"Inside the Dugout" with Monte Lee
From time to time, Monte Lee joins the show to catch us up on how things are going "Inside the Dugout." This week we spoke with Coach Lee before the start of a five-game week in Tiger Town.
Lee spoke with us about rebounding from the Miami series, the job Jake Higginbotham has done, and much more.
On the 9th inning loss to Miami:
"We all felt that loss as about as badly as you could. It was very, very difficult on our team and it was very, very difficult on our coaching staff. When you look back at your career, you don't remember the great wins, but you do the tough losses and I think that’s just a part of coaching."
On responding at Wake Forest:
"Our guys found the way to respond this weekend you know going after a tough week in general for our team. To go into Wake Forest on the road and be able to win three ball games. Two of those ballgames come from behind, where you know they were ahead in both games and we found a way to score runs, swing the bat. Our bullpen did a phenomenal job all weekend long. Wake Forest is a tough place to win. They had not lost a home series since 2016 so, for us to be able to go in there and do what we did, just awfully proud of our club. Hopefully, we can carry some of that positive on into this week."
On Jake Higginbotham:
"He’s been very, very good. I feel like all three of our starters have done a nice job. I think he has been really good for us these last couple of starts. You can look at his start at Miami, where he got in seven strong innings in what I think what was a breakthrough for him. We’ve been very careful with him in terms of his pitch count and his inning count so he can fully recover week by week. To throw over 100 pitches for the first time, in his career, against Miami to get us the win. Then this weekend, we felt like we needed to be a little bit more careful with him to cover the long start last week. We limited him to 80 something pitches this week, but he threw five shutout innings for us against Wake."
On winning at Wake Forest:
"Wake is not the easiest place in the world to pitch. The ball jumps out of that place like you wouldn’t believe. It's not Central Park and he did an unbelievable job. His command has gotten better and better and better. He went from a guy that's left-handed, with an above-average fastball and curveball, to a guy that can pitch and that's been the biggest difference for him, in my opinion. From the fall, spring and now, Jake has turned himself into a guy that’s very polished strike first, that still runs up there in that 90 to 94 range. For a left-hander with a good hook, he’s really impressed me. His poise and composure too, he's been able to learn from his adversity and tweak things. Just his mental and physical preparation, along with Coach See’s help has been very impressive for us this year."
On how or if they track potential seedings and where they might land in the postseason:
"The only thing I look at is really as the RPI, maybe once a week twice a week, but I'll be honest with you, Lawton. Something as coaches, I think we're all guilty of getting way too far ahead of ourselves. You start looking at those types of things that are in the future that you really can't control. Sometimes what happens is that you quit focusing what you really need to be focusing on. Number one is the status of your team. Who’s doing well? Who needs your help? What kind of changes and adjustments do you need to make with your team in terms of what you're working on in practice? How much rest and recovery your players need? We're just trying our best right now make sure that we do everything we can to make sure guys staying healthy but also trying to continue to develop some of our players and get them better and better as the season progresses. We really try not to spend too much time worrying about that kind of stuff. I think all of our guys understand the expectations, we're trying to put ourselves in the position to host the regional and we're right on that cusp right now. We got to play good baseball down the stretch. The only thing that matters is how you finish. We're in a good position. We're 29-11. I think we're ranked in the top 15 in just about every major poll. I think we are one game out of first place in the ACC.
Talk about the five-game week late in the season:
This is going to be a challenging week for us. We've got two-midweek games, which are never easy. You’ve got to get through 18 innings with a pitching staff that we had to stretch them out this past weekend so we’ll be limited in what we can do in the bullpen. Then we've got to go on the road and play Virginia who's fighting for their lives right now. They're trying to do everything they can to put themselves in a position to get into the postseason. It’s going to be a tough week for us but we like it hard, that’s the bottom line. If you want to make a deep run in the postseason, you’ve got to have a tough club. You have to have a healthy club. You gotta have a talented club. You’ve got to have a tough club and this week is definitely going to challenge us in a lot of different areas but we’re looking forward to it."
On if there is anything specific from a week to week that they try to do to improve productivity when they are not hitting home runs:
"We always want to win in various ways. I understand people’s criticisms and frustration with our offense, that you know we have to rely a little bit on the long ball and those kinds of things to score runs, but on the other side of it. I look at it like this. I think that if you have a lineup of nine players and your goal is to try to put together as many good at-bats within that lineup as you possibly can, your run production is going to be pretty good if you put up "quality at-bats". Quality at-bats for us is a lot of different things. If we've got to bunt, we're gonna bunt. We gotta hit and run. We're going to hit and run and do whatever we've gotta do to try to put together quality at-bats that go far to help our players and our team score runs. I think sometimes when you're not, people want you to manufacture a little more but the name of the game, to me, is just trying to put together good at-bats."
On where the guys are at the plate right now:
"If you look at our lineup, you’ve got guys like Kyle Wilkie who’s swinging the bat very well, Seth (Beer) swinging the bat very well. Williams is swinging the bat very well. Jordan Greene is doing some good things offensively. Kier Meredith is getting on base almost at a 50% clip. There are some guys in that line up that are doing some good things. Honestly, we’ve got to get four or five guys in that lineup all hitting well at one time. I think that's been the big thing for us. The big three, so to speak with Logan (Davidson), Chris (Williams) and Seth (Beer) if we can get those three guys hot at the same time, we’re gonna score a bunch of runs. It's always something that we’re gonna look at. What do we have to do to try to score more runs?"