Our offense will be an adventure all season long: we have quality talent - even stellar talent in some cases - but our coaching staff is still up in the air as to proving itself capable of coaching good plate approaches and decision-making.

Our pitching is still legit, for the most part: we have some arms in the back of the pitching ranks that are struggling with consistency and location. Their arm strength is upper-tier, but they go hot and cold too often, and just lose it a lot.

We have 5 pitchers who have accounted for 22.1 of the team's 146 total innings pitched thus far, and have given up 32 hits, 18 walks, and 25 earned runs through 16 games thus far for a 10.07 ERA. These innings make up 4 mid-week starts and 19.1 IP in mid-week games, plus 3.0 IP that resulted in 7 hits, 4 walks and 6 earned runs over the course of 2 weekend games. These pitchers clearly need a ton of help from the coaching staff.

The other pitchers - all 3 weekend starters Schmidt, Crowe, and Hill - plus our primary weekend relievers of Johnson, Reagan, Scott, and Bowers account for the other 123.2 IP allowing 24 earned runs, throwing 149 Ks and walking only 43. That's an ERA of 1.75 from those arms.

I do like a new freshman starter for us that's just returning from Tommy John surgery and a redshirt season of recuperation, in Cody Morris. Morris was a highly rated prep prospect that was expected to be drafted highly before he suffered his arm injury during his senior HS year. He started last week versus the Citadel for his first action as a Gamecock, and even though he was on a limited pitch count and only threw 51 pitches, he threw 3.0 of scoreless innings, with 1 hit, 1 wild pitch, and 1 HBP, with 6 Ks and 1 walk. Despite the WP and HBP, his pitches were mostly controlled (31 of 51 pitches were for strikes), and he never looked like he didn't have a plan for every batter.

Morris will be the starter Tuesday versus Furman at their home park. Hopefully he has a longer outing. I'm excited about watching him develop throughout the season, because I think he'll eventually become an Ace-caliber weekend pitcher for us in time, but being able to rely on him as a consistent mid-week guy will allow him to gain needed experience, while helping to keep our week-end arms fresher for conference games. But we seriously need to find another arm or two from the others who've struggled thus far - otherwise our guys who we can depend on now will be worn down towards the crunch time at the end of the season....