Paul Mainieri: KJ Scobey will have 'good chance' of starting at shortstop in 2026

Paul Mainieri has said it many times before in his time at South Carolina. You don’t realize that you have a good third baseman until you have a good third baseman and the difference that makes.

He had a good one last season with the emergence of KJ Scobey, who started a team-high 56 games over at the hot corner and proved to be a plus defender.

Heading into next season, though, Mainieri will very likely have a new starting third baseman. As fall practice gets started next Tuesday, Oct. 7, Scobey will slide over to shortstop, where he will compete for the starting job.

“I wish I could just clone him and put one guy at short and one guy at third because he’s as good a defensive player as I think, played in the infield last year in this conference,” Mainieri said in July.

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Scobey, who was ranked as the No. 11 shortstop in the state of Florida in his high school class by Perfect Game, began playing third base as early as the first day of fall practice last year. The Gamecocks already had Henry Kaczmar and Will Tippett vying for starting shortstop duties.

Mainieri, who was still getting to know Scobey, thought he was a third baseman since he played the position well. Scobey fielded at a .951 clip and made seven errors in 2025.

But with Kaczmar and Tippett now gone and transferred to other schools, the shortstop spot is up for grabs. South Carolina added a few transfers to add depth at that position. Scobey will be right in the mix, according to Mainieri.

“He’s going to go right to shortstop, and there’ll be competition,” he said. “I mean, we’ve got a couple of kids, Erik Parker coming in, Jack Reynolds coming in. I mean, there’s going to be other competition out there. But I think Scobey is going to have a good chance to end up there.”

The decision to move Scobey over to shortstop dates back to after last season ended. He began playing over there with the Lexington County Blowfish for a few games in the summer. Then he received an invite to the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team tryouts in late June.

“I was pushing very hard for him to get an invite to the USA team with what they have, what they call the Stars vs. Stripes,” Mainieri said.

Mainieri received a call from Eric Campbell, who is the general manager for USA Baseball’s collegiate and professional teams. Campbell asked him about Scobey and if he could handle playing shortstop with Team USA. Without hesitation, Mainieri had full confidence he’d be able to.

“That’s something that Scobey and I had been talking about throughout the year, that next year I would like to move him to shortstop, and he was very excited about that, because he was naturally a shortstop in high school,” Mainieri said. “I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that he would be able to make the move. And he played terrific over there with the Blowfish.”

Scobey, alongside 56 non-draft-eligible college players, competed in a five-game Stars vs. Stripes intrasquad series in North Carolina. He ultimately didn’t make the team, but Mainieri was still pleased with what he heard and saw from him.

“He might have been the best player on the field the first three days there. The first day he made, I think, five plays in the field, of which four of them, I would say, were above average, and he kind of became the talk of the team,” Mainieri said. “And he came about this close to making the 20-man team that went to Japan, but they’re very reluctant to take freshmen, and so for him to make it, he would have had to really do something extraordinary.”

As Scobey gets set for the fall, Mainieri believes he can make the seamless transition over to shortstop. But Scobey will have to earn the job and hope somebody else can take hold of third base.

“What he has to do is root for somebody really to step up at third base, so I don’t have to move him back to third base,” Mainieri said. “If somebody else emerges and plays really great at third, there’s a good chance that Scobey ended up at short.”

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