Winning a Regional – Or Not

Since I whined about Clemson not getting a better shake with the final rankings of the tournament selection committee, I feel obligated to share my thoughts on why we lost our third hosted regional in a row.  I don’t back off of my view that Clemson should have been ranked higher than UNC, although I’m happy that they won their regional and I congratulate them.  I believe my criticism of Ray Tanner and the selection committee at pitting Clemson and Florida State in the same super regional bracket was valid, even though, ironically, neither team was able  to advance out of their own regional.

So, why can’t Clemson win a regional?  I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve come up with three reasons:  pitching, pitching, and pitching.

Winning a regional is very hard to do –  harder than winning a three-game series, harder than winning a conference tournament, and certainly harder than winning a super regional.  A team can win a three-game series by winning just two games.  Same with a super regional –  win two games and you’re in.  In the ACC tournament, as the #2 seed, Clemson had to beat the #11 seed (Notre Dame) and the #7 seed (Miami) to advance to the semi-finals.  Certainly not the caliber of teams they would face in the NCAA Regionals.  We then lost to Florida State in a game that could have gone either way.  My point is that pitching is not quite as critical in the ACC tournament until you reach the semi-finals.  To win an NCAA Regional tournament, pitching is critical in every game.

Clemson’s pitching was good enough to win 43 regular season games this year, while losing only 13.  We did this with a mediocre team batting average of .261, but with solid defense and a phenomenal 98 home runs.  Our post-season record (ACC Tournament and Regional) was 4 and 3.  We still hit the home runs, but we just didn’t have the pitching.  In order to win in the post-season, especially in the Regionals, where you’re facing excellent hitting teams every day, you’ve got to have at least three excellent starting pitchers plus a solid bullpen of at least three quality pitchers and a dominant closer.  Clemson, in my opinion, had two quality pitchers in the bullpen  (Miller and Strider) plus a dominant closer (Gilliam).  As for starting pitchers, Crawford and Higginbotham are, I believe, good pitchers but not excellent.  Neither is the pitcher that you would consider your ace, the guy that you know will give you a quality performance every time he takes the mound.  As a matter of fact, I don’t know who I would call Clemson’s best pitcher, their ace.  I doubt that Monte Lee could tell you who his ace was this year.  For most of the year, Hennessy was the Friday night pitcher, the guy who takes the mound first in any weekend series to get the team off to a good start.  But he was erratic at best, and with a nagging injury was ineffective at the end of the season.

In the Regional tournament, when pitching was critical, here’s what we got.  In the opening game against Morehead State, we got 5 good innings out of Crawford where he gave up just 3 hits and 3 earned runs.  When Crawford weakened, we used Spiers, Miller (2.1 innings) and Gilliam to close out the 4-3 win.  In the second game, we started Higginbotham.  Maybe he was feeling the effects of the tough 6.1 innings he pitched in the ACC semi-finals against Florida State.  We only got 3 innings out of him against Vanderbilt, and he gave up 3 earned runs in those 3 innings.  We then went to Marr, Clark, and Spiers (2.1 innings) in relief.   That was a game we could have won to put us in the driver’s seat for the rest of the tournament, but we lost it 4-3.  This loss put us in the position of having to win 3 games in 2 days with an already seriously stretched pitching staff.  We started Hennessy against St John in game 3.  He couldn’t get through 3 innings, giving up 3 earned runs in 2.1 innings.  Miller then came in and pitched a gutty 5.2 innings.  Having pitched 2.1 innings two days prior against Morehead State, he didn’t have his best stuff, as he gave up 10 hits and 3 earned runs.  Clemson held on to win 9-8.  That brings us to the final game against Vanderbilt where the bottom fell out.  How could Clemson possibly give up 19 runs to Vanderbilt in this critical game?  Well, our two most dependable starting pitchers, Crawford and Higginbotham, were out of the picture.  Our third starter, Hennessy, was not available.  Our best middle relievers, Spiers and Miller were spent, with Spiers having already pitched 4 innings in the tournament and Miller having pitched 8.  Of those left in the bullpen, Strider was the least worst choice to get the start.  He was not good enough for the excellent hitting Vandy team, only going 2.1 innings and giving up 5 earned runs.  The only thing Monte Lee could do at that point was to trot out what was left in the bullpen and hope that something might stick.   The result was not too surprising, as it looked like Vanderbilt was taking batting practice.   Griffith gave up 2 earned runs in 2.1 innings, Schnell couldn’t get anyone out, giving up 2 more earned runs.  Then Marr, Huggins, and Weatherly together gave up 10 earned runs over the next 4 innings and the rout was on.

I don’t mean to slam these guys.  They did their best; nobody quit trying.  I love this team and I love Monte as the coach.  But I hear so much talk about Clemson choking in the regional every year, and “why can’t Clemson win a regional?”  Choking has nothing to do with it even though Clemson is as good a team as any they have faced in the last three regionals.  We just haven’t had the best pitching staffs over these three years.  And that leads me to the fourth reason we haven’t won a regional lately – PITCHING.   It’s not only a matter of having solid pitching; the games and the pitchers have to break right for you, with the right pitchers being available at the right times and avoiding dropping into the losers bracket.

So, you ask, why don’t we recruit better pitchers?  That’s an interesting point, and a real dilemma for college coaches.  Baseball recruiting at the college level is a crap shoot.  Because of major league baseball’s rule in conjunction with the NCAA, a high school player can sign right out of high school.  If he goes to college, he is then ineligible for the draft until his third year out of high school.  A college coach is faced with a major gamble trying to decide whether to hold a spot for that dominant high school picture who’s going to be drafted.  Will he turn down that multi-million dollar contract to come pitch for your program for three years?  Do you go after him or do you offer the pitcher who’s not as likely to be an early round draft choice.  Sometimes you get real lucky, like Auburn did three years ago.  Casey Mize was undrafted out of high school.  He went to Auburn and now is celebrating being the #1 overall pick in the draft.

Maybe Monte will get lucky like that.