New South Carolina offensive coach Chad Caillet helped engineer some of Southern Mississippi’s best offenses over the last 15 years and spent the last two years at Texas A&M.
Now, he’ll take over with the Gamecocks with the goal of implementing an offense designed to be balanced and well rounded against some of the best pitching staffs in the country.
“It’s about balance. The first balance I’ll speak on is the right-hand, left-handed hitter options. This league is full of elite, elite pitching; the best in the country. Predominantly those guys are from the right side, with the exception of a few,” Caillet said.
“So you have to have those left-handed bats on your roster to basically counter those right-handed studs we’re going to face. But you can’t be overly left-handed dominant. I’m a big fan of left-handed bats, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve had a lot of success with those guys over my career.”
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Caillet’s offenses dating back to 2008 at Southern Miss and going through 2021 with the Aggies have a career slash line of .290/.386/.435 and walk once for every 1.57 strikeouts and punch-out once in every 4.9 at-bats.
His ideal offense is one that can get on base and score in a variety of ways, and not relying solely on power to win games.
“You can’t be one-dimensional offense to where we’re just going to live on homers. You have to have the ability to put some pressure,” Caillet said. “The pitching staffs in this league are too good and the bullpens are elite. You have to have the ability to put pressure on defenses and on pitching coaches—both starting pitchers and bullpen pieces—and do that through speed.”
The Gamecocks are coming off a year where they struggled offensively, finishing 10th in the SEC in slugging percentage but ahead of only Missouri in average and on-base percentage slashing .246/.344/.429 and were 11th in runs scored at 319.
They lose a lot from that team offensively—including five of their top nine hitters in terms of at-bats last season—but will bring back the team’s leading hitter in Andrew Eyster along with Braylen Wimmer, Josiah Sightler and Colin Burgess who all had at least 170 at-bats last season.
“We definitely have a terrific core of position players coming back with a lot of at-bats. One thing my experience has taught me is it’s very difficult to win with true freshmen only on the field. I’m excited about the pieces that are coming back next year. They have a lot of logged at-bats for multiple years,” Caillet said.
“At the end of the day they’ve had good careers and I’m excited to put my own spin on it and maybe share some things and my knowledge and experience to tweak their games to excel to another statistical level and ceiling of their own.”
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South Carolina’s 2021 recruiting class is also made up primarily of hitters, headlined by four top 200 hitting prospects in Michael Braswell, Thad Ector, Vytas Valincius and Carson Hornung with junior college outfielder Wilson Galvan.
Caillet likes what South Carolina is bringing in but will also continue recruiting to his offensive philosophy over the next few classes.
“Ideally you want to put kids in successful situations,” he said. “We’re going to recruit pieces to have these opportunities to counter our opponents’ strengths. At the end of the day, specifically from the offensive side, to have that terrific balance of options on your roster so we can go head-on with any opponent.”
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