The key to South Carolina baseball's offensive success? It's man vs. pitching machine

When South Carolina baseball is slated to face a right-handed pitcher, assistant coach Stuart Lake throws batting practice before the game. If the opposing pitcher is a lefty, it's pitching coach Skylar Meade.

But while both men are well-respected, well-liked coaches, neither can measure up to the best hitting instructors the Gamecocks have — their pitching machines.

Those three-legged machines are key to USC coach Mark Kingston's training regimen, not to mention a recent offensive kick for the team, which is averaging 10 runs per game over the past four contests.

"To me, it's all about how we train," Kingston said last week before South Carolina faced LSU. "We trained a certain way all fall, all spring, in terms of how much we challenge our hitters, especially with machines and the velocity of machines."

Pitching machines are a common tool on almost every level of baseball, but at Founders Park, they're integral — and firing off pitches at elite speeds, between 92 and 94 miles per hour, Kingston said.

"Honestly, if you face the machine we face, it's probably tougher than some of the pitchers we're facing. So if you can hit off that, you're going to have success in the game," junior LT Tolbert said.

The fruits of that training showed in the early going, with South Carolina averaging nine runs per game over its first seven contests. But after that, the bats began to quiet, culminating in an eight-game road trip in which USC scored more than five runs just once and averaged less than four per game.

And Kingston didn't chalk up the team's road struggles — they went 3-5 on the trip — to just the usual stresses of travel or playing in front of hostile crowds. The big problem, he said, was that the Gamecocks didn't have their machines.

"Our swings looked a little slower than normal, a little longer than normal," he said. "I mean we use three to four pitching machines every day at practice when we're home. On the road, you're lucky if you get one. So it's just a matter of how you prepare. At this facility, with all the resources that we have, we can prepare at a very high level that being on the road, being on foreign soil, just doesn't allow you."

Senior Madison Stokes agreed, pointing to the human limitations of having coaches like Lake and Meade throwing batting practice all the time.

"I think being on the road and only seeing BP thrown at 60 miles per hour could maybe lengthen our swings up, get too big because it's easy to hit home runs and drive the ball when it's coming slow, so seeing the velocity for sure makes you lock in a little more," he said.

After getting back from that trip, South Carolina has has several intense practices featuring the pitching machines, and the results speak for themselves. After a 7-4 loss to Presbyterian, USC has scored 11, 11, 8 and 10 runs over the past four games, all wins. In each of those games, the Gamecocks also had 11 or more hits.

"When you train properly, the swings in the game are shorter, they're quicker, their reflexes are better, they take better pitches, they swing at the right pitches. Everything looks sharper," Kingston said.

Now, however, the team heads to Vanderbilt for the weekend to face the No. 17 Commodores. With a 9-9 record in SEC play, the Gamecocks need every win they can steal on the road to stay in the hunt for the NCAA Tournament, and Kingston said he's learned his lesson from last time.

"We may take some machines with us," Kingston said Wednesday. "Once again, training is important. How you prepare is important. So we're going to try to mirror what we do at home as closely as we can on the road."

If all else fails, he joked, they'll find a Baseball Factory nearby with a JUGS pitching machine for sale.

NEXT

Who:South Carolina (23-17, 9-9 SEC) vs. Vanderbilt (24-16, 10-8 SEC), Game 1

When:7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Hawkins Field, Nashville, Tenn.

Watch: Streaming online on SEC Network Plus via WatchESPN

Listen: 107.5 FM

Probable pitchers: South Carolina — Fr. RHP Logan Chapman (3-0, 3.29 ERA); Vanderbilt — So. RHP Drake Fellows (4-3, 3.03 ERA)

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 4:34 PM with the headline "The key to South Carolina baseball's offensive success? It's man vs. pitching machine."