Mark Kingston shares why he went TBA for Sunday starter, potential pitching plans
Through the first few weekends of the baseball season, Mark Kingston hasn’t had to make any changes to his weekend rotation. It’s been the usual: Jones, Eskew, Kimball. A good trio.
When the rotation was announced for this weekend’s series versus Longwood, the names looked familiar. Jones, Eskew, TBA…? Surely there wasn’t a pitcher on staff with three letters to his entire name.
But instead of naming Roman Kimball his Sunday starter, Kingston is leaving a void. There are plenty of reasons for it, but it’s not because Kimball hasn’t pitched well enough. In fact, the right-hander will appear at some point in this series.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” Kingston said, nodding his head while grinning when asked if Kimball would pitch at some point.
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After receiving six innings of shutout ball in game one from Eli Jones, the Gamecocks will go for a series win against the Lancers on Saturday. But the weather could cause some issues in that plan.
As it stands right now, there’s a 90 percent chance of rain on Saturday without slowing down until the afternoon.
“It’s TBD. Obviously, we know there’s some weather coming in. So we’re going to do everything we can to play tomorrow, whether it’s the assigned game time or whether we need to push it back some,” Kingston said about the potential options for playing on Saturday.
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And the impending weather may be part of the reason why he hasn’t named a Sunday starter yet. But at the same time, he’s also trying to win every game he can and use his best options to get the job done.
“There’s a lot of factors,” Kingston said. “We want to try to be more flexible with our pitchers. Maybe Roman starts on Sunday, maybe you need him on Friday or Saturday.
“We just want to try to be a little bit more flexible with how we use guys, when we use guys based on situations. Just allow ourselves some freedom to make decisions in the moment. It could probably be one of maybe four or five guys to start on Sunday. But again, we need to try and win that next game that follows.”
South Carolina takes on Longwood in game two of the series on Saturday with first pitch at 4 p.m. Right-hander Dylan Eskew (1-1, 3.29 ERA) will make the start on the mound for the Gamecocks.
