson.
“I like that you called them ‘issues,’” Sabins said. “I agree with ‘issues.’”
WVU’s coach then launched into an extended critique of the visitors’ bullpen setup at Doug Kingsmore Stadium, which Clemson changed ahead of the 2025 season. Tigers coach Erik Bakich has publicly called for fans in the area to be “rowdy” and provide a “10th man atmosphere” without crossing a line with their words.
Sabins credited Clemson for having “awesome” attendance at home games (6,475 people attended the Clemson-WVU game) but said Doug Kingsmore Stadium was more of a “minor league atmosphere” as opposed to a true atmosphere like LSU’s.
“The crowd here is raucous and really into the game, but it’s more of a traditional college baseball setting,” Sabins said of LSU. “At Clemson, it’s kind of that minor league thing where it’s offensive-oriented. Every time that there’s a ball or a walk or a hit, the music gets louder, and so it’s a little bit of an artificial heart rate increase, I think, for pitchers and for defenders.”
‘Drunk frat guys’ too close to players
Sabins then pushed back against Clemson’s visitors’ bullpen setup as “bogus” because, in his opinion, it allows “drunk frat guys” to get too close to opposing pitchers as they warm up in the bullpen.
“It’s a net where, as a pitcher is warming up, someone could actually grab a pitcher’s arm,” Sabins said. “And so I’m all for environment. It’s just that as somebody was warming up, somebody could actually reach out and grab an arm.”
Did any of his pitchers get touched by Clemson fans?
“I don’t want to say that,” Sabins said. “I don’t know that for certain. It’s close enough to be able to do that. So I think as a pitcher is warming up, psychologically, if you feel like you’re in danger, you may adjust your mechanics, or you may feel like it’s too tight. So there probably needs to be a rule in place just to control that a little bit.”
Clemson’s visitors’ bullpen setup, highlighted by The State in April, is within current NCAA rules, which only state that the area must feature two regulation-size home plates and pitcher’s plates. The NCAA’s baseball rule book does say that schools building new fields should place bullpens outside the field of play, not within it.
But that’s a recommendation, not a formal rule.
Bakich previously said Clemson changed its opposing bullpen setup because the Tigers used to offer a spacious bullpen outside the field of play and the “easiest place to be an opposing pitcher.” Clemson, he said, had played at a number of ballparks where the area was much smaller, in the field of play and/or closer to fans.
The addition of alcohol sales in Clemson’s baseball stadium for the first time ever — the university starting selling beer at Doug Kingsmore Stadium and other venues on April 5 — made the beer garden area even rowdier down the stretch this season.
Although South Carolina coach Paul Mainieri subtly critiqued the visiting bullpen setup in February, WVU’s Sabins is the first coach to publicly call out the area.
Sabins also mentioned Clemson’s visitors’ bullpen earlier this week when he was asked about how he manages a game getting chippy. He cited an example from the Clemson game when his players were jawing with Tigers pitcher Aidan Knaak.
“They were getting after him a little bit and trying to get (Knaak) to waver,” Sabins said June 3. “And the umpire came over to me and told me that we needed to stay with our guys and not say anything to the opposing pitcher. And I was upset at that.”
“I barked at him pretty good, because I asked him to look around the stadium because there were (6,000) Clemson fans, and I asked him to look in the bullpen because there were drunk guys screaming everything you could imagine to our team. I said, ‘Let’s not concentrate on the 20 guys in our dugout, right?’”
Later in Friday’s interview, Sabins was asked about the “problems” West Virginia faced against Clemson. Sabins said he didn’t want to blow things out of proportion.
“It wasn’t a problem,” he said. “Our guys competed well, pitched well, we swept a regional. I don’t want to turn it into a distraction for what we’re trying to do here.”
Sabins said Clemson’s home environment has prepared WVU well for this weekend’s super regional at No. 6 national seed and SEC power LSU, which runs Saturday-Monday at Alex Box Stadium. LSU’s home ballpark seats nearly 11,000 people.
“This environment is incredible,” he said. “This will be something that is great for our kids. But going to Clemson before we came here certainly puts us in a better situation than going to a quiet, golf-clap community. That was a little bit more aggressive.”
This story was originally published June 6, 2025 at 5:56 PM.
