Positive vibes
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CLEMSON -– From afar, Monte Lee’s postgame address to his team had all the looks of a tongue-lashing.
After watching his players leave 12 men on base and come a bit unglued in some key moments of a season-opening 6-4 loss to Wright State, Lee summoned his players to shallow right field beyond the earshot of the remaining people in the stands. For 15 minutes after a game that lasted three hours and 42 minutes, Lee appeared to be giving it to his team.
Only, he wasn’t. He was doing the exact opposite, as Seth Beer told us.
“You could see some hanging heads, especially the freshmen,” Beer said. “I remember I was in the same shoes the year before. We lost the first game and I thought it was the end of the world. And coach has a way of just talking. He’s smiling at us and saying, ‘We get to come out and play tomorrow. That’s the thing about this game that’s so awesome.’”
Lee had plenty of reason to be frustrated with the first game of his second season as Clemson’s coach. He watched starter Charlie Barnes fail to make it out of the fifth inning. He watched the next three pitchers – Tyler Jackson, Jacob Hennessy and Jeremy Beasley – get hit hard as Wright State scored three runs in the seventh and tacked on another in the ninth on an opposite-field homer off Beasley.
He watched freshman catcher Kyle Wilkie, subbing for injured Chris Williams, have some struggles. He watched a procession of his batters fail to capitalize when runners were on base. And chief among them was Beer, the superstar basher who struck out swinging with the bases loaded in the sixth with one out and the Tigers up 3-2.
But obsessing over mistakes – particularly the mistakes that come at the plate with runners on – isn’t the way Lee rolls. By the time he met with the media after his postgame chat with his team, Lee had closed the book on those missed opportunities and was ready to move on.
“I can assure you of this: We are not going to talk about it a lot,” Lee said of situational hitting. “We’re going to move on from it. Because the last thing you want to do is – I’m not going to put pressure on my players. These guys give me everything that I ask from them. They work as hard as they can. They’re selfless. They play together. I’m very proud of our players and where we’re at right now. So I’m not going to put pressure on them.”
From the beginning of his tenure at Clemson, Lee made it clear he was going to place a major emphasis on the psychological part of coaching baseball. Bringing in talent is important, as is making the right strategic decisions during games. But so is the ability of the players to execute freely and without the emotional strain of worrying about screwing up again.
Nine of the 15 players who saw the field Friday were doing so for the first time in a Clemson uniform. A few days ago, the team learned Williams will be out a significant period after injuring his hand. And leadoff man Chase Pinder missed the opener with an illness.
This is all important context for a coach as he considers what tone to take with his team after a loss. A few days earlier, he said he wasn’t really concerned with the scoreboard in this opening series. He was focusing much more on how his players would handle the pressure and stress. He wanted them to be as poised and as loose as possible.
So it made perfect sense that he embodied those qualities after the game.
“Coach is never going to be a guy that gets upset with you if you strike out in a big situation like I did tonight, or if a guy gives up a home run,” Beer said. “He wants you to play aggressive, and if that doesn’t get it done for you that’s just how it works.”
Lee said the coaches deserve the blame for an inability to get bunts down, plus some shoddy play in the outfield. He said the little things are what doomed the Tigers in this one, but his tone was far from gloom and doom as he highlighted stats that typically win games: nine walks drawn by Clemson to just two for Wright State, and 11 strikeouts by Clemson pitchers to just six for the visitors.
If this becomes a pattern, you’ll probably see Lee express more concern. But it was one day and one game. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Obviously there’s going to be some jitters going into this game,” said Beer, who made his debut at first base. “We’ve got a bunch of moving parts, and you’ve got to figure out who’s who and what’s going on. We’ve got three new guys in the infield, and four including me. And you’ve got a new guy behind the dish. So there’s going to be some different things and we need to figure out how we mesh together.”
As they’re figuring it out, the head coach isn’t going to flip out.
“One of these guys is going to step up and drill one with runners in scoring position,” Lee said.
He’s putting his trust in the power of positive thinking.
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