Meade settling in for year two

With most pitching coaches changing jobs in the offseason, they come over in the summer and hit the ground running in recruiting and fall practice but for Meade, he didn’t get that luxury.

After Jerry Meyers unexpectedly left the baseball program due to health reasons, Meade came to Columbia in late November and was tasked with learning and getting a pitching staff ready to go without the benefit of going through fall practice.

“It’s nobody that I knew that had gone through this exact circumstance, especially replacing 85 percent of your innings,” Meade told GamecockCentral. “There were a lot of different things that were at hand last year. It was awesome. I say none of that with complaints. It’s the best job in the country. It’s very unique to experience but I think in the end it’s a great thing for the next 30 or 40 years of my career.”

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Meade inherited a Gamecock pitching staff that lost two of their three weekend starters and, of the six relievers that threw at least 25 innings, only two were returning.

Outside of some individual and group work, the first time he saw his pitchers throw to active hitters was in mid-January when spring scrimmages started, 28 days before Opening Day.

So, for Meade, he had to learn his freshman-laden staff and learn it quick. Meade described learning his staff and managing it through a tough SEC slate as “day-to-day” with nothing really ever feeling settled at the time.

The Gamecocks would go with who was hottest at the time and who had looked good in practice during bullpens.

That strategy worked as the Gamecocks plowed through their regional and ended their season one win away from the College World Series.

“The numbers would suggest we figured a lot of things out but I don’t think we ever felt that way,” Meade said. “I want us to get to the point where everyone we throw out there is going to be able to handle and manage the situation and those become far and far less and definitely a thing of the past.”

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Now Meade is entering his second season at South Carolina, but most importantly his first fall with the Gamecocks.

He called the fall his favorite part of coaching and said now he’s able to work with his pitchers, some of which he’s helped recruit to South Carolina, in getting them to pitch how he wants them to.

That’s something he wasn’t able to fully do last season trying to get his staff ready to go quickly, and something now he’s having a lot of fun doing.

“This fall, you’re implementing how you put in your throwing program, your arm care, you’re really pushing the lifting aspect and the change in bullpens, PFP; anything you can think of from a baseball perspective,” Meade said. “The biggest part overriding all of that is just the mentality of how we go about things and the aggressive nature we need to use when we’re trying to pitch, throw whatever it is. That part’s been awesome to actually do.”

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In year two, Meade will be able to do more with his pitchers and there’s an increased comfort now since he gets the new pitchers in right from the start and to work with the returning players for another year and continue to develop them.

Head coach Mark Kingston is hoping Meade getting ahead this season will pay dividends when the Gamecocks start their 2019 season.

“Him coming with us half stream last year was a challenge trying to figure out what he had, how he was going to use guys, what they needed to do, what pitches they threw in spots. He just had to just figure that out as we went,” Kingston said. “There’s so many things that go into it that he’ll be so much father ahead of the game than he was last year.”

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