Jack's takes from South Carolina's fourth straight loss on Thursday
For about 10 minutes on Thursday, things were going well for South Carolina. Ethan Petry hit a solo homer to give the Gamecocks an early 1-0 lead. But that was quickly erased when Tennessee’s Christian Moore led off the bottom of the first with a long homer into dead centerfield.
From there, the Vols would go on to score eight more runs in the game and cruise to a 9-3 victory. This marks South Carolina’s fourth straight loss.
Here are my takes from the loss.
Starting pitching continues to be the achilles heel
After pitching very well lately, Ty Good got the nod to start game one on Thursday. But he struggled right from the jump after giving up that solo shot to Moore.
He’d give up two more homers in his outing, as he struggled with his command. 44 of his 89 pitches were thrown for balls, which is nearly half of his pitch count. As a result, he fell behind in a lot of counts and gave up six runs on five hits and walked four.
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Once again, the Gamecocks get another brief outing from a starting pitcher. They haven’t gotten a quality start in weeks at this point. And it’s getting concerning.
You need starting pitching to go far in the postseason, and South Carolina just doesn’t have that. We’ll see who it throws Friday and Saturday, but I’d expect Eli Jones and Garrett Gainey.
Tennessee capitalized with runners on base
There’s a key difference in this game: Tennessee hit four homers while South Carolina hit two. It may not seem like a big deal but the Gamecocks got those off solo shots. The Vols scored seven runs off the long ball, which was enough to win.
Overall, the Vols were 3-for-9 with runners in scoring position and 4-for-13 with runners on. Meanwhile, South Carolina went 1-for-8 with RISP and 3-for-14 with runners on. Tennessee just did more good, despite only picking up one more hit than the Gamecocks.
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Will this team be fine? Not sure
It’s easy to say, “Oh, South Carolina will figure it out and get back on track.” But will it? There hasn’t exactly been much reason to believe so.
During this four-game losing skid, the Gamecocks have easily played some of their worst baseball. Opposing teams are scoring in high numbers due to struggling starting pitching. And the offense has had to make some sort of comeback attempt. Although, that wasn’t really the case on Thursday.
Point being, this is a team going ice cold right as the regular season is about to end. Not a good sign for the coming weeks and future.
I do think they’ll still make a regional, regardless of what happens. But they desperately need to find a way to win at least one of the next two games this weekend before heading to Hoover.
