On what he’s seen from Rankin going back to the fall…
“Yeah, just maturity. I heard his conversation with you and what I witness every day is just that level of maturity. One reason why I wanted him to come back, selfishly, is because he’s been part of a College World Series at every stop and every year of college. Nothing else but just how brilliant he is, how sharp he is. He’s a great team member. You know, he hit the doubles, got off to a great start last year, but, you know, he’s had pretty much a college career of success. And he does a lot for younger people. And he does, I would back him up. He’s not just he’s not just connecting with the guys that he has played with before. He’s connecting with our first-year guys and our young guys. I think Rankin is interested in the legacy he’s going to leave eventually, at the end of this year. I think he’s going to go into med school and I think he will continue some amazing work now that, you know, baseball is winding down. He’s a great student, great person, and, you know, he adds a ton of value to us. It’s like having another coach on the field. When you have that, you always feel good as a coach. Not only a guy that can knock in the runs or make a play and be one of your best players, but when you have a coach that’s actually on that field that can direct traffic and keep guys engaged, sometimes it’s more powerful coming from a player than a coach, and Rankin offers us that.”
On the comfort level of having so many experienced leaders back…
“Yeah, it’s always been to a certain degree. I think you know exactly how I’m wired. After you coach for 20, and then you get to a new decade, a third decade of coaching, there’s a there’s a style that you’ve kind of learned through experience. You know, people at Auburn student athletes, students, families, fans of Auburn and all across the country have been through a ton here. I’ve been thankful to have people like Rankin (Woley) and Ryan Bliss and Cody Greenhill and Jack Owen (who) have helped our program persevere until I speak to you today, three weeks before season starts. They’ve done a great job of morale and leadership. You know, I asked during one section, one month of us spending time together as a team, when we had, you know, Hal Baird and Jonathan Schuerholz and John Smoltz and Bo Jackson and all these men come and talk to our team on this zoom. Once we get through hearing from those 20 amazing people, I asked this leadership group, all these players that I mentioned are on my legacy group, and I said, ‘I want you to come up with your three words for the program’, because for the first five, it’s been attack, legacy, vision. And we make that run. And I asked those guys to come up after listening to those 20 guys, give me new three new words for us to kind of change while we’re in a good position, while the program’s in a good place. But what I was after was their conviction and ownership to go to an even more of a depth I guess, and, you know, they came up with confident, committed and unified. You know, so as we go through our challenges this year, they built the narrative. I think that’s powerful. I think when we get to challenging moments, well they built the narrative and they have skin in the game now and they’ve taken ownership of our program. I’m happy to give that to our players because we have a group of seasoned players that, like you say, have a ton of experience, game experience, but are grown men. For them to have skin in the game, I feel great about it, and to go through what we’ve been through to this point, it’s been amazing having a great level of maturity to lead our programming in these guys.”
On the position battles at first base and DH…
“We’ve kept Rankin over at third. For an example, Rankin will probably play at third base today, and since we haven’t really, you know, in the small group stuff, and now we’re going to play, we go from zero to playing in three squad games in a row Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so I would envision that Rankin would probably play tomorrow at first base. So he’s back and forth. Tyler Miller would probably play first base today and then tomorrow go over to third base. I just think for the left-side infielders, we could just work to keep from them throwing back-to-back days, since we haven’t played one game in a row yet, much less add in three. You’ll see some of those corner guys do that. Rankin and Tyler Miller have played at both positions. Bryson Ware, our new junior college transfer from Mississippi, is a guy that’s in that category, that has just amazed us all. We’ve been so impressed with Bryson. Johnny Ceccoli, a second-year freshmen from Texas, has primarily only worked at first base, so he’s working there every single day. The second person that’s only working at first base at this point is John Samuel Shenker from the football team. So there’s five guys and that lets you know in the past we really haven’t had these awesome problems of having so many guys that can play two positions. We all know if you’re looking for one of the best defenders on the field, then Brody Moore can play, you know, seven positions and we might squeak him in for an inning or two this year to let him play all nine. He still reminds me that every day when we go out to stretch, but, you know, he’s kind of a super-utility guy. We have five guys that we have to get at-bats for. The middle infield still has a bunch of guys competing. All three outfield starters are back, but they’re being pushed. A Bryson Ware, a Bobby Peirce, a Cole Foster at shortstop, are first-year players that have pushed these returning veterans and I don’t (any) of the veterans have done anything wrong. We just have some good new players and have to get a lot of guys some playing time. So we’ll manage back-and-forth, third-to-first and to try to protect arms, but that’s the good thing about having three weeks of squad games here and maybe 11 or 12 squads is they’ll all get their at-bats, they’ll all be able to show us how ready they are, but there’s some competition these three weeks for sure.”
On Bryson Ware and how many positions he might play…
“In some of our drill work yesterday, we kind of did an up-tempo day, he played short, so I think short, third base, I would call third base primary. He came to us as a shortstop like a lot of these guys have done. That’s a position on the field that can really move to other spots and pick up on it pretty quick. I would say primarily third, first. Shortstop, because you still have Bliss, and Brody Moore and Foster, so that would be a secondary position. I would say another distant secondary position could be one of the corner outfields if we have any challenges, whether it’s health, COVID or sometimes the potential of his bat has been so dynamic, you’re hunting for a way to get him on the field. We ask him to power shag when other guys are hitting in that outfield just to try to keep up some skills because I would say that’s an outside potential as well moving forward even though it’s not at the forefront today.”
On the power potential this team has…
“I just see more. From inside of our walls, we feel like we’re a little more depth positionally. We feel like somebody like Josh Hall and Kason Howell that has been up and running full speed, those two guys add an element of speed where we feel like we have a tick more of that. Steven Williams, some big swings that he’s had in the past and the potential that we all see when he takes batting practice every day and the number of bats he has, you feel like there’s potential power there. I think for you and our fans, I think some of the biggest gains are going be like, Judd Ward has taken another step with just being able to drive the ball to all parts of the field and a ton of experience. Kason Howell has some power that we haven’t seen in a game yet, but we feel like those two guys in the outfield have made a jump there. Ryan Bliss can get on anybody’s fastball. He showed that in his first full year as a freshman and again when he played 18 games last year. He’s getting ready to play his third season now, so he’s bigger, faster, stronger than he was as a freshman when you remember him playing a complete season. Bryson Ware, he might have as many springs and coils as anybody that we have of electricity in his hands and in his body. You’ll just see it when he gathers or loads up to hit that there’s an intention. For me, I’m like, ‘Can you put the bat on the ball enough?’ You know, as we start moving into a season, if I can be frank and honest for a minute, and he did in the fall and I’m looking forward to it because there’s a lot of power. I think Rankin has a right-centerfield approach that served him well for a college career. You know, hit a ton of doubles. He and Bliss were just having a great, great little short season for us heading into SEC play. Bobby Peirce from Arizona has real power. And I just, you know, Shenker, we just believe in his character so much. You know, Gus and those (football) coaches had told us about his character. We sensed it last year. He was fighting to get a single last year, but you have to look at it and say, ‘Man, he probably hadn’t had a meaningful baseball at-bat in three years’ and then he jumps out and he plays a little bit. What I will tell you, we’re getting him in that same timeframe. We’ve had that same time to work with him, but it does not look anymore like he hadn’t had that at-bat in three years. That’s exciting. Because this is a young man that, you know, every time he swings a bat, it’s coming off about 110. When he walks up to the plate, if Gabe Gross is standing at third, nobody says a word, but he backs up. And you see the left-side infielders like, ‘Yeah, ease on back to the grass a little bit’. Nobody’s saying anything, you’re just seeing that natural ability when he squares it up, it comes off the bat different. I think he’s closer to being able to have real at-bats and be a huge impact for us in the category you’re asking about, Mark, power. I feel like we’re ahead. I feel like we’ve been a pretty good defensive team in the last couple years. You know, maybe just throwing the baseball might have kept us from winning a big one at some point. But our power’s up, and we still think we can defend the three acres out here Plainsman Park pretty good. Our power and speed by a couple guys in the middle of field makes us feel like we, you know, are a little bit further offensively, further along at the start of the season than we’ve been. Compound that with a little bit more depth. Brayton Brown’s another guy that has power potential that’s definitely in our program. Cam Hill’s another freshman, so those are a couple young guys. We’ll be able to play the hot hand. There’ll be more options as opposed to just 10 or 11 position players available. You’re looking at 13-14 guys sometimes being able to pick bats that are really swinging it well might be able to help us on a on a day or a series offensively.”
On the level of play in the SEC this year…
“Yeah. Bill, good to hear from you. It’s been a while, and I appreciate you. I think that’s one of the most, I’ll give you the question of the day thus far. That’s what I think about, Bill, because I do like our team, and shouldn’t I? I mean, seven out of nine starters return. We do feel like we’ve added some decent players. You know, (Matt) Scheffler has been our biggest deal. Can we replace a catcher that just makes everybody on the team better, especially the pitchers right in front of him? But (Nate) LaRue and (Ryan) Dyal have done a really good job with that. We’re excited about those two guys getting the opportunity to figure out how to hold down or share in that responsibility. Having all these, you know, a Cody Greenhill and a Jack Owen, in a normal year we would not have gotten those guys back. That makes us better. You know, both of those guys have had, you look at their last 100 innings, just pretty good 100 innings, you’d take it. And, you know, Richard Fits, to keep getting better and better and people recognizing it. Mason Barnett that may be second to none from a talent standpoint that people don’t really know about yet, except we do. It’s a strange narrative going into this season because I feel great about our team. This is my 20th year, I guess, getting to be on somebody’s team in the SEC, and I’ve never felt any better, but I would imagine every SEC head coach might feel exactly like I do. Then what kind of narrative do I have? How should my feelings be when, you know, I look and we’re ranked, I’ve seen 17, 23, 26, 37, you know, missing, in action. I don’t even know how to feel. I just know what I’ve got. I know everybody feels good about their team. And I’d say it’s hard. You know, I’m on a poll, and it’s hard. That is not enough, last year of a non-conference slate of 18 games, to honestly pick and now we’re talking about two years, really? So it’s hard. I’m saying it’s hard. So I don’t know which one of these gurus are right out there about our ballclub. In my brain, I’ve got to stay locked inside and we have to get prepared. We’ve been pretty good at the start of seasons. That’s important, but our challenge is we’ve been together less than we’ve ever been going into a season. My mind says control what you can control. Get this team as red as you possibly can because that’s been a strength of our ballclub these last few years for sure. We’ll get opportunities is what I’m going to sell to our guys. You don’t have to have this big chip on your shoulder. You don’t have to feel great. You don’t have to feel like you’re being disrespected. What you do is we’re preparing for an opportunity. We’ll get to do it first weekend against Presbyterian. Then we’ll get to go to Texas and play another three great teams, and then we’ll get to go through 10 weeks of SEC play. So, with my club, I just keep talking about opportunities and getting ready, but I just have to give you what I feel at the time. My narrative is this is the most complete team that we’ve had since I’ve been here. Does that mean something amazing is going to happen? There’s some people that are not as high on our team as I am. And that’s OK.”
On the biggest question mark heading into the season…
“Yeah, just we were apart 60 days, and any coach this time of the year, if you look at any point in time of the year where you’re the most susceptible for an arm injury, it’s right now. I think you could go back, and I look at the other sports. I’m a fan. I care. I’ve been in this thing. You guys have been covering it. And I look at the other sports and I look at health and how guys respond. Are they’re playing at their best? Are they hitting on all cylinders? So health in the arms the next three weeks when we were apart for 60 days and couldn’t be with our players, that’s probably paramount for me because I’m ready to go mix it up with, you know, some of these pitching staffs in the league, supposed to be the best maybe college baseball’s ever seen. I think that’s awesome. I think that’s great for our league. It might be, back to Bill, Bill, this might be the best SEC baseball we’ve ever seen on paper. How does that play out? When we’ve been in this COVID maybe not with our guys. We need to march healthy into the season. You know, we marched in the last year and we had Steven Williams and Kason Howell, they were out for a little bit. That can affect our ballclub if one of these good arms, these four or five top arms on our staff, you know, need more time or are not ready or not sharp opening weekend, that affects our ballclub. So those are the things that I think about. We’ve always been pretty cautious and doing everything we can with arms, but as of right now we’re trying to get every one of these guys we talked about ready to compete, and they should be. The thing that can stop you quicker than anything else leading up these three weeks is making sure you’re not trying to do too much this opening weekend of the squad games to curtail. If communication for the players can be honest, and if the coaches can try to push in the right areas, but make sure that we’re allowing them time to ramp up where we have our whole team complete heading into opening weekend, that’s probably what we’re thinking about the most right now coming out of our staff meeting this morning.”
On what attendance will look like in 2021…
“Just rumors. I’ve heard nothing. No guidance has been handed down. I’ve got a lot of a lot of fans, you know, we worked to the point where we get amazing support and sold out Plainsman Park last year for the first time ever. What’s awesome about that is just, you know, seeing it and being a part of it. What’s negative is not getting to finish the season and get into SEC play. It’s not a negative. It’s actually been fuel for me the last couple of weeks, is all these people that have built and walked in that door with us, they want to know. I’m asking for patience. As soon as we get some direction and guidance, we’re going to support it and try to get it to people, but at this point, there’s been nothing handed down. I think there’s been more and more discussion. Our softball team’s probably part of that. We’re kind of the brother-sister combination there. I know Coach Dean’s getting ready for an amazing season so every now and then we’ll reach out to each other. We’re kind of in the same boat. A lot of our student-athletes and a lot of our people around campus, we tip our hats to everybody that’s done good work to where we feel like we’re going to get our opportunity to play. We’re not going to be too pushy. I know it’s getting close for our people, our season ticket holders, people that want to come to these games. It’s exciting, but we just have to wait. I think that waiting later is to try to get it right. That’s what from our commissioner, Greg Sankey, has been the narrative that worked to get some of these other sports off the ground and really to have successful seasons. Of course, we’re in the middle of basketball right now, but for our spring sports, I feel like we’re just taking another page out of that book that he set forth as we began in August, and it’s been a pretty good script so far.”
