MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Randy Mazey will open his tenth season leading the WVU baseball program this weekend in a familiar location, while hoping for an uninterrupted schedule after back-to-back COVID-affected seasons. The Mountaineers will open a four-game trip to Conway, South Carolina against Central Michigan Friday at 11 a.m.
“The offseason for us seems like it takes six years. It seems like forever since we have played our last game. It is always a moving target in baseball trying to formulate a new team through the transfer portal and different areas, managing the draft in the summer and doing all that. We get used to it in this world,” said Mazey.
West Virginia’s roster features 40 players as some players take advantage of an additional season of eligibility created by the cancelation of the 2020 season after just 16 games. Mazey says managing his roster will be a balancing act and planning for the future may be a thing of the past.
“These days, if you don’t play those young and talented freshmen enough, they just jump right into the portal. It is going to be a trick. I would say eighty percent of the games we play this year, we are going to throw five pitchers or more in each game. It is going to be one of those deals for that reason and the fact that they are all pretty talented. We still don’t have any idea who is going to start on Sunday for us on the opening weekend. There’s about four or five candidates as we go into this weekend’s intrasquads.
“You are no longer building a program. You just have to build a team one year at a time. The status of this thing year-to-year now is, probably half of your team every single season is going to be kids that are in your program for the first time. Developing a freshman into a senior now is harder than it used to be. Part of development is learning how to sit on the bench, learning how to fail and learning how to do all that. Kids just don’t want to do near as much of that nowadays as they have in the past.”
Four WVU pitchers (Jackson Wolf, Ryan Bergret, Madison Jeffrey and Adam Tulloch) were selected in the MLB Draft last July. Sophomore Carlson Reed [4-5, 7.59 ERA in 2021] figures to be the opening day starter. Fellow sophomore Ben Hampton [4-3, 4.83 ERA] should also be in the weekend rotation.
In the bullpen, Navy transfer Trey Braithwaite and Pittsburgh transfer Chase Smith should be table setters for closer Jacob Watters [4-1, 3.33 ERA, 53 K in 27 IP].
“If [Watters] is going to be consistent on the field, he has to be consistent off the field with eating habits, sleeping habits, taking care of his body. If he can clean all that up and steer clear of injury reports and bad nights of sleep and that type of thing, I think he will flourish in the role he is in. The stuff that he throws up to home plate is as good as anyone pitching in the entire nation. But it has to be consistent for him to be a big winner for us.
“Anybody can do it after the damage has occurred. The trick to changing pitchers is to know when to do it before the damage occurs. We are going to try a lot of different guys and guys are going to have different roles. Hopefully, they will be excited about the roles they are in even of they are short-lived roles.”
2021 Parkersburg South High School graduate Grant Hussey was a corner infielder for the West Virginia Black Bears last summer and looks to have the starting spot at first base secured.
“Grant had some pretty good success in the Draft League last summer. I was guilty of saying [Wednesday] that I would take his production this spring that he did last summer. I think he hit .277 with eight homers with a wood bat against predominately professional pitching. That was a phenomenal summer for him.”
West Virginia will welcome back shortstop Tevin Tucker to the lineup. Tucker missed all of last season due to injury.
“It is nice to have Tevin’s leadership back on the field. His value to the team isn’t always reflected in batting average or fielding percentage. It is in managing the defense and talking to the young guys around him, making sure they are calm and letting the pitchers know that everything is going to be okay.”
Mazey hopes to use his speed throughout the lineup to put pressure on opposing defenses.
“It is kind of like the old ‘Press Virginia’ that [Bob] Huggins had. People hated to play West Virginia and every player on the court was in your face. I want people to hate to play us in baseball because every guy that gets on base has an opportunity to run and make some things happen. It makes the pitchers uncomfortable and other teams uncomfortable and makes them do stuff they wouldn’t normally do.”
Entering game week, Mazey says a handful of starting spots remain up for grabs.
“If we started tomorrow, I wouldn’t know who is playing left field and I wouldn’t know who was catching. And I wouldn’t know who is DH-ing. I tell these guys all the time, ‘You feel like the season is upon you but you’ve still got seven days to prove yourself’.”
While Mazey acknowledges that planning for future seasons is a challenge with the annual draft and the new one-time transfer rule, he is very optimistic about the his recruiting class for 2022.
“Going into this season, we’ve got maybe the most talented freshman class coming in next fall we have ever had. And it looks like we are going to get a lot of innings out of freshmen and sophomores on the mound this year. So you would think with another year of experience out of this year’s sophomore class pitching, and the influx of some superstar pitchers coming out of high school that next year would really be the year the Mountaineers will do something special. But with the draft and the transfer portal, you have no clue.”