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Coach J.D. Arteaga joined the CanesInSight Podcast to discuss Miami’s 4-1 week and the upcoming series against Virginia Tech. A transcript of the interview below:
DMoney: Coach, the timing of these shows has been great because we’re here on Thursday and you guys still haven’t lost a midweek game all season. I won’t say the last team to have the kind of start you guys have had in midweeks (2016), but it was a very successful team that accomplished a lot of the goals I know you guys have. How are you feeling coming off that ACC series win and then another midweek performance?
J.D. Arteaga: That was a big win last weekend for a number of reasons. Obviously, it was our first ACC series win, but we really went into that one limping. Max has been out for a while, Morris is out now, and then not having AJ Ciscar for the weekend—that’s your Friday night guy, your ace, the guy who sets the tone for the weekend. Him being out really thins out your bullpen quite a bit.
It was a shortened week as well. It was a Thursday, Friday, Saturday weekend, so there were a lot of things going against our pitching staff, especially. They responded great. Sebastian Santos-Olson came out as a freshman making his first ACC weekend start and gave us four and a third quality innings and kept us in that game. We ended up winning in extra innings.
Then what can you say about Lachi Collera on Saturday? Best start of his career. Six innings, two hits, no runs, somewhat efficient, got a couple double-play balls, and really made pitches when he needed to. That’s the key to pitching. Stuff, to me, is overrated. You see big stuff all over the country and you still see a lot of 13-12 games. I’m talking about pitching staffs that are supposed to be the top in the country. I think a lot of it is rated on stuff alone and not pitchability. It was a breath of fresh air to see a guy make a pitch when he needed to, get the ground-ball double play, and minimize damage.
It was a great weekend overall. Then Tuesday against Florida Gulf Coast, that’s a team swinging the bat as good as anybody in the country. Again, we came in on a shortened week because had we brought Sebastian back to start on Tuesday, you’re talking about two days short rest, and we’re still not really sure what’s going to happen on Sunday with Ciscar. He’s penciled in to start, but we really won’t know until after his bullpen this afternoon, and really won’t know until tomorrow to see how he wakes up and responds to throwing off the mound. We have to keep him in our back pocket to possibly start on Sunday. So it was great to see Coats and Dorne come on and eat up six or seven innings there and do a great job for us.
DMoney: I want to go back to Sebastian a little bit, because he got in some tough spots and was able to fight his way out of them. As someone who recruited these guys and is still learning more about them as you watch them, what goes through your mind from an evaluative perspective when you’re trying to figure out where a guy fits and how he might progress?
J.D. Arteaga: He’s a guy we’ve really wanted to be a weekend starter for us. I still think he’s a pitch away from that. When I say that, I mean a third pitch—a changeup he can throw, maybe not as an out pitch, but enough to even things out and maybe get him back into the count where he doesn’t have to go to the slider.
It’s tough to have the same pitch be your out pitch and your pitch to get you back into a count. I still think he’s that third pitch away. He used the changeup effectively enough on Thursday night to keep himself in the game and get some cheap outs. Earlier on, we had some opportunities where we were undecided about our Sunday starter, and we’d start him on a Wednesday with a two-inning mentality and see how he did. He just never really got the job done to earn that spot, so we kept going back to Tate DeRias or Collera, whoever it was.
He’s definitely a guy we see as a potential starter for us. He is in that role right now. Right now he’s our number four starter. The future is bright for him. He’s gotten into some jams and gotten out of them, which is a very good trait for any pitcher.
DMoney: Switching gears to Lachi, he’s had to play a lot of different roles, which I’m sure is tough for a guy still trying to figure out where he fits. We’ve seen him in the bullpen, on the weekend, in midweeks. What did you see from him in that start on Saturday, and where do you think he might slot going forward?
J.D. Arteaga: Remember, Lachi started the season as our number two or three starter. He pitched well. He did nothing to lose his job other than us needing his help in the bullpen. We kind of envisioned him as a setup-type guy, maybe even a closer on days Ryan Bilka wasn’t available, and he pitched that well in intersquads and to start the season as a starter.
His move to the bullpen had nothing to do with him and more to do with the team. He had some situational opportunities late in games and just didn’t quite perform to the level we thought he should, so he kind of went into the long role. Then we got smart and figured this guy did a good job as a starter—let’s put him back in the rotation. He never really lost his job because of anything he did wrong. It was more of a team need. We put him back in there and he responded great on Saturday.
DMoney: A name we hadn’t seen but had been hearing a lot about was Menendez. When he pitched, it felt like there was a jolt of energy. Obviously he’s still working his way back, but it seemed like he brought some juice to the staff and the room. What do you see from him as far as his progression?
J.D. Arteaga: The best part is, and I’ve said it, him and Nick Robert—you can’t say they’re the answer because you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get when they come back, or how frequently we’ll be able to use them. We’ve still got to be very careful. His limit last weekend was one inning or 20 pitches, or two innings and 35 pitches.
I told myself we weren’t going to put him in a high-stress situation, and I kept telling myself that, then it’s a three-run game in the seventh and it’s like having that shiny toy. I went against my gut there. But honestly, he pitched fine. He got the first out, the second guy hit a ground ball that should have been the second out with nobody on, and we made an error. One downside to our weekend was our defense. We made about nine errors in that three-game series. Then the next guy gets a bloop base hit and then a sharp single.
The biggest thing I took from it was that he was throwing strikes and going after hitters. One single came in a 1-2 count on a breaking ball that just stayed middle-middle and he didn’t execute it. That’s to be expected after a year of not pitching. But I was really happy with the energy he brought to the dugout. He’s a guy who has worked really hard. Any time you see that on a team, and the guys are around him every day and see how much time he put in and the frustration of not being able to compete with your teammates, when you finally get out there, everybody’s happy for him.
The first pitch being 96 miles an hour helped the excitement in the dugout a little bit too, and it was a strike. He’s a guy we’ll continue to use moving forward and hopefully he keeps pitching the way he’s capable of pitching. In a couple weeks we get Nick Robert back. Another injured arm nobody’s talking about yet, but I’m telling you, he’s going to have a role, is Lonzo Drummond. He was really our best freshman from the left side, especially in the fall and early spring, then he had a little shoulder injury and hadn’t pitched much. He threw one inning at Duke on a day I don’t think anyone could have pitched well for us. It was one of those days—we had no chance that Sunday game at Duke.
But he pitched last Tuesday night, threw one inning, and was really good and really sharp. Good stuff on all his pitches. We’re excited about having him back as well. Things are starting to come into place. I think this weekend we should get word sometime in the next hour or two on Max Galvin being cleared to play as early as tomorrow. Whether he plays tomorrow or not, we’ll have to see how he moves around the field. He’s one of those guys who just rolls out of bed ready to hit. Hitters hit, and Max Galvin just hits. But there’s more to the game. We’ve got to watch him be on his feet for an hour and a half in the outfield, running the bases, taking turns, coming to quick stops and starts. That’s what we’ve got to see now.
We all feel really good that he’s going to be cleared to play tomorrow. Again, whether he starts or not, we’ll see, but we should see him at some point this weekend, which is exciting.
Mikey Torres’ injury is not as bad as we thought originally. When I first saw it happen, I thought he was done for the season for sure—ACL tear. It turned out to be a bone bruise and a PCL sprain, and they said four to six weeks. He was running in the AlterG yesterday. I saw him at Mass Sunday night without his crutches, so I had to throw him under the bus and tell the trainer he was supposed to still be on crutches. I guess he prayed enough at Mass that he was safe to be without them. He was walking well. So we should get him back sooner than expected, possibly as soon as next weekend.
Like I said, Nick has a simulated game tomorrow afternoon, another one next week, so he should be live, if everything goes well, by Stanford weekend. Things are looking good. We can finally start getting our roster together and look more like the team we expected to have at this point in the season. We’re excited. We’ve just got to keep playing well.
DMoney: I want to follow up on a couple of those guys. With Nick, from a fan perspective he kind of came out of nowhere as a freshman. He was one of the lower-ranked guys in the class, then ended up being huge for that team. It felt like every critical bullpen out went through him. Then he came back as a starter and looked like he had really sharpened his game. Now he’s coming back from injury. What do you expect from him and what does he bring to your ballclub?
J.D. Arteaga: First of all, you guys recruit off rankings, and the fan base gets all excited about the guys coming in. I’ve been around long enough—if you recruit off rankings, you’re going to be in big trouble.
Nick was the last guy from that class that we signed, and the best one. He turned out to be the best one. He was just a late bloomer, and on top of that, a really hard worker who does everything right. Great makeup, great character. He’s a kid who learned how to pitch and then started working on his body, and the velocity started coming, which is how it should work. Kids now are just training to throw hard and never learn how to pitch.
So yes, he’s the best guy from that class even though he was the last one. He was our top reliever as a freshman and was our Friday night starter before the injury in his sophomore year. The numbers didn’t look good all sophomore year, but now we know why. The day he got the MRI, I wasn’t worried because he was throwing 95 the day before, and it turns out his UCL was torn the entire time. It was really affecting his command, especially on his breaking ball, and that’s where he was getting beat most of that season.
Now he’s back. As for how we’ll use him, it’ll probably be similar to the bullpen early just because of the limitations those guys have. The question is once you bring them in, do you leave them in if they’re pitching well and let them finish a game, or do you go to your closer? Those are all things we have to see based on how they bounce back. He threw his first full bullpen on Tuesday and was pretty sore yesterday, which is normal. I’m sure after his simulated game on Friday he’ll be really sore on Saturday. We’ll see how he bounces back. Frank, by doctor’s orders, was available after throwing one inning on Thursday, through Saturday, but there was no chance he was going to throw just from regular pitching soreness. So Nick will definitely start out in the bullpen.
DMoney: You mentioned Drummond, and I wanted to get to him, because I remember one of the last scrimmages before the season started. I was there and asked about him because I didn’t know much about him, and he looked really, really good. Then the injury delayed his debut a little bit. But that at-bat he had, even in a blowout game, stood out. For those who haven’t seen him, what does he bring to the table and what could he bring to your team this year?
J.D. Arteaga: It’s special stuff, and that at-bat says it all. That kid was a really good hitter. He goes into his last at-bat of the game with a 46-game hitting streak. He’s going to be very aggressive. We could have pitched him like it was an 0-2 count and he probably would have chased, but Drummond went right after him and beat him with a fastball to punch him out. That tells you a lot about his stuff and who he could be. If he stays healthy, you talk about a jolt to your bullpen—that’s a big one right there.
DMoney: Derek Williams—we talk about him all the time. I want to take it back a little bit to the process of you guys getting to know him. From the outside, Wichita State is obviously a big program, but he wasn’t one of those local-ties portal guys where you say, okay, you get him back home like Frank Menendez or Alex Sosa. How did you identify him, build that relationship, and then develop him into one of the top hitters in the country right now?
J.D. Arteaga: He played junior college here in Florida at the College of Central Florida for a pitching coach at the time named Zac Cole, who I have a great relationship with. He’s now the head coach at Florida Southwestern. He called about him, and Derek was already at Wichita State, but he really called about his makeup, his background, and who he is as a person. Obviously he was a good player and kind of a streaky hitter, but it was really a character check. Zack had great things to say about him.
The only other player Zac had really recommended to us before him was Zack Levenson, another hitter who turned out to be a really good one for us. He actually called me this afternoon about another player, so we may see another one of his players come through the pipeline here.
That’s how his name came across our desk. Then we started watching him and following him that summer, and it turned out to be a great pickup. It was a two-year pickup, not just one year. I’m not sure what scouts are looking for. He had the injury last year, but all we’ve ever known from Derek Williams is what he’s doing now. The only time he didn’t hit was the first couple weeks coming back from a really serious injury that affects hitters—a hamate bone surgery. He’s always hit for us. He was our best hitter when he got hurt last year, had some big hits down the stretch after he came back in regionals and super regionals, and now he’s continued right where he left off all season this year.
He’s our most valuable player, our hottest hitter, and a guy who really helps lengthen the lineup. You’ve got Cuvet in the two spot right now and Sosa protecting him. Then you’ve got Williams in the four spot protecting Sosa, and then Brylan West protecting Williams in the five spot. When you talk about a deep lineup, a long lineup—that’s all I really talked about in the preseason—that’s what I mean. There’s so much protection. You can’t really relax. You can’t pitch one guy to get to the next guy. That’s the importance of it. When you talk about a tough lineup to navigate, it’s that length of it, not just having an All-American in the two, three, four spot and then a severe drop-off. It’s about having a lot of guys protecting each other.
DMoney: The numbers speak for themselves. We saw 64 Analytics had you guys top 10 in the country, not just offensively but overall, with the offense driving a lot of that. Defensively, obviously not where you wanted it at certain points, but we know there are great athletes there and guys who can play defense at a very high level. What needs to get fixed to get those guys where they can be?
J.D. Arteaga: Obviously we had some errors this weekend from Jake Ogden at second base, which isn’t normal for him. At first base, West has made some errors, and a lot of them are coming from the mound on pickoff opportunities. We’ve got eight errors coming from the mound alone. That’s really going to drive down your fielding percentage, even though it’s part of it. Most of the time it’s just a matter of playing catch.
Then with West, he’ll make some silly errors, but then he’ll make a play like he did to end the game.
DMoney: A few of those, yeah.
J.D. Arteaga: He’s made a few of those diving left and right. But then he has some lapses where he just has to relax. He’s got to stay focused all 27 outs and be ready to go and anticipate the ball being hit to him all the time. That’s something we’ve just got to clean up. To me, that’s more of a mental decision than a physical one. We work on all those things all the time. It’s about mentally staying in the game and being ready.
DMoney: I remember last week I asked you about Ogden at the plate and you said he was hitting the ball hard and you weren’t worried, and then he had four hits last game. So you were on that one pretty early. Before we leave here, Virginia Tech is a huge series. I expect it to be a packed house. Florida Gulf Coast was a really nice crowd as well. You can see the fans starting to come out, and when you score all those runs and play that brand of baseball, it’s easy to fall in love with. Just preview the series a little bit—what are you expecting from Virginia Tech and what do you guys need to deal with?
J.D. Arteaga: They’re a team that’s going to challenge us defensively. It’s funny we’ve talked so much about defense this afternoon, but they’re going to challenge us with a small-ball game. They run a lot of first-and-third offense, safety squeezes, bunts, and things like that. We have to take the outs when they give them to us and minimize damage.
One sure way to take that out of play is to get a lead. If we pitch well early and score some runs early, it kind of takes the short game out of it. But they are a team that really thrives on that and puts pressure on you. We’ve got to be ready to go. Monday and today were heavy defensive practice days for us, working and preparing for some of those plays.
DMoney: Coach, the timing of these shows has been great because we’re here on Thursday and you guys still haven’t lost a midweek game all season. I won’t say the last team to have the kind of start you guys have had in midweeks (2016), but it was a very successful team that accomplished a lot of the goals I know you guys have. How are you feeling coming off that ACC series win and then another midweek performance?
J.D. Arteaga: That was a big win last weekend for a number of reasons. Obviously, it was our first ACC series win, but we really went into that one limping. Max has been out for a while, Morris is out now, and then not having AJ Ciscar for the weekend—that’s your Friday night guy, your ace, the guy who sets the tone for the weekend. Him being out really thins out your bullpen quite a bit.
It was a shortened week as well. It was a Thursday, Friday, Saturday weekend, so there were a lot of things going against our pitching staff, especially. They responded great. Sebastian Santos-Olson came out as a freshman making his first ACC weekend start and gave us four and a third quality innings and kept us in that game. We ended up winning in extra innings.
Then what can you say about Lachi Collera on Saturday? Best start of his career. Six innings, two hits, no runs, somewhat efficient, got a couple double-play balls, and really made pitches when he needed to. That’s the key to pitching. Stuff, to me, is overrated. You see big stuff all over the country and you still see a lot of 13-12 games. I’m talking about pitching staffs that are supposed to be the top in the country. I think a lot of it is rated on stuff alone and not pitchability. It was a breath of fresh air to see a guy make a pitch when he needed to, get the ground-ball double play, and minimize damage.
It was a great weekend overall. Then Tuesday against Florida Gulf Coast, that’s a team swinging the bat as good as anybody in the country. Again, we came in on a shortened week because had we brought Sebastian back to start on Tuesday, you’re talking about two days short rest, and we’re still not really sure what’s going to happen on Sunday with Ciscar. He’s penciled in to start, but we really won’t know until after his bullpen this afternoon, and really won’t know until tomorrow to see how he wakes up and responds to throwing off the mound. We have to keep him in our back pocket to possibly start on Sunday. So it was great to see Coats and Dorne come on and eat up six or seven innings there and do a great job for us.
DMoney: I want to go back to Sebastian a little bit, because he got in some tough spots and was able to fight his way out of them. As someone who recruited these guys and is still learning more about them as you watch them, what goes through your mind from an evaluative perspective when you’re trying to figure out where a guy fits and how he might progress?
J.D. Arteaga: He’s a guy we’ve really wanted to be a weekend starter for us. I still think he’s a pitch away from that. When I say that, I mean a third pitch—a changeup he can throw, maybe not as an out pitch, but enough to even things out and maybe get him back into the count where he doesn’t have to go to the slider.
It’s tough to have the same pitch be your out pitch and your pitch to get you back into a count. I still think he’s that third pitch away. He used the changeup effectively enough on Thursday night to keep himself in the game and get some cheap outs. Earlier on, we had some opportunities where we were undecided about our Sunday starter, and we’d start him on a Wednesday with a two-inning mentality and see how he did. He just never really got the job done to earn that spot, so we kept going back to Tate DeRias or Collera, whoever it was.
He’s definitely a guy we see as a potential starter for us. He is in that role right now. Right now he’s our number four starter. The future is bright for him. He’s gotten into some jams and gotten out of them, which is a very good trait for any pitcher.
DMoney: Switching gears to Lachi, he’s had to play a lot of different roles, which I’m sure is tough for a guy still trying to figure out where he fits. We’ve seen him in the bullpen, on the weekend, in midweeks. What did you see from him in that start on Saturday, and where do you think he might slot going forward?
J.D. Arteaga: Remember, Lachi started the season as our number two or three starter. He pitched well. He did nothing to lose his job other than us needing his help in the bullpen. We kind of envisioned him as a setup-type guy, maybe even a closer on days Ryan Bilka wasn’t available, and he pitched that well in intersquads and to start the season as a starter.
His move to the bullpen had nothing to do with him and more to do with the team. He had some situational opportunities late in games and just didn’t quite perform to the level we thought he should, so he kind of went into the long role. Then we got smart and figured this guy did a good job as a starter—let’s put him back in the rotation. He never really lost his job because of anything he did wrong. It was more of a team need. We put him back in there and he responded great on Saturday.
DMoney: A name we hadn’t seen but had been hearing a lot about was Menendez. When he pitched, it felt like there was a jolt of energy. Obviously he’s still working his way back, but it seemed like he brought some juice to the staff and the room. What do you see from him as far as his progression?
J.D. Arteaga: The best part is, and I’ve said it, him and Nick Robert—you can’t say they’re the answer because you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get when they come back, or how frequently we’ll be able to use them. We’ve still got to be very careful. His limit last weekend was one inning or 20 pitches, or two innings and 35 pitches.
I told myself we weren’t going to put him in a high-stress situation, and I kept telling myself that, then it’s a three-run game in the seventh and it’s like having that shiny toy. I went against my gut there. But honestly, he pitched fine. He got the first out, the second guy hit a ground ball that should have been the second out with nobody on, and we made an error. One downside to our weekend was our defense. We made about nine errors in that three-game series. Then the next guy gets a bloop base hit and then a sharp single.
The biggest thing I took from it was that he was throwing strikes and going after hitters. One single came in a 1-2 count on a breaking ball that just stayed middle-middle and he didn’t execute it. That’s to be expected after a year of not pitching. But I was really happy with the energy he brought to the dugout. He’s a guy who has worked really hard. Any time you see that on a team, and the guys are around him every day and see how much time he put in and the frustration of not being able to compete with your teammates, when you finally get out there, everybody’s happy for him.
The first pitch being 96 miles an hour helped the excitement in the dugout a little bit too, and it was a strike. He’s a guy we’ll continue to use moving forward and hopefully he keeps pitching the way he’s capable of pitching. In a couple weeks we get Nick Robert back. Another injured arm nobody’s talking about yet, but I’m telling you, he’s going to have a role, is Lonzo Drummond. He was really our best freshman from the left side, especially in the fall and early spring, then he had a little shoulder injury and hadn’t pitched much. He threw one inning at Duke on a day I don’t think anyone could have pitched well for us. It was one of those days—we had no chance that Sunday game at Duke.
But he pitched last Tuesday night, threw one inning, and was really good and really sharp. Good stuff on all his pitches. We’re excited about having him back as well. Things are starting to come into place. I think this weekend we should get word sometime in the next hour or two on Max Galvin being cleared to play as early as tomorrow. Whether he plays tomorrow or not, we’ll have to see how he moves around the field. He’s one of those guys who just rolls out of bed ready to hit. Hitters hit, and Max Galvin just hits. But there’s more to the game. We’ve got to watch him be on his feet for an hour and a half in the outfield, running the bases, taking turns, coming to quick stops and starts. That’s what we’ve got to see now.
We all feel really good that he’s going to be cleared to play tomorrow. Again, whether he starts or not, we’ll see, but we should see him at some point this weekend, which is exciting.
Mikey Torres’ injury is not as bad as we thought originally. When I first saw it happen, I thought he was done for the season for sure—ACL tear. It turned out to be a bone bruise and a PCL sprain, and they said four to six weeks. He was running in the AlterG yesterday. I saw him at Mass Sunday night without his crutches, so I had to throw him under the bus and tell the trainer he was supposed to still be on crutches. I guess he prayed enough at Mass that he was safe to be without them. He was walking well. So we should get him back sooner than expected, possibly as soon as next weekend.
Like I said, Nick has a simulated game tomorrow afternoon, another one next week, so he should be live, if everything goes well, by Stanford weekend. Things are looking good. We can finally start getting our roster together and look more like the team we expected to have at this point in the season. We’re excited. We’ve just got to keep playing well.
DMoney: I want to follow up on a couple of those guys. With Nick, from a fan perspective he kind of came out of nowhere as a freshman. He was one of the lower-ranked guys in the class, then ended up being huge for that team. It felt like every critical bullpen out went through him. Then he came back as a starter and looked like he had really sharpened his game. Now he’s coming back from injury. What do you expect from him and what does he bring to your ballclub?
J.D. Arteaga: First of all, you guys recruit off rankings, and the fan base gets all excited about the guys coming in. I’ve been around long enough—if you recruit off rankings, you’re going to be in big trouble.
Nick was the last guy from that class that we signed, and the best one. He turned out to be the best one. He was just a late bloomer, and on top of that, a really hard worker who does everything right. Great makeup, great character. He’s a kid who learned how to pitch and then started working on his body, and the velocity started coming, which is how it should work. Kids now are just training to throw hard and never learn how to pitch.
So yes, he’s the best guy from that class even though he was the last one. He was our top reliever as a freshman and was our Friday night starter before the injury in his sophomore year. The numbers didn’t look good all sophomore year, but now we know why. The day he got the MRI, I wasn’t worried because he was throwing 95 the day before, and it turns out his UCL was torn the entire time. It was really affecting his command, especially on his breaking ball, and that’s where he was getting beat most of that season.
Now he’s back. As for how we’ll use him, it’ll probably be similar to the bullpen early just because of the limitations those guys have. The question is once you bring them in, do you leave them in if they’re pitching well and let them finish a game, or do you go to your closer? Those are all things we have to see based on how they bounce back. He threw his first full bullpen on Tuesday and was pretty sore yesterday, which is normal. I’m sure after his simulated game on Friday he’ll be really sore on Saturday. We’ll see how he bounces back. Frank, by doctor’s orders, was available after throwing one inning on Thursday, through Saturday, but there was no chance he was going to throw just from regular pitching soreness. So Nick will definitely start out in the bullpen.
DMoney: You mentioned Drummond, and I wanted to get to him, because I remember one of the last scrimmages before the season started. I was there and asked about him because I didn’t know much about him, and he looked really, really good. Then the injury delayed his debut a little bit. But that at-bat he had, even in a blowout game, stood out. For those who haven’t seen him, what does he bring to the table and what could he bring to your team this year?
J.D. Arteaga: It’s special stuff, and that at-bat says it all. That kid was a really good hitter. He goes into his last at-bat of the game with a 46-game hitting streak. He’s going to be very aggressive. We could have pitched him like it was an 0-2 count and he probably would have chased, but Drummond went right after him and beat him with a fastball to punch him out. That tells you a lot about his stuff and who he could be. If he stays healthy, you talk about a jolt to your bullpen—that’s a big one right there.
DMoney: Derek Williams—we talk about him all the time. I want to take it back a little bit to the process of you guys getting to know him. From the outside, Wichita State is obviously a big program, but he wasn’t one of those local-ties portal guys where you say, okay, you get him back home like Frank Menendez or Alex Sosa. How did you identify him, build that relationship, and then develop him into one of the top hitters in the country right now?
J.D. Arteaga: He played junior college here in Florida at the College of Central Florida for a pitching coach at the time named Zac Cole, who I have a great relationship with. He’s now the head coach at Florida Southwestern. He called about him, and Derek was already at Wichita State, but he really called about his makeup, his background, and who he is as a person. Obviously he was a good player and kind of a streaky hitter, but it was really a character check. Zack had great things to say about him.
The only other player Zac had really recommended to us before him was Zack Levenson, another hitter who turned out to be a really good one for us. He actually called me this afternoon about another player, so we may see another one of his players come through the pipeline here.
That’s how his name came across our desk. Then we started watching him and following him that summer, and it turned out to be a great pickup. It was a two-year pickup, not just one year. I’m not sure what scouts are looking for. He had the injury last year, but all we’ve ever known from Derek Williams is what he’s doing now. The only time he didn’t hit was the first couple weeks coming back from a really serious injury that affects hitters—a hamate bone surgery. He’s always hit for us. He was our best hitter when he got hurt last year, had some big hits down the stretch after he came back in regionals and super regionals, and now he’s continued right where he left off all season this year.
He’s our most valuable player, our hottest hitter, and a guy who really helps lengthen the lineup. You’ve got Cuvet in the two spot right now and Sosa protecting him. Then you’ve got Williams in the four spot protecting Sosa, and then Brylan West protecting Williams in the five spot. When you talk about a deep lineup, a long lineup—that’s all I really talked about in the preseason—that’s what I mean. There’s so much protection. You can’t really relax. You can’t pitch one guy to get to the next guy. That’s the importance of it. When you talk about a tough lineup to navigate, it’s that length of it, not just having an All-American in the two, three, four spot and then a severe drop-off. It’s about having a lot of guys protecting each other.
DMoney: The numbers speak for themselves. We saw 64 Analytics had you guys top 10 in the country, not just offensively but overall, with the offense driving a lot of that. Defensively, obviously not where you wanted it at certain points, but we know there are great athletes there and guys who can play defense at a very high level. What needs to get fixed to get those guys where they can be?
J.D. Arteaga: Obviously we had some errors this weekend from Jake Ogden at second base, which isn’t normal for him. At first base, West has made some errors, and a lot of them are coming from the mound on pickoff opportunities. We’ve got eight errors coming from the mound alone. That’s really going to drive down your fielding percentage, even though it’s part of it. Most of the time it’s just a matter of playing catch.
Then with West, he’ll make some silly errors, but then he’ll make a play like he did to end the game.
DMoney: A few of those, yeah.
J.D. Arteaga: He’s made a few of those diving left and right. But then he has some lapses where he just has to relax. He’s got to stay focused all 27 outs and be ready to go and anticipate the ball being hit to him all the time. That’s something we’ve just got to clean up. To me, that’s more of a mental decision than a physical one. We work on all those things all the time. It’s about mentally staying in the game and being ready.
DMoney: I remember last week I asked you about Ogden at the plate and you said he was hitting the ball hard and you weren’t worried, and then he had four hits last game. So you were on that one pretty early. Before we leave here, Virginia Tech is a huge series. I expect it to be a packed house. Florida Gulf Coast was a really nice crowd as well. You can see the fans starting to come out, and when you score all those runs and play that brand of baseball, it’s easy to fall in love with. Just preview the series a little bit—what are you expecting from Virginia Tech and what do you guys need to deal with?
J.D. Arteaga: They’re a team that’s going to challenge us defensively. It’s funny we’ve talked so much about defense this afternoon, but they’re going to challenge us with a small-ball game. They run a lot of first-and-third offense, safety squeezes, bunts, and things like that. We have to take the outs when they give them to us and minimize damage.
One sure way to take that out of play is to get a lead. If we pitch well early and score some runs early, it kind of takes the short game out of it. But they are a team that really thrives on that and puts pressure on you. We’ve got to be ready to go. Monday and today were heavy defensive practice days for us, working and preparing for some of those plays.
