Stuart Lake's been around the South Carolina program for a very long time, but he's taking on a new role with the program this season.

Lake transitioned this offseason as the team's new hitting coach, tasked with helping the Gamecocks rebound after a 2019 season where they struggled at the plate.

Before spring scrimmages started, Lake sat down with GamecockCentral to talk about his new role and what he's seen from the Gamecocks and the hitters' new approach.

GC: What is your role now compared to last year?

Lake: “I don’t feel like my role’s changed a lot, but I do feel the responsibilities have changed a lot more. First two years I think it was a case of Coach (Mark) Kingston learning who I was. I come off a lot, and I learned it from Coach (Ray) Tanner, but I’ll never be the guy writing a book. In the sense what I feel like as a hitting coach I’ve done well, and I learned it from good people, is I like to create relationships. A lot of times in creating relationships, it takes a little more time. I feel like after last year where we didn’t have a year any of us wanted, that was when he approached me saying, ‘Would you want more responsibility for the day to day: setting the groups up, the philosophy?’ Just creating the relationships as the guy instead of helping to be the guy.

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"Of course, that’s all I’ve ever done. From being here and once I left here, I was always by myself with hitters: College of Charleston, Ole Miss, as a head coach I went back and did it. It’s really fun for me. I have a process doing it. I joke I’m not one to write a book but I am one that we use a book. I’ve done this with every group of hitters I’ve been with. The original version of this came with Coach Tanner at I. I still have it in a plastic folder. What I do is I sit with our hitters and we change it. I don’t do it ever year. Obviously this year with it being my first to do it, so I go through the chapters we’re going to do. We actually write this as a group. All throughout the fall we talk about: what’s our goal? What’s our focus? We come up with all of this stuff. I haven’t written any of this. My role is I’m really organized. This sheet, whenever we didn’t perform in our scrimmage the way we want in our scrimmages, this is the sheet they got in their locker.

"We decided on these. I didn’t decide that our Gamecock hitting goals were going to be top five in the SEC in on base, runs per game or OPS. We decided. So have I missed a meeting somewhere? We had a game where we struck out 13 times and walked four. That can’t happen. That’s where I take it. I’ve really enjoyed it. College coaching is different than professional coaching. Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff going on, but the reason I still coach 25 years later is I love relationships and I love watching them grow. It’s harder now to coach hitting because of our phones and laptops.”

GC: Because there are so many different tutorials online?

Lake: “Because there are so many people. What I’ve done with it, if you see something you like (online) bring it to me and explain why you like it because it might be something good. But if you bring it in here and can’t explain why you like it, we can’t find out why it’s good, let’s move out from it. They’ve all had hitting lessons and hitting coaches. It’s been really fun for me. Coach has allowed the practices, our BPs have changed. We do more situational BPs now. We do hit and runs, opposite fields where the last few years we were more middle power and we were looking at exit velocity. We don’t bring the screen out much any more.”

GC: Just so they can see where they’re hitting the ball?

Lake: “We bring it out on days we want them to keep up with it. One of the coolest moments for me here is I’m in the batting cages and Justin Smoak’s in here hitting and Christian Walker’s hitting. I’m in there as the flip guy. I’m just flipping. Christian keeps looking at the screen and it’s driving Smoak nuts. He finally goes, ‘What do you keep looking at the screen for?’ And Christian said he wanted to know his exit velocity off Coach Lake. Why? Because he wants to know at what percent of how hard he’s swinging because he flips to me all the time and I keep it between 90 and 93. Smoak laughed at him. Then he said, ‘Smoak, that thing’s nothing but a speedometer, man.’ I thought it was a real clear way (to explain it). My speedometer on my car says I can go 140 but I don’t drive home at 140. I think when technology started and everyone got it, they thought it was to max. I picture the guy hitting the thing at the fair. I think that’s what we all thought the technology was for: hit it as hard as you can, throw it as hard as you can, see how fast you can hit it. He made it real simple for me that day. He said, ‘I’m looking at it for speed. When Coach Lake underhand flips me, I want to be 90 to 93. When he throws to me I want to be like 93 to 97. When I hit off the machine, maybe I’m a little faster.”

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GC: Lower velocity to try and control the bat a little more?

Lake: “Now we’ve taken that tool when we first got it, we only used it for one thing: how fast was it? Now it’s us getting in there and I hit with my own son and he’ll hit a ball and I’ll say, ‘What do you think your launch angle was?’ He’ll go, ‘Probably about 15 to 20.’ Yeah, that’s what we want. I don’t even use launch angle. I say exit angle. Did you use bottle rockets when you were growing up? That’s what I picture when I use the word launch. I see you shooting a bottle rocket up. We just banned that term in the program: launch angle. I’m fine with you telling me your exit angle and exit velocity, but you can’t use the word launch. It’s going back to thinking line drives.”

GC: What other responsibilities do you have?

Lake: “I was throwing all the BP and stuff to begin with. Now I always felt responsible. Now I have more. Maybe he can come in here and yell at me if he wants where he couldn’t in the past. What it is now is they know to come to me and we create those relationships. This is an older team that’s pretty intelligent. I have fun with them.”

GC: What’s hard about trying to change a team’s approach?

Lake: “It’s honestly a thing where coach and I sat down. I’ve had it on paper more when I was back at Ole Miss. I use terms instead of a hitting approach. A lot of times when I hear the word philosophy, I picture a really smart person. I’m not one. So I use the word approach. The words we use: discipline, aggressive. I want hitters who want to hit fastballs. The discipline part of it is I want you to also know you can’t just swing at every pitch. I’ll use Eyster: the inner third is not where your numbers indicate you hit well, but the outer two thirds you do. Let’s be really disciplined to get where you want the pitch. Then the term I think is synonymous with this program is battle. We just took the term that was already so entrenched in this program. Our two-strike approach is our battle approach. Our hit and run approach and our get a runner over approach are all battle approach. To me, when a guy’s throwing 90-plus, it’s a battle to get the ball to second place. We really talk two-strike approach. In our hitting approach, those are our two terms: disciplined aggression and battle.

"Then I try to talk every day about two-strike approach and seeing the ball early. We talk a lot about vision. You’ll see in our cages we have a tennis ball machine and colored tennis balls and all they do is track so they can see it earlier. Our two-strike approach is hitting the ball in the middle of the field. We’ve really put that middle power into our two-strike approach. They we’re really aware of it. When they get a two-strike hit, their teammates know about it and are like, ‘Damn, that’s a battle.’ That’s a 7-pitch at-bat is still a good at-bat. When I see guys fist-bumping guys coming off the field who didn’t get a hit understanding he’s not doing it just because he has to fist bump so coach doesn’t get mad but he’s doing it because dude that’s an 11-pitch at-bat. That’s when I get proud, like they’re catching it.”

GC: Are you sensing guys have come around?

Lake: “It’s helped because the older guys in the program—Andrew Eyster, Noah Campbell, Brady Allen, Wes Clarke—they all already believed in it because we talk about it so much. Then the group that came in with the (Dallas) Beavers and (Bryant) Bowens, they bought in. it gives you a chance to go home at night and not base everything on if you go 2-for-4. This game eats you up if all you base it off is your batting average. So that’s why we talk about on base. I wanted to do OPS because Gamecock baseball is about hitting home runs. That slugging percentage will forever be a part of the program. I wanted it to be on base and slugging. We want to be top half. Teams that get on base tend to be teams that score runs. A team that scores runs is usually the team that wins.”

GC: What’s an ideal offense look like to you?

Lake: “To me, I don’t talk about strikeouts. We talk about positives way more than we do about negatives. My go to line is, ‘Will you stop trying to perfect an imperfect act?’ I’ll say that to guys when their body language (dips), which is big for me. Why is your body language bad? You think you’re going to be perfect at this game? We have a freshman in Wimmer who I think is going to be a good player but he’s still learning how to handle failure, and that’s hard. It’s hard on everyone…the perfect lineup to me is based on having our on base percentage guys at the top. The guys in the middle are supposed to drive in runs. They’re supposed to be your guys to go gap to gap. The three run home run is still a good part of the offense but it’s hard to hit those when no one’s on base. We couldn’t hit three-run home runs last year. No one was on base.

"The big part now, and we talk about it a lot, but let’s figure out whom our best on-base percentage guys are. Who can hit and run for you? Who can bunt for a hit to keep that defense uncomfortable? Then you hope you settle in with guys in the middle who are your drive in run guys. They’re not going to be asked to steal bases. The other guys—Noah Myers, Noah Campbell and Brady Allen—those guys have to run. They have to do stuff. That’s where you hope the lineup shakes out. I want those guys that are in the middle to drive in runs, I want them to take full responsibility for getting on base, too. Get hit by a pitch, have an eight-pitch at-bat instead a three-pitch noncompetitive one.”

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GC: What are some of the big teaching points you use?

Lake: “I start first with the approach. I’m very basic in a sense in getting in a good position of power early. Let’s get our foot down early; let’s get still with our eyes. The approach part is when I’m looking with no one on; I can look for that pitch in my zone. Once that runner’s on, what are my responsibilities? Is it to get him over? Is it to get him in? When we get in those runners on situations, I want them to understand where their pitches are…the two strike approach I talk more mental the physical. Physically it’s about getting your foot down early and in a position of power.

"What I’ve learned through the years is trying to see the pitch earlier. We talk a lot about vision and knowing the count. Is it 0-2 when you have two strikes or 3-2? Is there a runner on third? A lot of times if there’s a runner at third at our level, you can’t throw that power breaking ball because it may get by. There are so many parts I try to keep talking about. What I try to really, really emphasize is be really proud when you get hit a hit with two strikes. That should be your medal of honor that doggone we can get a hit with two strikes and we can hit with two outs. If you can do that, you can break a lot of people’s wills.”

GC: Did you see the numbers you wanted to in the fall?

Lake: “The fall gets you because you want your batting average to be a little better but then you realize you’re playing yourself. It’s constant. We always try to filter who got the at-bats. This fall, we’ve gone back and looked and wished we gotten more at-bats. Because we didn’t have a ton of pitchers we didn’t want to stretch. I was very pleased. I want to still get our strikeouts down. I think our walks will go up once we’re facing other people. We did OK. Our hit by pitches were OK. I like to get hit by pitches. It’s like saying I’m not going anywhere. Overall, I was pleased. I was pleased with the buy-in. we’re still going to hit our home runs but we’re going to fight our butt off to get on base. If there’s 20 pitches an inning, when we hit those plateaus, we’re going to get those guys out of games.”

GC: It probably helps with fatigue, too?

Lake: “He’ll make a mistake. Am I better in my 18th or 20th pitch than I am the first or fifth? If we can keep him out there in the third inning throwing 18 or 19 or 20 pitches, he’s probably going to leave it up with his breaking ball and his fastball is going to be more over the plate; there’s so many positives to it.”