Bad luck or something else? South Carolina’s baseball season isn’t quite going as planned
The situation was ripe for a hero.
Down four runs. Bases loaded. No outs. The No. 1 ranked team in America on the other side. This was the time to turn opportunity to outcome, to avoid a sweep, to begin turning things around.
That hope lasted all of about two minutes.
Jase Woita struck out. Kennedy Jones grounded into a double play. South Carolina stranded three runners en route to a 7-2 home loss Sunday afternoon at the hands of No. 1 Tennessee (26-2, 8-1 SEC) as the Vols completed the series sweep.
“Obviously we didn’t come through in a lot of clutch situations,” coach Paul Mainieri said. “We had a lot of opportunities. We had the right guys up at the plate and it just didn’t happen for us today.”
Those are the opportunities that have doomed South Carolina (17-12, 1-8 SEC) all season. They’re the moments that optimists will point to as evidence of the Gamecocks being close — close to turning a corner, to being a good baseball team, whatever.
But when the outcome of those moments don’t change, it’s hard to keep pointing to bad luck.
Mainieri’s first season out of retirement has not been smooth. He came into the year admitting the Gamecocks lacked that overpowering ace — something he has repeated dozens of times — but he thought they had a bevy of good SEC pitchers.
Then, before the season even started, possible Opening Day starter Eli Jerzembeck went down with a season-ending injury. And that seemed to kick-start never-ending pitching fluctuation. The Gamecocks have had four different Friday-night starters and one of them — Dylan Eskew — is out with an oblique injury after a baseball struck him in the head while he was in the bullpen during batting practice at Arkansas last weekend.
To hear stories like that is to believe the Chicken Curse is alive and well.
But even a hex does not account for the fact that South Carolina came into Sunday holding the SEC’s worst batting average (.275) with runners in scoring position and is near the bottom with runners on base (.287). It does not explain why South Carolina walks less, hits fewer home runs and gets on base less than just about every SEC team.
Or that the Gamecocks’ pitching staff — though it’s dealt with injuries — came into Sunday’s series finale with a 4.75 ERA (12th in the SEC) having allowed 35 home runs (15th in the SEC) before Tennessee added to that, slugging a pair to ensure the sweep.
For whatever it’s worth, Mainieri has a thought about good fortune.
“I have a saying I use that (former baseball executive) Branch Rickey used,” Mainieri said. “Luck is the residue of design.”
He quickly points to an at-bat in Sunday’s sixth inning at Founders Park. Second baseman Jordan Carrion stepped to the plate with one out and a runner on third. Every infielder except for the the Tennessee third baseman was playing back. And who did Carrion hit it to? The one guy playing in, of course.
“He should be trying to hit a ground ball to the middle of the infield, where the infield is back,” Mainieri said. “So then you don’t have bad luck.”
The same goes for the bases-loaded situation in the fifth inning.
“Personally I think Woita was a little too selective,” Mainieri said, speaking of Woita coming to the plate with the bases loaded and no outs. “(Tennessee) threw him a couple off-speed pitches and he took strikes. ... You’ve got to adapt. Even if he just takes an off-speed pitch for a fly ball to left field, he gets us a run in.”
The first-year Gamecock coach was almost left shaking his head on Sunday. There was no major gaffe. The pitching was decent — not great, but no blow-up inning. They played error-free baseball. Everyone in the lineup recorded a hit. They only struck out five times.
And yet, South Carolina — because it left 11 runners on base — still lost by five runs.
Mainieri has said the Gamecocks’ margin for error is small, but Sunday almost makes you wonder if he’s talking about a grain of rice. Is the margin for error so minute that the difference between winning and losing comes down to Woita swinging at an off-speed pitch? Or Carrion hitting a ground ball too far left?
“There’s just another gear that you’ve got to put in to beat a really good team,” Mainieri said. “Somebody had to do something extraordinary on your team.”
Maybe that’s just the case against the top teams in the country — a number of which South Carolina has played in March: Clemson, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Or maybe, it’s just the reality of the Gamecocks’ situation — that sometimes near-perfection isn’t enough to win.
USC baseball schedule: Upcoming games
- Tuesday vs. Presbyterian, 7 p.m. (SEC Network)
- April 4 at Mississippi State, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- April 5 at Mississippi State, 3 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- April 6 at Mississippi State, 2 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
This story was originally published March 30, 2025 at 4:29 PM.
