Everything Monte Lee said after Clemson's fourth straight loss

CLEMSON — The losing streak continued for Clemson baseball Saturday afternoon as the Tigers suffered a 4-1 loss to Miami at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

Clemson’s pitching staff did its job, but the Tigers had only four hits against the Hurricanes. No Clemson players had multiple hits, and all four hits by the Tigers were singles.

The only run Clemson scored the entire game came on an error.

Here’s what Tigers head coach Monte Lee said following the loss:

Monte Lee recaps Tigers loss to Miami

Monte Lee opening statement: Give Miami credit. They played a good game today. Their starter I felt like did just enough. We had some opportunities. We hit some balls hard there early in the game. Tough day to hit. I thought [Max] Wagner hit a ball there early in the game that on a lot of days is a home run. Blake Wright hit a ball pretty good early in the game. But there’s no excuse.

We’re still just struggling a little bit on the offensive side of things. We’ve gotta get better there. But pitching staff wise I thought we pitched really well. [Nick] Hoffmann gave us everything he could have given us for a Saturday start. And I thought our bullpen was good.

We ran into some tough luck there. We had [P.J.] Labriola in there facing a lefty and had two strikes on him, two outs, and he did a really good job of just using the whole field, base hit and scores two runs. But all-in-all I thought our bullpen did great.

It was good to get [Geoffrey] Gilbert back in a game. He’s been out for a couple of weeks. It was good to get him back in there and he threw the ball well. [Ty] Olenchuk threw the ball well. I thought we pitched well. Defensively, I thought we made some nice plays. We’ve just gotta get the bats going. That’s the bottom line. We’ve gotta swing the bats better and hopefully we can get some momentum at some point in tomorrow’s game and get turned back in the right direction offensively.

Question: Monte is there a common thread you’re seeing with the situational hitting? You guys were 1-for-13 with runners on today.

Monte Lee: I think hitting with runners in scoring position is tough. I think a lot of times when you have runners in scoring position, pitchers are going to spin the ball a lot more. And I think we have to do a better job of laying off of pitches out of the strike zone with runners in scoring position.

Sometimes guys can be a little bit overly aggressive on off-speed pitches. We have to be able to use the whole field. Lay off of pitches outside of the strike zone and put ourselves in better counts to hit. I think that’s part of it.

I think we’re just pressing a little bit too much right now. I think that we’ve had a few games in a row now where we haven’t been very offensive and I think our guys are just pressing a little bit at the plate.

Question: A week ago you were 14-0. Baseball takes a turn very quick. Is there anything you can say to these guys about the highs and lows?

Monte Lee: Yea, I told them, ‘Look, this is just part of the season. I mean it’s part of the process. You’re going to go through this.’ We weren’t going to perfect throughout the season. We knew that at some point you’re gonna go through some tough spells. And we’re going through one right now, but we’ve just gotta maintain our belief in each other, maintain our belief in what we’re doing and more than anything they have to individually believe in themselves.

When you’re going through a tough time, go through a couple of tough games, sometimes you lose your confidence a little bit and you begin to press and those kind of things. I’m the one that needs to be stressed out and down in the dumps, not the kids. The kids need to come out and play and keep competing for each other. That’s what coaches are for. Coaches should wear the losses.

The kids, they have to understand that we need them to go out there and compete for our program and keep believing in each other and keep fighting. And they will. Again, it’s gonna take one inning. If we get one inning where we get a couple of guys on base and somebody hammers a baseball in a gap, the next thing you know that offense will get rolling again, just like it had up until about a week ago.

Question: What did you think was working for Nick?

Monte Lee: He just really did a good job of pitching in and out and up. I thought he did a really good job today of elevating his fastball with two strikes, got some swings and misses at the top of the zone.

His punch out numbers were pretty dang good for Nick. Nick’s not a guy that punches out a lot of guys usually. He’s a pitch to contact, fly ball-oriented guy. He was able to elevate the fastball above the belt a little bit today and got some swings and misses.

I thought he did a good job of running some fastballs in on their hitters. They do a real good job of using the other side of the field with two strikes. He doesn’t spin the ball a ton, but I thought he just did a really good job of pitching in and out and up. I thought it was his best start of the year, in my opinion.

Question: Could we see more lineup changes?

Monte Lee: I’ll always look at it. Now that the game is over I’ll look at the pieces and see if there’s something that makes sense to move in and out and those kind of things. I mean typically when you’re not scoring runs you want to run another guy or two in there and see what they can do.

I don’t want to move the pieces of the puzzle all over the place. But we’ll still continue to look at it and maybe tinker with one or two more guys to see if we can find a spark there.

Question: What went into the decision to intentionally walk [Yohandy] Morales in the seventh?

Monte Lee: We had Labriola on the mound. Morales hits left-handed pitching very, very well. The on-deck hitter hits .176 versus lefties. So that was the rationale behind it. We felt like the matchup was better. We had [Jackson] Lindley ready to face [Jacob] Burke. The right-handed hitter [Maxwell] Romero doesn’t hit left-handed pitching very well. Labriola had him. We had him right where we wanted him. We had him in a 1-2 count with two outs. He just left a breaking ball up and didn’t bury it. Had he buried it, probably good things would have happened. But he’s a good hitter.

But that was the rationale. Morales, with a base open, we felt like Labriola, with him, especially with a lefty on deck, it was the right move to put him on base and pitch to that match up. We feel like Morales is their most dangerous hitter.

Question: When you say guys are pressing, what can you do as coaches to help?

Monte Lee: We try to be very positive with the players. I think that’s the main thing is you have to remain positive with your guys and show that you believe in them. The psyche of a baseball player — it can be tough. I mean you’re dealing with a lot of pressure to play at a school like Clemson. You’re dealing with failure constantly.

The players have to feel like you have their back. You’re the person that they can come to that’s going to help them and not shun them. When you have to deal with the amount of failure that a baseball player has to deal with, they need somebody on their side.

My job is to remain positive and keep coaching them and helping them to the best of my ability so that they maintain their confidence and their belief in themselves.