Consistent mindset guided Sanders through injury rehab, struggles

For as dominant as he was throughout his first two collegiate seasons, Will Sanders always knew there was more. The 3.54 ERA in 53 ⅓ innings was a foundational start as a freshman. His numbers were even better with a 3.43 ERA in 89 ⅓ innings as the team’s unquestioned sophomore ace.

But there was almost nothing to speak of postseason wise, with just one NCAA Tournament win in two years.

Nobody comes to South Carolina for that, and he knew it. And speaking at the team’s preseason media day back on Jan. 26, it still bothered him.

“This team, this school has been here a long time,” he said. “I’m just a small blip of it, but I want to impact as many people as I can in a positive way. Us losing last year made a lot of people angry, including me. We just don’t ever want that to happen again.”

The road has been anything but straightforward. Now 132 days after his pre-season push, Sanders looks back to his best self and is finally making that June impact on one of the premier programs in college baseball. He threw four shutout innings in the regional to help send the Gamecocks on to super regionals, two wins away from their first trip to Omaha since 2012.

His March struggles led to the team electing to skip his turn in the weekend rotation for a road series at Mississippi State, something they hoped would get his mind right and set him up for second-half success. It had some short-term results with a better, albeit rain-abbreviated outing against LSU the following week, but it also reminded Sanders of why this season was so important to him.

“This school has given me a lot,” Sanders said in an Apr. 12 press conference. “I want to give it back to the coaches, the team and the city, so it was more than baseball. Not throwing for 10 days really aggravated me.”

It all came to a head when he walked off the mound on May 5th at Kentucky. It was yet another disappointing outing, a start in which he allowed four earned runs in five innings as the Gamecocks lost the opener of their eventual sweep in Lexington.

Limped off the mound might be more accurate, though.

“I knew something was kind of wrong throughout the season just because it was very painful,” Sanders said Wednesday. “I had to see all these doctors and kind of just figure out first what was wrong and kind of where the problem started. It’s two different things. It’s the fibula, the low fibula right above my ankle, and my knee. The main disabling thing was the knee.”

He was demoralized, his ERA for the season ballooned to 5.75, and it felt like his season — and college career — had both crashed to an unceremonious thud.

The calendar gave him less than a month to get his body right for a regional, something that everyone involved thought would be too tall a task for the big right-hander. He sought advice from his parents on how to approach it. With the MLB Draft looming in July, he worked through scenarios with his advisors.

But at the end of the day, it all came back to wanting to help his team. To be there for his teammates, the ones he shared long, painstaking workouts with last summer starting just days after only South Carolina’s second losing season since 1970 ended in Hoover.

So he started on the long, risky road to recovery, trying to speed his way back into the pitching plans before it was too late. It required a group effort, with everyone from athletic trainer Cory Barton to even people in the football program helping him out.

“I had 3-4 weeks to get my mind right, to get my body right,” Sanders said. “And that was the biggest thing for me. Just eating lean meat, fruit, vegetables, going on walks, doing my stuff in the football pool. They’ve been very helpful to me, letting me do my stuff in the mornings, do my stuff in the pool and get on the treadmill.”

His role for the weekend is still up in the air. Mark Kingston implied he could be a contender to start game three on Sunday if the series went the distance, but was also quick to point out he needs to maximize his options, which could mean Sanders in the bullpen again. Whenever he pitches, it will be against the team he has had the most success with in his career. Coming into the super regional Sanders has 18 career innings against the Gators with 29 strikeouts and just four earned runs allowed.

But despite who is in the other dugout, it is who in his own dugout who have pushed him this far. That has been the case since the quiet preseason scrimmages of January, and still will be with a chance to reach the biggest stage in the sport.

“I wanted to give it back to the team,” Sanders said. “Not a lot of them knew kind of what was going on. It was disappointing to me being sidelined like that. Friday-Sunday having four innings under my belt now makes me feel a lot more comfortable and confident going out on the mound, and that’s why I got so excited.”

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