The South Carolina pitchers were able to shut down Clemson Saturday at Fluor Field 4-1, and doing so Gamecocks even the series but bats go cold in the process. Jack Wynkoop, Clarke Schmidt, and Taylor Widener combined for 13 strikeouts and only gave up one run and that came in the first inning. Wynkoop picked up his second win of the season, and Widener pitched two hitless innings for his third save of the season.
However, even though the Gamecocks picked up their seventh win of the season, after an early flurry, the bats went very cold. After the 3rd inning, South Carolina was not able to get a single hit. So although in the final stats it shows they had 7 hits for the game, they were shut down for 6 innings.
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In the two games against Clemson, the Gamecocks offense has only hit .224, which seems very surprising considering how strong the bats had been up until now. They had been hitting .306 coming into the series and now are hitting .287. Hopefully this is just limited to this series, and not reflective of an overall issue. However, if you look at the season’s stats, you notice that truly four guys are carrying this team hitting:
- Elliott Caldwell – hitting .435 with 5 rbi
- Gene Cone – hitting .382 with an on-base percentage of .462
- Alex Destino – hitting .375 with 2 HR and 7 rbi
- Kyle Martin – hitting .355 with 7 rbi and on-base percentage of .432
In fact, if you take out these four players, the rest of the team is hitting a paltry .219 on the season. The only saving grace for the rest of them is that Max Schrock and DC Arendas both have on-base percentages of over .400 because of their walks and hit by pitch. Regardless the rest of the team is going to have to contribute better than this for this team to truly be successful this season. Although the Gamecocks clearly have good pitchers, so far their ERA is 3.04 and they’ve given up 10 runs in the first inning.
Sunday’s tie-breaker game is in Columbia Sunday at noon, so maybe some of the other bats will come to life. Josh Reagan will get the start for the Gamecocks.
update: The final game of the series will be played Monday afternoon at 4pm at Carolina Stadium. If you can’t attend you can watch it on SEC Network Alternate Channel and SEC Network Plus.