Gavin Casas, Cole Messina Leading Charge For Gamecocks' Lineup

South Carolina's Baseball team has been prolific at the plate in the non-conference slate, a reputation that's been spearheaded by Cole Messina and Gavin Casas.

When it comes to South Carolina's batting lineup, few teams in college baseball have dinged up opponents to the extent the Gamecocks have, as Carolina ranks second in the country in home runs, tenth in walks drawn, and second in hit by pitches. Two of the more prominent catalysts for South Carolina's surge of offensive firepower have been catcher Cole Messina and first baseman Gavin Casas, two players who have made their presence felt in various ways.

For Gavin Casas, the fresher face between him and Messina, he came in with a known reputation for being a big-bodied first baseman who could tear the cover off of baseballs as they flew out of the ballpark. As great as that trait was, however, Gavin struggled in the first couple of weeks in the season to get on base through other methods, striking out countless on pitches away from the plate and, if not trotting around the base pads back to home plate, found himself walking back to the dugout.

Starting this past weekend with the Clemson series, Casas began to reshape his image as a hitter, cranking four homers out of the park in the past eight games but also drawing seven walks and collecting eight hits in that same stretch, putting together more quality at-bats and challenging pitchers to get more creative. For Cole Messina, he wasn't able to put it all together as a freshman in 2022 but has developed exponentially in terms of his plate approach, which has been quite evident over the past seven contests, registering a hit in every game, drawing five walks and hitting three homers, something he said this past Friday that isn't always the result the team seeks.

"The funny thing is that Monte [Lee] never preaches about it. He [brought] it up today, 'we don't preach home runs,'" Messina recalled. "We've never had a day where we've tried to hit as many home runs as possible, so we just stick to our approach, and if it happens, it happens, and it's happening, so we're excited."

One thing's for sure, regardless of the competition they've faced so far, South Carolina has proven itself as a team who can beat the opposition through various methods when they wield their bats at the plate. Regarding Gavin Casas and Cole Messina, well, there's a reason why they're currently batting third and fourth in the lineup, respectively.

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