LSU coach Paul Mainieri and his players met with reporters Friday during the Tigers’ annual Media Day activities in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field. LSU, ranked No. 4 in the Collegiate Baseball preseason poll, began practice Friday and will open the 2015 season at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 13 versus Kansas in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.
Following are Mainieri quotes and LSU player quotes from Friday’s press conference:
LSU Baseball Media Day 2015
January 23, 2015
Opening Statement…
“It is great to back and be with all of you again. I don’t really have any major statements to make today. I think Bill covered everything that is going to happen today. There is no new earth shattering announcements about our team. Everyone is healthy, and everyone was eligible from fall practice. We have a roster of 33 guys. I know the limit is 35, but we had two players transfer during the fall semester and after the fall semester. Those players will have to count toward our 35 man limit. So will go into the spring with a 33 man roster. I feel great about our team. I thought we had an excellent fall practice. We knew we had position-player wise. The one question we still have is who is going to man third-base for us. Although, we are narrowing in on that. I think we will be just fine there, but not as good as Christian Ibara defensively. Christian Ibara has become the standard setter. He is greatest third baseman I’ve ever coached. It would be like replacing Brooks Robinson with the Orioles. Everyone tries, but no one was ever quite like him. I don’t think we will ever have someone like Christian Ibara. I think we are very capable of doing a good job there. I have a few options, and I think it is going to be a good solid lineup. We have a lot of experience, but I am equally excited about the young freshmen. These kids have the chance to be really fine players. We just don’t need them to play as much right away as we would with our pitching staff in years gone by. I think we will be solid with our position players. It is just the matter of these young pitchers. The question always seems to be if I’m nervous about counting on these freshmen pitchers. All you have to do is think back to last year. The media asked how I could count so strongly on an unproven freshman pitcher in Jared Poche’. My answer to everyone at that time was this kid really brings some intangibles. He was the man at Lutcher High School. He went 11-0. He pitched in the state championship and shutout St. Thomas Moore. The next year they did win the state championship. He shut them out with 11 strikeouts. He had an aura about himself with confidence, moxy, and savvy. I knew he would do a good job. He goes out and wins nine games for us. That is a pretty good example to set for these other freshmen pitchers coming along. Hopefully, Jared will continue to be the leader of our staff in that way. Losing Nola was a big blow. This is the way it is in college baseball. I laugh sometimes when I hear coaches talk about how young they are. You can’t sign kids to 10-year contracts in college. You are going to be young every year in some aspect of your team. You just have the courage to play those freshmen. You have to hope your coaches will do a good job with them bringing them along. Once they get out and get their feet wet, they lose that feeling of being freshmen quickly. Once they are out there pitching against Ole Miss, Arkansas or whoever it may be, nobody is going to be saying there is the freshman pitcher. Whoever is standing on the mound is the most important pitcher on our staff at that moment. It doesn’t matter what year they are. There are no excuses. I think we have a good group of freshmen pitchers, but I also think we have some veteran pitchers that will fill some very specific holes for us. As we go into the spring season, the biggest question is who will your weekend rotation. I can’t tell you that 100 percent for sure right now as we go into the SEC schedule. What we plan to do is use the first three to four weeks of non-conference schedule before we open up against Ole Miss in March and get the freshmen as many innings we possibly can. We may start them, and it is quite possible one of them may move into the last couple innings role of the game like a closer or key set-up guy. I believe the person who gets the last out of the game is just as important as the guy who starts on Friday night or Saturday night. You can’t win in this league without someone getting the last outs of the game. I don’t care what sport you are talking about. If you can’t hold the team at the end of the game, you can’t win big in the SEC. Those one-run games and close games will define you season. That will be the main focus for us, figuring out who will be the closer for us. Obviously, we love Poche’. Poche’ is certainly capable for being a weekend starter for us. We will just have to see how these other freshmen play out and what their specific assets will be. They might all be good pitchers, but one guy may show a particular strikeout pitch that will make him a better close than someone else. We will figure out how to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I am fired up and ready to get started. Of course, it got cold today which is typical of opening day of baseball. We have had three beautiful days where we did individual work. It was time to turn chilly to get us ready for opening day in February.”
On the effects of the new baseball…
“The bats have not changed, but the ball has. What they have done is we now have a baseball that has a flat seam. The concept was, and this is what we are hoping as coaches, that the higher seamed ball when you hit it and hit it well and it had air under it, the high seams gave a drag effect much like an airplane that would lower its landing gear to slow its plane down while its trying to land. That was slowing the baseballs down. The idea was if the seams got flattened with consequently less drag, the ball would carry further. No one really knew for sure what was really going to happen, although some testing indicated that you might get 20 to 30 feet more carry. I am happy to report, quite frankly, that it has proven to be true. During the course of fall practice, we hit 16 home runs. That’s not an exorbitant number, but by comparison, we hit 10 the previous fall with pretty much the same hitters. I will tell you more specifically we had a situational simulation of a game with a pitcher against a hitter obviously with a catcher because we are only allowed to have limited players at practice at one time. You have to use your imagination to get your pitchers ready. We hit three home runs off of our pitchers the other day. We also have this device that tracks the exit speed of the ball after a ball is hit. The three home runs that were hit all had an exit speed of 94 mph. That may not mean anything to you, but last year, we hit several balls in excess of 100 mph exit speed that did not fly out of the ballpark that landed on the warning track. Our indication is there is going to be more life given to the offense that the ball will carry more if you hit it well. That last 20 feet may mean the difference between that ball landing on the warning track or going into the stands. I think anyone who loves college baseball will probably be happy to see that. It’s hard for me to predict. I think we hit about 40 home runs, if I am not mistaken. If I did predict, I would guess that we are going to probably hit about 60 to 70 home runs this year. It’s not going to return to the gorilla ball days, no question about that. But, I do think that there will be a little more home runs and consequently maybe some late inning rallies and that type of thing…The reality and reaction that I have gotten from the pitchers is that they actually enjoy throwing the ball more as well. I know when Kevin Gausman was here, he had terrible problems with blisters from that raised seam. The problems with blisters are much more reduced. The ball actually feels smaller in the pitchers’ hands, so they feel like they can throw it with more velocity. They feel more confident throwing it. Although it may hurt them a little bit in the spinning of the ball for a breaking ball because it can’t create the same friction, they’re feeling like they are getting a little more movement with their fastball. It kind of balances out in some ways, but I think everyone would be happy to see a few more home runs in the game.
On the veterans returning…
“I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite here, like I’m playing both sides of the fence, because I’m telling you we are going to go with freshmen pitchers, and I don’t think experience is going to be that important for them. Yet, for the position players, I think the experience is a great factor for them. If we had inexperience all over the field and on the pitcher’s mound, I’d be nervous. Because we are so young on the mound, the thing that gives me a great deal of conference is that we do have a lot of experienced players. You mentioned Stevenson, Laird and Bregman, specifically; these are three guys that have been three-year starters in the program. You could throw a lot more guys into that mix when you are talking about veterans. They may not have played or started for three full years, but Kramer Robertson has a year under his belt. (Chris) Chinea has been a part time starter for a couple of years. Conner Hale who was a junior college transfer last year is now in his second year at LSU but his fourth year in college. Jake Fraley has a year under his belt. Even Danny Zardon, although he played very sporadically last year, has a year under his belt. Let’s not forget Kade Scivicque as well, who was our starting catcher by the end of the year last year. I think all of that experience gives those guys a great deal of confidence. After they left us last spring, they all went out and had pretty good summers. It would probably be a hard press to find a starting lineup out there in college baseball that could probably give these facts to you. We had five players make the Cape Cod League All-Star game last summer. A sixth player was the starting shortstop on Team USA. If Danny Zardon and Jake Fraley are starting players, you have two other guys that played in Cape Cod and had pretty good summers. I like the experience of our team. I think what comes with that is they’ve been through it, and it gives them a great deal of confidence that they know what it takes. I think by having a good defensive team out there, it gives those freshmen pitchers a lot of confidence. If they are not afraid to throw the ball over the plate, there is a pretty good chance that somebody behind them is going to catch it. I think the leadership of that group is going to be very significant this year.”
On freshmen pitchers and getting them acclimated to pitching in the SEC…
“I’ve always believed in coaching philosophically. You get a heck of a lot more by building them up. I’m going to do everything, Alan Dunn is going to do everything, Andy Cannizaro, Will Davis, we are always going to do everything we can do to build our players’ confidence to the highest level. I don’t think you gain anything from tearing them down. When they step onto that field, they have to believe they can do anything if they put their mind to it. Part of that process is to challenge them is to not make it easy for them. I’m not looking for a bunch of softies out there. The SEC is not for the faint of heart, I can promise you that. You better be a tough son of a gun. You better be able to handle adversity. You better be able to bounce back when you get your nose bloodied because this is a tough, tough league, and it’s unforgiving. I tell the players all of the time when things aren’t going good, don’t feel sorry for yourself because I promise you 50 percent of the people out there don’t care about your problems. The other 50 percent are glad that you have them. You have no time to go out there and feel sorry for yourself in this league. You have to build the confidence in them. At the same time, you have to make them believe they can do it and they belong. I’m so excited about these freshmen pitchers because they all seem to have something extra about them, maybe it’s because they are so intelligent. Alex Lange is a 4.0 student. Jake Latz is an excellent student. Jake Godfrey is an excellent student and Doug Norman. These kids are intelligent. I think what comes with intelligence is composure and poise, a lot of self-confidence. They’ve been the dudes, just like (Jared) Poché. Latz and Godfrey pitched their teams to the state championship. Lange was the Gatorade Pitcher of the Year. Norman broke all of the records at his high school that Alex Wood, who is now pitching for the Atlanta Braves and went to the University of Georgia, had once had at his high school. These are kids that believe that they are good. I am going to tell you this very emphatically. We have the right pitching coach working with those guys. Alan Dunn has a way, and I’m telling you, when I saw these kids throw these last couple of times here in January, the improvement they’ve already made from when they arrived here in September is leaps and bounds. If they keep improving at the rate that I’ve seen so far, they are going to be special.”
On Alex Bregman‘s contributions to the team…
“When you get to coach at a place like LSU, occasionally you get these really special kids that come through your life, and he is one of them. Every day I thank the Lord that I had the opportunity to have Alex Bregman in our program. He very easily could have signed professionally out of high school. No one would have even blamed him. He probably could have gotten a $1 million signing bonus. If not for that injury coming out of high school, he would have gone in the first round, and we would have never seen him. But, he decided to come to school, and I am sure he is glad that he did. He’s had an amazing experience here because he’s had an amazing career. He has been a kid that he may be gone in a year, but you’ll never forget him because it’s not just his ability as a player, it’s the way he carries himself all of the time. He’s the first guy at the field, the last guy to leave. He works harder than anybody. He cares more about the team than anybody else does. Yet, he’s the guy that is going to be the highly touted draft choice and all that stuff. He has his head on straight. He knows where he is going, and he wants to make his experience here at LSU the very best. He’s been like that since the time he’s got here, so I can’t even say that he’s matured that much since he’s been here or that he’s any different than he was two years ago. He was an inordinate freshman, but he had had experiences playing for Team USA even before he came here. He’s played for Team USA the two years that he’s been here. He’s worldly. I don’t have any doubt that he is going to have a remarkable year this year. Everybody points to Bregman’s sophomore year and says, ‘Well, it wasn’t as good as his freshman year.’ During his freshman year, he didn’t come through every time, but he had a guy named Katz and a guy named Rhymes hitting behind him. You just don’t remember when he didn’t come through because those guys picked him up every time he didn’t. Last year we had new players there. It took time. This is the thing: he had the worst slump of his life. I don’t remember what he went, 4-50, or something like that. It just ate him up. He never took the bat out to shortstop with him. During that stretch where he struggled with the bat, he played better shortstop than I’ve ever seen him play. Now how many kids do that? Most kids go out there, and they trip over their lip they are pouting so much. And, they are not ready to play. He went out there and helped us win games with his defense. He sprinted on the field, and he sprinted off of the field every inning. When he was in the dugout he was cheering on his teammates. What I’m saying to you is this, there’s a saying in sports that adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character. What it reveals to me about Alex Bregman is that he’s no frontrunner. He’s going to give you everything he’s got all of the time. Whether he’s doing well or not, he’s not going to change. My respect for that young man grew during the time that he struggled. That’s why I think he is going to be such a success this year and why he is going to be a success as he goes on beyond here. I told him, ‘going through this’, going through what he went through last year, ‘is actually going to help you down the road. You are going to have times in professional baseball where you are not going to get a hit or two hits every game. The fact that you’ve had some of this adversity that you’ve had to deal with will help you down the road.’ He’s a wonderful, wonderful young man.”