NOTEBOOK: Skip Talk
12/13/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Entering his 20th season at the helm of the University of Pittsburgh baseball team, head coach Joe Jordano is the winningest coach in program history. Hear the skipper chat about what he saw from his squad as the fall season comes to an end.
On his overall assessment of the fall…
We have a lot of new players on this team, and many of those are going to have to contribute to our success this spring. The main focus was to keep our process very simple and to make certain every player understood what was expected of him every day - whether it was in practice or a scrimmage - the effort and execution needed to be consistent.
With that said, I definitely saw tangible progress. I thought my staff did a great job of staying focused on the simple fundamentals and team principles throughout the fall and really had a clear sense of our player's strengths and weaknesses and what we needed to work on during our individual segment. So, overall it was productive. We made progress and accomplished a ton over the first semester.
On how the fall transitions into the spring…
In my opinion, in order to have a successful season there are basically three things that need to happen:
- Your best players need to play their best.
- Players have to step up in new roles.
- Stay healthy.
We have already lost Blair Calvo and Derek West for the year. Those two could possibly have been one and two for us this year, so that certainly did not help our rotation. But, I really like the depth of our pitching staff; however, it is a very young staff with a lot of freshmen arms that have talent. Each of them will have to contribute in order for us to be successful. Quite frankly, I am confident that they will.
We lost Charles Leblanc following last season, and that was a tough one to overcome. We expected him to get drafted, but not as high as he did. We could not be more pleased with the opportunity that Charles received from the Rangers and are proud of his accomplishments. He has a great future in professional baseball. However, that means we had to move David Yanni to shortstop, which he is very capable of handling, but it is a new role for him. This trend of new roles is throughout our defense and lineup. Most of our position players are taking on different roles this season, including three or four freshmen that will see significant action this spring. It is going to be a challenge but we are embracing it and look forward to our season.
On the status of the strength and conditioning program…
We were very happy for our former strength coach, Brian Bert, who was named the head strength coach for the University of North Florida. We were very happy that he was able to get his own athletic program. Tim Beltz, who was our strength coach for many years, stepped in and did a great job in the interim. I am feeling very good about how well our new strength coach, Troy Ramsey, has transitioned with our guys and brought a lot of experience and energy to the position. We are certainly stronger and in a solid spot at the end of the semester.
On the challenges heading into the spring…
I believe the biggest challenge is understanding that we need to play every pitch or every game. We are going to be a team that plays clean baseball and pitches well. We are capable of doing this, and it is what we have worked on every day - both the mental and physical aspects. Like I stated earlier, our guys have to step up - it is their time and we all look forward to seeing it play out. We can't teach experience, you have to live it. When the umpire says "play ball" we have to be ready to play our game. There is no question that we will be prepared, then it becomes a matter of execution. I believe our schedule is very strong from opening day and throughout the pre-conference portion and our ACC schedule is very tough as well, as it always is. I have said it before, if you love to compete, this is where you want to play.
Final thoughts…
This is a work in progress. I love this group and have enjoyed working with them. There is a different feel with these guys. Work ethic is great. They really enjoy being around each other and we all care about each other. We look forward to the break to spend some time with our families and will be anxious to get back to work in January. This first semester has gone by very quickly and the pre-season preparation will as well. It's almost here and we can't wait for our season to begin.
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