The West Virginia baseball team has opened the season 3-0 after a weekend series with Jacksonville under new head coach Steve Sabins.
The Mountaineers won Friday’s tilt 4-2, while sweeping a double-header the following day 10-3 and 3-2 to put the season off on the right foot.
And Sabins was proud of what he saw out of his club.
“I thought they played free and aggressive. Opening weekend, often times thar’s really what you’re fighting. It’s just making sure all the work and preparation that the kids have put in shows up on the field and that they’re loose,” Sabins said. “Baseball is a skill sport. Often times that opening weekend with young guys they put a lot of pressure on themselves and try to perform and do more than what their training has taught them and for the most part I thought we played free and aggressive.”
The Mountaineers initially came into the weekend expecting to play four games, but the Sunday tilt was canceled due to inclement weather. Still, Sabins was highly encouraged by what his starting pitchers and bullpen over the three days were able to do.
In the first weekend, Sabins wanted to have his starters go four innings and Griffin Kirn went 5.2 innings in the opener, then Gavin Van Kempen threw 4.0 innings, and Robby Porco ate up 3.2 innings, so the group exceeded expectations as far as the first time being out there as each left the game with a lead.
Then the bullpen only permitted three runs over the course of the three games.
“The bullpen was excellent,” Sabins said.
Every game is important, but this three-game series was especially critical because it provided some tight contests to open the year for the coaching staff to see which players responded in tough situations early in the season. Outside of the 10-3 game, the margin of victory helped to deliver a message to the team.
“We won one game by two runs and won another by a single digit run so in those games it doesn’t matter how you slice it one mental mistakes or a few physical mistakes or a lack of focus the Mountaineers could have been 1-2. That’s how close baseball games work,” Sabins said. “So, the fact that we were in those situations and executed at a high enough level to end up getting the win is kind of the ideal situation for the team.”
But it allowed Sabins and the coaching staff to point to the fact that regardless of the opponent you can get beat unless you play very good baseball.
Sabins pointed to the first game where he felt that his team truly outperformed Jacksonville out hitting them by 10, recording zero errors and getting excellent starting pitching but in the ninth inning the opposition still had the tying run come to the plate.
“So, kind of the message to the team is that’s how good you have to play to win college baseball games at this level. That allows for growth and forces some of the younger guys to grow up fast and some of them performed well but also performed average but not poor enough to cost us the game so it’s a learning lesson without costing us the game which is a good thing,” Sabins said.
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @wesleyshoe
