Everything you need to know before the Gamecocks opening day
South Carolina kicks off their 2023 baseball campaign on Friday at 4:00 p.m. against UMass Lowell, beginning a season that will be pivotal for the Gamecocks.
Collyn Taylor and Kendall Smith have all you need to know ahead of South Carolina’s season opener, talking questions, new faces, and line ups.
For more on Gamecock Baseball, stay tuned on GamecockCentral.com and on social media @GamecockCentral.
MORE: Inside the summer that helped shape South Carolina’s pitching staff
By Collyn Taylor
As if it were clockwork, South Carolina strength and conditioning coach Billy Anderson’s phone would start buzzing around dinner time every night over the summer.
The first buzz would come followed by subsequent buzzes over and over over the course of the next few minutes.
Anderson would unlock the phone and begin peering through the messages. A picture of some sort of “animal protein,” as he called it–steak, chicken, salmon, etc.–would be there to greet him.
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Scroll through and it would be a cavalcade of arm-flexing emojis or other pieces of animal protein, each one designed to one-up the previous.
But this was par for the course during the week this summer with the group text–labeled Strong Summer–that included a group of 15 to 20 players of mostly pitchers who stayed behind for voluntary workouts at the facility.
“Those guys decided it and they made the decision that we’re not going to end our season like that,” Anderson said. “We’re going to be the leaders, we have a bunch of old guys on this team and we’re not going to let this happen again.”
It was that summer, a grueling two-month journey filled with that group text, 10 a.m. workouts, a beach trip to Florida and Lil John that helped morph the Gamecocks’ pitching staff into one of the better on-paper staffs in the SEC heading into the season.
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‘That’s just not OK around here’
For Justin Parker, trying to field a pitching staff in 2022 was like trying to plug a dam with cracks popping up at each turn.
For each hole that got plugged, another would find a way to pop open. The Gamecocks went into the year knowing Jack Mahoney and Jackson Phipps would miss the season with Tommy John surgery.
Then they subsequently lost Wesley Sweatt, James Hicks and Sam Simpson to season-ending injuries, down to a MASH unit of pitchers by the end of the season.
That was, in part, why the Gamecocks finished below .500 for the first time this century and missed the postseason for the second time in three full seasons.
“We still had that taste in our mouths about our record and losing the opener in the SEC tournament and not making the postseason,” Mahoney said. “That’s just not OK around here. We know that.”
Losing as much as they didn’t sit right with the core group of South Carolina leaders, led by a trio of pitchers: Mahoney, Will Sanders and Noah Hall.
Those three, along with others like James Hicks, rallied a group of pitchers to stick around for the entire summer with the goal of never having something like 2022 happen again.
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“You go home and everyone has a bad taste in their mouths. But you never know how people are going to interpret it. There could be guys who say, ‘Screw this, I’m signing for anything,’” Parker said. “There could be guys who say they’re going to go home off to their own pitching guru and spend all summer there…Those kids all made the decision (to stay)…That, first and foremost, was like, ‘These guys are made of the right stuff. We have the right people here.’”
A week after South Carolina’s season ended in Hoover, that group of pitchers walked into the weight room and essentially never left.
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Suffer together
Everyone wants to be in Columbia over the summer until June hits.
It’s one thing to hear about 100-degree temperatures and another to live through them for weeks on end. But that’s what South Carolina’s team gladly went through this summer.
Workouts started at 10 a.m. sharp every day of the week.
Monday and Thursday were lower-body workouts. Tuesday was one of two upper-body days. Wednesday was the team’s conditioning day, focusing heavily on sprinting.
One week could be speed work. The next could be pushing sleds in the batting cages. And on some occasions, Anderson would take the guys over to the Rice Athletic Center and have them running up the hills in the South Carolina heat.
“It was kind of like: suffer together,” Anderson said. “That’s what everyone said, ‘Let’s all suffer together.’ No one complained about it. They worked hard at it.”
Hall controlled the music more often than not as someone that “knows how to get things going,” according to Mahoney. A tough set or big rep during a workout called for the group’s big pump-up song: Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz’s “Throw it up.”
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Fridays the Gamecocks got to let loose a little bit. Those were what Anderson dubbed “Beach Friday.” The workouts were all upper body, “very meathead” workouts as Anderson described them. He designed those workouts to be tough while giving the guys a little confidence in themselves heading into the weekend.
Guys would start taking their shirts off over the course of the workouts. Anderson would even jump in from time to time to show them he could accomplish what he was asking them to do.
Those ended with a 20-minute outdoor circuit that included anywhere from jumping rope to battle ropes to hitting a tire with a sledgehammer to anything else Anderson could think of to leave guys drenched as they departed the park.
“The workouts sucked. Billy was on some crazy stuff. We’d be out here on the concourse and it’d be 115 degrees and I’ve never felt heat like that. We were all going through it at the same time but nobody gave up. Nobody was being soft about it,” Hall said.
“We all knew it was our choice to be there. You can’t choose to be here in the summer and complain about it. You have to be about your business. And we were all about our business.”
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One Wednesday in July
South Carolina’s pitchers spent the majority of the summer not even worrying about the band that spent the last six weeks making music together.
In their minds, there wasn’t anything that would break this unit up. Then July 19 happened.
The first two days of the MLB Draft happened without a South Carolina player getting plucked. The Gamecocks felt like they didn’t have to even worry about the draft messing up a beautiful plan.
Then James Hicks hears his name. Three picks later Josiah Sightler comes off the board. Then Braylen Wmimer. Then Noah Hall.
The Gamecocks went from not having to worry about the draft to being on edge that this group who spent weeks pouring blood, sweat and tears in the weight room might be going its separate ways.
We were a day or two into the draft and thinking we’re getting everyone back. Then all of the sudden everyone gets picked off,” Mahoney said. “We’re like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ we’re so excited they got drafted but it was one of those things where they got drafted and then it might get yanked out from under us.”
But things shifted rapidly. Sightler ultimately signed with the Pirates but Hicks, Wimmer and Hall all turned down money to come back to South Carolina and play one more season with the hopes of getting to Omaha and the College World Series.
“I think it says a lot about how those guys felt about wanting to come back here and having some unfinished business,” Mark Kingston said. “If you have a program where guys can’t wait to get out of, when they get drafted they go. So when three guys in one draft cycle decide to come back it continues to strengthen the program. That says a lot about them and where our program is.”
And those guys were back in the weight room soon after spurning the draft, working out again.
Workouts to smoothies and more
It’s one thing to show up for a workout, lift the required weights and leave. Thousands of college baseball players across the country do that every single year.
It’s another to use this uninterrupted time to bond, build a culture and take advantage of the opportunity in front of you. The Gamecocks did that.
It wouldn’t be uncommon to see guys at the park long tossing and doing throwing programs at 8 a.m., finish that and come into the kitchen to make breakfast at 9 a.m. together. They’d work out then immediately head back down to the kitchen to make protein shakes.
“Everything was done together,” Anderson said.
Records and notes from last season were posted around the locker room. Those served as a harsh reminder of what the Gamecocks desperately want to avoid in 2023.
Summer workouts happen every year, including South Carolina, with Anderson the annual leader. But even he mentioned there was something different about it this summer.
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“Just the intensity we had with our workouts. You could see the look in everybody’s faces. We were still hungry and we still felt like last year wasn’t us,” Hall said. “We knew it wasn’t us and we knew we could come back and be better. It was fun. That’s what made it not stressful. It’s something we enjoyed the whole time.”
The guys would spend time together even outside of the few hours they were working out at Founders Park. There was a group trip to Florida for the Fourth of July. There was the group text and plenty of other bonding events.
It was just a different vibe.
“Those guys were also here in the summer building that foundation. Last year maybe wasn’t up to what their standers were,” Parker said. “It meant something to them and they did something about it. That foundation those guys built in the summer carried over.”
Carrying it over
It’s one thing to lift a bunch of weights, look good for a camera or under a squat rack but it’s another to take what you did over the summer and apply it on the field.
So far so good for a South Carolina staff projected to be one of the better on-paper groups in the SEC. Sanders, Mahoney and Hall headline a group that has a mix of developing sophomores, veterans and young talent.
Players still laugh about how different they look now compared to the end of the season, a chance to not only get stronger but also build a culture around the team.
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“I give them all the credit. I just tell them what to do. They do all the work. It’s voluntary. They could tell me, ‘Forget you, Billy. I’m not doing this.’ And there’s nothing I can do,” Anderson said. “They could not show up. Now teammates would get on them if they didn’t show up. We never had issues with that. They all wanted to come. We did get the results.”
That work ethic carried over to the fall and, South Carolina hopes, the spring. The Gamecocks are trying to get back to the postseason with the hopes of getting back to the College World Series for the first time since 2012.
And if they do, they’ll have this summer to look back on as a big reason why.
“They were tough. It was Billy getting on us with spring work and lifting as much heavy weight as possible while still being healthy,” Sanders said. “It was fun because we were all here and pushed each other. That’s what’s going to change the future of the program.”
