University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Baseball Media Day
2/10/2003 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Baseball Media Day
How?s things going, heading into Friday?
It?s time to play. We?re tired of playing against each other. It?s time to see what we?ve got early. McNeese State is a very good opponent. They are picked to win their league. It's going to be a challenge the first three games of the season.
How are you going to rotate your pitchers this weekend?
Cliff Russum will be bumped up to the No. 1 position and pitch Friday. Stephen Castleman will move into the No. 2 spot for Saturday?s game. Sunday?s starter is TBA. We will pitch either Brent Leach or Anthony Dewitt. It's kind of thrown our rotation into a spin a little, but we have to make due until Bob comes back.
Have you resolved your middle infield for the season?
We are starting Jarrett Hoffpauir at second and Matt Shepherd at shortstop, how we ended last season. They worked very hard during pre-spring and now during our preseason practice. We are going to keep them where they were last season. I might have been out coaching myself. I better stay with what we have.
How do you feel going into the season?
I feel pretty good about our offense. Our defense has played well at times. My concern is our pitching staff. All three guys we lost last year had a lot of strikeouts. We don?t have a lot of strikeout pitchers this year. The premium is going to be on defense. In order for us to be successful, we have to field well. I think we have some pretty good pitchers, but they don?t get a lot of punches. They?re ground ball guys. We have Bob McCrory and Cliff Russum, who can get some but most are ground ball pitchers. When you take out Shea Douglas and Daniel Stewart?s strikeouts, you?re losing 7-10 strikeouts a game. I?ve told our team that we have to be in the top half of our league in defense. That is going to be a key.
How about offensively?
I think we have 12 Division I starters. I think you will see us rotate more with lefty?s and righty?s this year. We feel like we have enough balance that we can do that. We start five left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers and when they change to a left-handed pitcher, we have several hitters we can sub in to compete against the pitcher. It gives us some depth to compete with against the matchups. I think we have some speed, power and depth.
What are you looking for out of Stephen Castleman?
I think he has a chance to break the C-USA pitching rotation. He started there last year. He has got to hold it. He has to keep his arm strong between starts. I think it deadened out on him last year. He had a great first half, as well as anyone and didn?t finish as good. You have to be strong the whole year as good as this league is. There are seven teams from the league that can win the whole thing. It slowly snuck on everyone with the addition of East Carolina and TCU and now it is the fifth-best league in the country. That?s pretty good for a league that has only been around since 1996.
What about Eddie Burger?
Kevin Coker is running No. 2 behind Brad Willcutt. Coker has played well so far. He will play some this year. Brad is coming off arm surgery, and he is about 80 percent. We are going to rest Brad some this year, something we did not do last year. We are going to look at playing Brad at DH and first base on Sundays and some during the week until his arm is fully recovered. There is no danger that he has reinjured it. He had a tough surgery and then had seven months since then. I don?t want to blow it out before conference starts. He played at first base during practice so far and you have to have his bat in the lineup.
How about your outfield?
Jeff Cook is back and is one of the better players in the league. Carlos Velasquez has improved tremendously overall defensively. He has come out with a purpose. He is another guy that needs to have a whole year not a half of a year. He had a great first half and was a little beat up and injured the second half but he is bigger and stronger. I like our right field. Clint King is playing well right now. We have a junior college player, Ryan Frith, probably the best outfielder on the team. He is going to be right in the mix. The thing we have to do is keep everyone that is capable of playing ready to go. We?re going to play a few more players this year. Then if we have an injury, we can have them ready to go. With as many Division I hitters as we have, we need to have someone ready to go at all times.
Last year, you were left home on tournament selection day, do you remind the guys not to take a day off early in the season and risk losing to someone you shouldn?t lose to?
Anyone can beat anyone on a given day. Every game is important in Division I baseball. Bob is going to be out 2-3 weeks and that is three big games that he is going to miss. I did not put a lot of pressure on last year?s team about regional bids. In fact, I didn?t bring up the subject until the last two weeks of the season. We were such a young team last year. I?m not putting pressure on them but they know what I expect. But more importantly, they expect that of themselves. We need to try to make that charge. I think position player wise, I like our team. We have some unknowns on the pitching staff, that is going to be a big key.
How many places do you think that Conference USA is going to get in the tournament this year?
Conference USA is the fifth-best league in country. You got to think that there is four and maybe
How good of a handle do you have on this year's team?
I think we have a pretty good handle on the team. If we face a left-handed pitcher, do we give Willcutt the day off and play him at first base or DH. I personally thought we got hurt against left-handed pitching late in the year. We went out and solved that. Not that we will give some guys a shot. You know Jeff Cook is going to be there everyday. We talked to the team this year and told them that you can?t be selfish. You have to believe in what we?re doing. If that means you have to take a seat against a certain pitcher, you get back in there the next day and pick back up where you left off.
With so many guys coming back, who do you look to as your leader?
Jeff Cook is our team captain. He leads by example. That is the kind of person and player he is. I think Stephen Castleman has done a good job. This is his fifth year. If anybody knows me, he knows me. He knows what we need to do in this program. He?s a senior and needs to have a great year. I think Clint King is capable of having a breakout year. If you put him in the middle of the lineup with Cook and Willcutt, that?s three very good Division I hitters. I don?t know if I would trade them for a whole lot of people. Those guys do a good job.
Do you have the long ball capability?
I think Cook and Willcutt will hit them. I think King and Israel has the capability to hit them. Ryan Frith has got a lot of power. He can hit the ball out of the park. So we do have that but we also have speed. Frith has made us quicker with Clint in the game. Clint is our fastest guy on the team. So that not only helps us with the bat but it helps with the base running and stealing ability. That also helps Carlos Velasquez and Jeff Cook. We are going to probably hit those guys 1-2-3 against right-handed pitchers. That is speed and power in the top of the order. That is the most exciting thing to me, we got some ways to go with our lineup and I feel good about it.
How do you see the conference race this year?
I think that Houston is the team to beat with Tulane in there. Houston has a great pitching staff. Their top three guys are expected to go in the first day of the draft. Their No. 1 pitcher, Brad Sullivan is rated one of the top four pitchers in the country. They strive off that. Tulane has some good players back and so does East Carolina. South Florida is kinda like us in that they have several position players back. TCU is a sleeper and Louisville has their program going. Every team lost some good players but everyone is returning some good players as well, especially in the first seven or eight clubs.
Talk about the development of some local guys like Russum, Shepherd and Lowery?
Cliff Russum is a tough-nosed kid. He has a good arm but what separates him is that he knows how to compete. He showed that last year. You don?t come in against South Alabama and Ole Miss and say here it is for three innings, I?m 19 years old and you?re not going to hit it. He showed me then he is ready for prime time. Shepherd is a tremendous competitor. What separates him and Cliff, they play with a lot of confidence. You never see a whole lot of disgust in them, they play with confidence. Lowery is a good player. We are trying to figure out how to get him on the field. We are fortunate that we have a lot of good players. I think Jason will have a chance to play some for us. I think Marc Maddox is a good player and plays very well for a freshman. He is in the mix to play some. That goes back to the 12 guys that can play on different days.
You have a lot of guys you feel you can play and a lot of confidence. What has the practices been like with that much competition?
I told them we have to use our whole roster. I have always been a big proponent of that. I think it keeps guys excited that they have a shot to play. I keep telling the guys we have to be team oriented everyday. When we switch things, you have to be able to deal with it and go on and go with it. We do have some guys out there and some days won?t start and some days will. We have some guys that we will never take out of the lineup. That is just part of it. You have other guys that sometimes we are going to rotate. It?s not a knock on them as players, but we have a little more depth that we have had in the past few years.
