Everything Monte Lee said after South Carolina's midweek win over Davidson

South Carolina interim head baseball coach Monte Lee spoke to the media following the team’s 8-6 victory over Davidson on Tuesday. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Well, we hung in there. I told the guys after the game, ‘We needed our offense to find a way to win us a ball game and pick our pitching staff up.’ As many times as our pitching staff has done a great job and we haven’t been able to support them the way that we would like to on the offensive side, for the offense to come through, obviously, right there in the first and score five runs, and then found a way to score three more runs in the middle innings with some solid situational hitting with runners on base…

“I know Riley [Goodman] obviously had the tough outing, but after that, I thought we threw the ball pretty well. This guy to my right, [Logan] Prisco, has been so good for us all year long. Anytime we need strikes and we need a guy to give us length and to bail us out, it seems like he’s the guy that we tend to go to because we trust him. He’s done just such a good job for us. [Parker] Marlatt was huge for us there. Brought him in with the bases loaded and got a big pop-up and threw the ball well.

“And then, Cooper [Parks] did what a guy in a save situation will do sometimes. I’ve said it many, many times: The last three outs of the ball game are the hardest outs to get. They just are. The heightened awareness is so high in the other dugout. They had the tying run on deck and the winning run in the hole, and they were very, very competitive at the plate against us tonight. They earned what they got on the offensive side, but we did just enough. Swung the bats well and had a number of guys that threw the ball well.

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“The thing I was probably the most proud of with the lineup was everybody in that lineup did something tonight productive. Even if they didn’t get a hit, they got hit by a pitch, took a walk, found a way to help us in some capacity, one through nine in the lineup. So I was very proud of the offense in that regard and found a way to win a game.”

It’s right after the game, but what did you see out of Goodman? He just has been going through these struggles all year. Is there any simple solution in your eyes as to how to get this thing right for him?

“What I saw out of him tonight, quite honestly, I thought his command was better. What got him tonight, unfortunately, was, in the second inning, we led the inning off, got in a 1-2 count to the leadoff guy and left the breaking ball over the plate too much, base hit the other way. Then, a single to center field —which is fine. He’s just trying to pound the strike zone first time through the order, and I thought he did a pretty good job of that. He gave up the three-run homer in a two-strike count, and then we gave up another two-strike homer.

“So honestly, if you’re asking me what happened today, he probably threw the ball over the plate too much. He got in some two-strike counts where he had a chance. In that inning where we gave up the big inning, he gave up three hits. Two of them were home runs in two-strike counts. I know he’s frustrated by that. I know that he would have liked to have executed those pitches a little bit better, like any pitcher when you give up a two-strike base hit.

“But I thought, overall, the command was better. He threw the ball over the plate more. I just felt like, with those three hitters there in the second inning, he just left some pitches over the plate, and they took advantage of it. That was the outing in a nutshell, quite honestly.”

You talked about the offense. How assuring is it to see you guys swing the bats the way you did, especially going into another tough SEC battle this weekend?

“I mean, just proud of the guys. Again, the first inning that we had, [Will] Craddock was a little mad after the first. He felt like he should have made a play. There’s a level of accountability with this kid that is so refreshing to see in a freshman. [Dawson] Harman laid out to his right on a ball hit down the line, hopped up, threw the ball to first. I haven’t had a chance to see the replay of it, but I think Will felt like he should have picked that ball or caught the ball. It got by him, and it led to them scoring a run. And Will was ticked off about it. He got in a two-strike count, took two good swings. They left them a breaking ball up, and he hammered it.

“The reason that we scored five runs in the first inning is because of Craddock. When you go up there as a leadoff guy and you hammer a ball in a two-strike count, it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to be okay.’ [Tyler] Bak with the walk, Talmadge [LeCroy] hit a two-run homer. And then, Harman had a heck of an at-bat. I know he didn’t have anything really to show after that, but he hits a double with a two-strike count. I think it was about a seven- or eight-pitch at-bat. And then, [KJ Scobey], in a two-strike count, he hammers one out of the ballpark.

“So we scored five runs there, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that our leadoff guy just did a good job of competing in a two-strike count, hit a ball hard, was able to put behind the fact that he felt like he should have made a play in the first, and he didn’t. He was frustrated, but he set the tone for us there in the first inning, and we were able to put together a big inning, which was great.

“And then, in the middle, Craddock gets hit by a pitch. He’s tough. He’ll stay in there, and he’ll wear one, which I love about him. Bak and LeCroy had single RBIs, we scored two runs. And then, in the fifth, [Jake] Randolph walk, [Ethan] Lizama double — did a good job of base running. They threw the ball to third. And then, [Luke] Yuhasz, they got the corners in, third baseman and first baseman in, and Yuhasz had a selfless at-bat: hit a hard ground ball to second base and scored us a run.

“So all in all, offensively, we did a good job. I wish we would have been a little bit better in the last nine outs of the game on offense. If there’s one thing that I will mention to the guys, we take a lot of pride in talking about winning the last nine outs of the game because they’re so crucial in games like tonight. And we just didn’t do enough at the end of the game offensively after having a good day at the plate. I would have liked to have seen us been a little bit more competitive there in the last nine outs of the game on offense to find a way to tack on one more run, two more runs, there at the end of the ball game.

“But all in all, it’s eight runs, you’ll take it. We’re going to win a lot of games when we score eight runs if we pitch the way that we’ve been pitching.”

You mentioned Prisco and his performance. What made him so effective tonight and, really, this season so far?

“We could see it in the fall, just being on the other side of the ball trying to hit the guy. He throws a ton of strikes, number one. He’s got a good curveball, and he’s got a solid changeup. But what makes him so tough is, his fastball has what we call ‘carry’ on it — ‘ride.’ He’s got a ‘ride’ heater. And when he throws his fastball right at the top of the strike zone, you can’t square it up. It’s a really hard fastball to square up. It doesn’t matter if it’s 88 [mph] or 93. If he can throw his fastball up around their belt, they’re just not going to hit it. And then, he throws that curveball. That curveball tunnels where that fastball plays. The hitter sees that curveball in the same tunnel, and then the bottom just falls out of it.

“He’s tough, man. He’s really tough. He just throws a ton of strikes. And I just love his confidence. He’s the one guy that, when you go out there and he’s coming into the game, when he hits the dirt and he’s getting ready to come on the infield, he’s smiling from ear to ear. He loves coming into the game and pitching, and I love that about him. He gives that calmness to everybody in the infield — and to me. They’re like, ‘Man, this guy’s getting ready to come in here and do well just because he enjoys competing.’

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“He was a huge part of why we won the game tonight. He kept them at bay there in the middle of the game.”

It can change just quickly as Friday, but what do you think it means to your guys to get back to the .500 mark, to climb out of that sub-.500 cellar of the SEC? Do you think, psychologically, that has an impact on the guys?

“Well, we’ve won four games in a row. I don’t worry so much about, ‘We’re at .500, below .500, above .500.’ I’m not as much concerned about that as much as I am that we’re playing better baseball.

“We’re finding ways to win close games. We had a stretch there where we were losing those close games. And now, we’ve been able to find a way to win the close games. 8-6 tonight, 6-4, 1-0, 5-2, I believe… So we’ve been able to find a way to win those close games and get over that hump. That just gives the guys confidence that, ‘Hey, we can we can do this. We can play nine complete innings of baseball and find ways to win a tight ball game.’

“That’s a good thing because it’s good to have confidence late in a ball game with a lead versus feeling the pressure of trying to hold on. We’ve got the confidence of, ‘Hey, we get the ball to the right guys out of the bullpen and play good defense behind them with a lead, we’re going to win this game.’

“Teams that win a lot of games, that’s what they do. It’s what you do with a lead. You ask yourself one question: If you got a good team, you got nine outs to go with a one-run lead, are you going to win the game? That’s what good teams do. They win the tight ball games with nine outs to go. We’ve been able to do that as of late, and hopefully we can continue to do that.”

Josh Gunther probably wishes he could have gotten out of that [seventh] inning there with the jam he had gotten himself into. What do what do you feel like the next step is for him to get himself back to being the pitcher that you guys believe he can be?

“The next step for him is the same step that every guy coming out of the bullpen has to do if they want to be a guy that we go to. Josh is certainly one of those guys.

“You got to close your in-and-out. It’s really simple. Pitchers, they’ve got to smell blood in the water when they get two outs. It’s like, ‘Hey, this inning is over. I’m shutting it down right here and now.’ What you see is, sometimes, pitchers will go one way or the other. They get two quick outs, and they take a what? A deep breath, versus putting their foot on the accelerator and saying, ‘I’m getting ready to close this out, and you got no shot of getting a baserunner on with two outs.’ That’s what guys do that are at an elite level in the bullpen. It’s almost like they get better. They get two outs, and it’s like, ‘This inning is over.’ The velocity goes up even more. The breaking ball’s a little bit tighter. They’re going to close their inning out.

“And I think that’s it. This is not him, this is just relievers in general. The best of the best, when they get two outs, they close it. They just finish that inning right then and there. I think guys that pitch at a high level, they can smell the blood in the water, and they’re going to shut it down right then and there. ‘I’ve got you where I want you, and I’m not going to give you any room to breathe whatsoever.’

“For me, that sense of urgency to close out the inning, it’s really that simple. We got two quick outs, and then it was walk, walk. And then, they bunted, and we threw it away, or whatever happened.

“And got to throw the heater a lot. That’s another thing, too: mixing. Sometimes, come out of the bullpen, you got to pound a strike zone with your fast ball, and when you get ahead of them, then go to your off-speed. I think sometimes we mix a little bit too much, and you fall behind in the count.

“He’ll get there. I mean, he’s been a dude. He’s had arguably two of the better starts of the year, outside of Amp [Phillips]. The Florida start was unbelievable, the Clemson start was unbelievable. He’s going to be fine for us, and we certainly need him to be a dude for us. So we’ll keep running him out there, and he’ll figure it out.”

Is the plan moving forward to keep trotting Gunther out there out of the bullpen, or would you like to eventually see him find his way back into the rotation, given the success he did have before?

“I think that’s really going to be dependent upon a number of factors. I think we all know where we’re at with [Brandon] Stone and where we’re at with Amp. We know that [Alex] Valentin can start for us or pitch out of the bullpen, and we can stretch him out if needed to win in game one or two.

“We can’t keep going to the same two or three guys out of the bullpen late in the game. Those guys are going to wear down. So a guy like Gunther, we need Gunther to be Gunther out of the bullpen for us to give us another weapon. And then, we’re just going to see how it goes from that point.

“My plan right now for him would be, ‘Help us out of the bullpen, and then let’s see how the second half of league play goes and how he pitches.’ He certainly has the capability of starting, but right now, we need him to be able to get big outs for us out of the bullpen.”

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