Nick Mingione details the challenge vs. Florida offense: 'Every pitch matters'

Following an afternoon full of fireworks in Kentucky’s 12-11 triumph over Florida on Friday, the Wildcats got off to a slow start in Saturday’s second game of the series.

Florida took the early lead and was up 3-0 as the game turned to the bottom of the fourth inning, where the Gators only added to their advantage. But in between innings, the SEC Network broadcast crew caught up with Kentucky head coach Nick Mingione to address the Wildcat hitting the day before and the pitching so far on Saturday.

The broadcasters commented that while UK starting pitcher Dominic Niman had given up some runs, he wasn’t missing pitches by very much and had still thrown a decent game all things considered. Mingione commented that Niman just missed a couple pitches where he couldn’t.

“Yeah, you know, the home run that went opposite, obviously, we’re trying to go up there, and if you miss, as you know, you got to miss up, you can’t miss down.”

The Wildcat head coach then compared the fragility of missing by a hair with a baseball pitch to doing the same thing on the golf course.

“You know, every pitch matters. It’s much like golf. When you miss, you got to know which part of the fairway or hole you miss at when you do miss.”

You can miss and put the ball in the rough, but if you miss and put it in the water or in the sand, then you’ve got problems. But overall, Mingione isn’t too upset with the pitching performance thus far.

“So, obviously, this is a good offense, we saw that yesterday. But Dom’s a great competitor, man. I just love his competitive spirit and the way he competes. And obviously, he’s a really good one for us.”

The announcers also credited Kentucky’s no-quit attitude with every at-bat considering how often they’re able to squeeze hits out of two-strike situations or score runs with two outs. For Mingione, it’s just trying to manufacture base runners and runs by any means necessary.

“Yeah, there are six components to offense and we take a kind of pride in being good at all of those. Whether it’s two strikes, as you mentioned, yesterday we had seven two-strike hits in one game. We lay down bunts, have the ability to hit homers.

“So we usually talk about, we want our offense to be a whatever-it-takes type of offense, and these guys have bought into that and we have some pretty talented players.”