Mark Kingston announces South Carolina’s weekend rotation to start season
South Carolina baseball has set its weekend rotation for the first series of the season. The first two names were expected — the third was a bit unexpected.
Redshirt sophomore Carmen Mlodzinski and sophomore Brett Kerry will pitch Friday and Saturday, respectively, coach Mark Kingston announced in a statement. Junior JUCO transfer Brannon Jordan will start Sunday.
Mlodzinski and Kerry were all but assured rotation spots, as Kingston consistently said through preseason scrimmages that they were the front-runners for the top two rotation positions.
Mlodzinski was USC’s ace heading into 2019, but broke a bone in his foot against Clemson and missed the rest of the year. Coming back from that, however, he dominated the Cape Cod League this past summer and exploded up MLB draft boards to become a projected first-round pick. He continued that impressive showing into the fall and preseason, hitting the upper 90s with his fastball and flashing high upside with his offspeed stuff.
Kerry, meanwhile, mostly came out of the bullpen as a freshman, becoming one of the Gamecocks’ top options in high-leverage situations. He transitioned to starting later in the year and picked up the win in the final game of the regular season, holding Mississippi State in check to clinch an SEC tournament berth for Carolina. After not pitching this past fall, he has performed well in preseason scrimmages, and Kingston had previously said he’ll get the chance to start.
Jordan, a transfer from Cowley County Community College in Kansas, was taken in the 31st round of the MLB draft but came to USC. In his final year at the junior college level, he went 9-2 with a 2.63 ERA in 61 1/3 innings, striking out 74 batters. He was rated as a top-100 draft eligible college prospect by Baseball America and showed out well in fall scrimmages.
This past Friday, Kingston had said another junior college transfer, Thomas Farr, had a “good chance” to start on Sunday. Farr missed fall practices while recovering from Tommy John surgery and had been knocking off the rust in preseason scrimmages. Another JUCO pitcher, Andrew Peters, was pegged by Kingston as a likely midweek starter while also recovering from Tommy John surgery.
