Monte Lee Likes Where His Clemson Baseball Team is as Spring Ball Opens

Head coach Monte Lee says his Clemson baseball team is farther along heading into spring ball this year than it has been in years past.

Coming off of what can only be described as an extremely long offseason, the Clemson baseball team is back on the field this weekend.

Monte Lee's Tigers officially kick off spring ball on Friday and with Opening Day just three weeks away, the Clemson head coach really likes where his team is at currently, particularly his pitching staff.

"We started classes on January 6 here at Clemson," Lee said. "That has given us a lot of opportunities to be able to get out on the field to get a lot of really good baseball work in with our guys. Feel like we're in great shape. Pitching staff looks outstanding. Lot of competitive workouts to this point. I feel like we're probably farther along right now that we've been in the past."

One of the strengths of this Clemson team should once again be the pitching. Despite losing Sam Weatherly and Spencer Strider, both weekend starters from last year's team, Lee says the Tigers are in really good shape. 

Davis Sharpe, Mat Clark, Keyshawn Askew, and Carter Raffield all return. Add freshman Caden Grice into the mix and the Tigers have no shortage of quality arms when it comes to the starting rotation.

"Our pitching probably is ahead of our offense and quite honestly I like it that way," Lee said. "I think we would all prefer to have a pitching staff that's ahead of our offense. If our offense is ahead of our pitching staff, in my experience and in the way that baseball has worked for over 100 years, if you got a lineup knocking around your pitching staff, that usually does not bode well for making a deep run in the postseason."

Lee says the team opens camp relatively healthy. Starting catcher Adam Hackenberg is the only player who is out at the moment and he could be out for an extended period of time with an arm injury.

"Physically, we're in really good shape," Lee said. "We do have Adam Hackenberg, who's our team captain, and our starting catcher, he's out right. He has an arm injury. We feel like he could be out for some time. We're not exactly sure how long quite yet. We expect it to be over the next couple of weeks but it could go into the season that he may not be available and we will do everything we can to get Jonathan French and Cooper Ingle ready to go."

The biggest challenge for this coaching staff heading into the season will be dealing with the pandemic. Lee says that he and the rest of the coaching staff already have a good grasp of what they are dealing with and that while they have not had to manage playing a season in these unusual times, they did have to manage the same kinds of things throughout fall ball.

"I think we have a pretty good grasp of what we're dealing with," Lee said. "The biggest thing is just, again, just trying to do everything we can as coaches to make sure our guys are doing the right things. A lot of that is just going to be their accountability off the field. These are college students. We know that they want to spend time in groups, they want to gather they want to socialize, but we simply cannot do those types of things this spring if we expect to be able to work with our full roster throughout the whole course of the spring. So we know that we're gonna have some hiccups but we're just going to have to deal with it and do the very best we can."