As Opening Day arrives, South Carolina eager to answer ‘question marks’
From the outside looking in, the 2019 South Carolina baseball season that opens Friday at Founders Park is one full of unknowns.
From the inside, the Gamecocks know that expectations aren’t very high — they’re unranked by every preseason poll — but their own confidence remains strong.
“This team, you got a lot of new faces, but I can see there are outside sources saying there’s going to be a lot of question marks. But I don’t see those question marks because I see how good the team is, because I’ve been a part of it,” senior center fielder T.J. Hopkins said. “We’ve been going since the fall, so I can see how some outside sources can be like, ‘Yeah, there’s question marks,’ but I’m really excited for this team to get going because it’s a really talented team.”
In coach Mark Kingston’s second season at the helm, he will trot out an entirely different rotation and a radically different lineup for this weekend’s series against Liberty from the one that ended last year in the NCAA Super Regionals.
For the most part, Kingston has settled on his initial answers to those question marks. His trio of starters is set, his lineup card is mostly penciled in, and he’s ready to go to work.
LIBERTY
The Gamecocks are 11-3 all-time against Liberty, which last made it to the NCAA tournament in 2013 and 2014. The Flames were not included in preseason projections of the tourney this year and were picked to finish third in the Atlantic Sun conference.
Despite that, Kingston called Liberty an “NCAA-caliber type team” that returns the majority of its lineup from last season, when the Flames went 32-26.
Liberty’s coach, Scott Jackson, is someone who runs “aggressive, well-coached” teams, Kingston said, but there’s no unusual message he plans to preach to the Gamecocks ahead of the series.
The one area Kingston did highlight as a strength of Liberty’s is its starting rotation.
“They got some power arms on the weekend. They’re going right-left-right this weekend with a lefty in the middle that’s more of a pitchability guy. The Friday-Sunday guys are power arm types,” Kingston said.
LINEUP
Hopkins, right fielder Andrew Eyster, second baseman Noah Campbell, shortstop Nick Neville, third baseman Jacob Olson, catcher Chris Cullen and designated hitter Luke Berryhill will all definitely start for USC against Liberty.
The left field spot remains open, but freshman Brady Allen has a “good chance” of starting there. At first base, Kingston is still keeping his options open. Freshman Josiah Sightler, sophomore Jordan Holladay, Berryhill and Allen were all names he mentioned Thursday as potential starters, and it seems likely he’ll play more than one this opening series.
On offense, the exact order of the lineup is something Kingston said he has a fairly good sense of, but he declined to publicly give any indication of who will go where. One thing he did say was that fans should expect more than the starting nine hitters to get chances at the plate this weekend.
“We have more than nine hitters that deserve a chance and a look this weekend, so we’ll try to get more than nine hitters in the game this weekend,” Kingston said.
On defense, the Gamecocks are coming off a 2018 season in which they tied the program record for fielding percentage. And though USC must replace its entire starting infield, Kingston hopes to replicate that success, eventually.
“We lost some really good guys on the infield. ... On Opening Day, do I expect it to be as good as as the last day of the Super Regional? Maybe not, but I think we can get there. I think the shifts will have a lot to do with trying to protect your guys in terms of knowing where the ball will go most likely,” Kingston said.
ROTATION
USC is going with sophomore Carmen Mlodzinski, freshman Dylan Harley and junior Reid Morgan. Of the three, Mlodzinski is the only one with real collegiate starting experience.
But the Gamecocks are projecting confidence in the group. “Nasty, nasty and nasty,” is how Hopkins described them, in order, and after flirting with the idea of experimenting with the bullpen and “openers” in the preseason, Kingston said he believed the three starters are strong enough to forgo anything unusual.
“We’re going to go into this season traditional, with the traditional model of starters and relievers, set-up men, closers and maybe some matchup lefties. I don’t see any reason to try to break something that doesn’t need to be fixed yet. However, if we get into the season and it’s not working at a level that we think is where we want it, then we’ll look into that stuff,” Kingston said.
GAME INFO
What: South Carolina baseball vs. Liberty
Where: Founders Park
When: Friday, 4 p.m.
Saturday, 3 p.m.
Sunday, 1:30 p.m.
Tickets: Starting at $6
Radio: 107.5 FM in Columbia area
Watch: Games 1 and 3 streaming on SEC Network Plus via WatchESPN
Weather forecast: Partly sunny, changing to cloudy with a 50 percent chance of showers late on Friday, high of 68 degrees. Mostly cloudy on Saturday and Sunday with the chance of rain at 50 percent. Temperatures in the mid-60s, rising to as high as 70.
