STARKVILLE – The Mississippi State baseball program wrapped up its two-day Virtual Media Days event. Assistant coach/pitching coach Scott Foxhall and assistant coach Kyle Cheesebrough each talked to the media about the upcoming season, how the fall wrapped up and what they are looking forward to in the second week of spring practice.
Baseball Media Day
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Assistant Coach Scott Foxhall
Q: How do you handle the expectations of this pitching staff this year?
SF: There has been a lot of hype. I would say that it has been well deserved hype for the talent that these guys have. It is a special group. It is a competitive group. It is a talented and very smart group. I would say that it is almost like having a staff full of unicorns. You get them once in your coaching career and it seems like I have a whole staff of them right now. I think the way we handle expectations and hype is just to handle it one day at a time. These guys know that they have to get a day better each day. For all of the talent and competitiveness, all of the great qualities that they have, the one quality that they do not have a lot of right now is experience. I would say to all the people that are putting high expectations up right now that we do not have a lot of SEC wins on this pitching staff right now. The game is the best teacher, as much as we practice and as much as they have gotten better. The work ethic is certainly there. The game is the best teacher and that is what we have lacked for the past year due to the situation we have all been placed in. I am anxious to see how they handle games. I am anxious for them to be in games because I think there is going to be a lot of learning once the game starts, especially once we start SEC play. There is going to be some speed bumps, but I have a lot of faith and all of the confidence in the world in the guys on this staff. I think that they are going to be able to be quick learners and overcome those obstacles.
Q: How close do you think that Eric Cerantola is to figuring things out and being able to find some consistency?
SF: Eric [Cerantola] has made the most progress of any of our pitchers on our staff. He had the most room for progress I believe. Eric is a different animal in the fact that he is new to baseball. He hasn’t played baseball his whole life like a bunch of players and pitchers we have here who grew up in the south. He is a Canadian that was a hockey player and found baseball a little later in life than most of the guys here. It has been a learning process for him. We concentrated early on making his misses smaller, because he had some big misses. Instead of telling him that he should find command we have been telling him to make his misses smaller and he has done a good job of making his misses smaller. Now we are getting to the point where we are talking about command with Eric. He has done a great job of commanding his fastball in his bullpens during the preseason. In his first outing last weekend his command was pretty sharp one inning and then the second inning it could have been a little better. The big misses were not there. I feel like he has made a lot of progress. I feel like he has made a lot of progress with his off-speed pitches. He has confidence in a changeup and a curveball which makes his fastball that much more devastating. I am very happy where he is. I will go back to what I said before in that the game is going to teach him a lot about himself. How he handles adrenaline, how he handles a bad call from an umpire, how he handles a hitter that fights off three two-strike pitches in a row. These are things that you cannot simulate in bullpens and he does not have enough reps in scrimmages. It will show up in the games and he will be able to learn from that and he will learn from that. He is smart. Like I said, I have a staff of guys who are really smart and really competitive. I know that he will learn but we just need the games to get here so that he can do that.
Q: How vital is it that you get some guys on the staff some pitches, but are still able to compete against some really good teams on opening weekend?
SF: It is going to be a balance. We have a lot of pitchers on this staff because of a shortened draft and guys were able to get a year back. It is going to be a balance of trying to win games, which is first and foremost, when the season starts, but also developing guys. The younger guys are going to be the future of the program. Also, developing guys that may be able to win you a championship in April and May. It is something that we talk about in the locker room all the time. “How are we going to get this pitcher innings?” We are just coming up with a system early in the season where it might be like a minor-league season where we have what we call “piggy-back starts” where a guy will throw four innings then you throw another guy in there for four innings or three innings. It is almost like you threw two starters in one game, then you just have an inning or two left for the bullpen. Make no mistake about it, we are going to try and win. That is where it is different from the minor-leagues. It is a little bit of the same in the way that we have a lot of pitchers on the roster like the minor leagues. It is different in the way that the priority is winning. We are going to try and find the right formula to do that.
Q: We should not be reading into who you run out there for the first couple of games , right?
SF: That’s right. We are going to go all hands on deck on the weekends and try to win those games. The guys that come in relief on the weekend are probably candidates to be starters in midweek later in the year or starters on the weekend later in the year. We are going to do everything we can to win those first three games. I think that Coach Lemonis has made a good point of finding out what the best matchups are the first weekend. We feel like we have multiple guys who can pitch on Fridays. I have about 89 reasons why Eric Cerantola should pitch on Friday. I can give you 89 reasons for Will Bednar to pitch on Fridays. I could give you 89 reasons why Christian MacLeod should pitch on Friday. They are a little bit interchangeable with how good they are. We will play the matchups a little bit to see what gives us the best chance to win.
Q: Where did you see the most progress made within Eric Cerantola, Will Bednar, and Christian MacLeod?
SF: Christian [MacLeod] will try to tell you that he has just tried to make his pitches a little bit better, each one. We have been working on a little bit more vertical movement with his fastball, so back spinning his fastball just a little bit more. He already had great vertical movement, but we are just trying to make it better. His breaking ball, same thing. The depth on his breaking ball, just making it a bit better. His changeup, believe it or not, with Christian’s changeup we tried to soften it just a bit. Sometimes his changeup can almost look like a two-seam fastball. We want to try to make that pitch a little bit more of a swing and miss pitch. That is something more of a feel movement in his hand thing. Make it move around in his hand and make it a little bit softer and a little bit better to get swings and misses with changeups. With Will [Bednar], we really have been focusing on his off-speed pitches. He dominated about 20-percent of a season last year with mostly fastballs. He can dominate with his fastball this year as well, but he has added a lot more confidence in a slider. He has a real curveball, too, as a weapon. The changeup was the newest pitch for him to throw because he never really needed a changeup until he got to this level. He has been doing a good job with his changeup, so I would say that the focus for Will has been his off speed pitches. I tell Eric [Cerantola] a lot of times that it does not matter the hitter who is up there. The sequencing does not matter so much with Eric. We don’t have to set up hitters or move the ball around to do different things like other pitchers. It is all about being able to throw his pitches in the strike zone. He has three plus pitches. Everyone always talks about his fastball. I know at the end of his freshman year he was running out there throwing 98 miles-per-hour in the SEC Tournament and last year he had an exploding fastball and he still has that, but man, if you could see the stuff, he was throwing last weekend. It was some of the best changeups I have ever seen in my career. We had scouting directors come in here in the fall and say that is the best breaking ball in the country. So, it is really about strike percentage with him. That is what we have been working on with him.
Q: Are there any newcomers you feel will have a big role on the team like Landon Sims last year?
SF: Landon Sims deserves to be talked about in the same breath as the three I just talked about. His stuff is electric. [He] maybe has the best slider on our team. One of the most competitive pitchers on our staff. Of the new group, Jackson Fristoe is the guy I would say comes to mind first. All four of those freshmen. Cade Smith probably threw the best of any of the freshmen in the fall. Mikey Tepper is ultra-talented. Dylan Carmouche is a 6-foot-5 lefty that is going to remind our fans of Ethan Small. [Carmouche] probably has a better breaking ball than Ethan Small at this point in his career. Jackson Fristoe would be the one that I would say, at this point, could be what Landon Sims was last year. [Fristoe] had an electric first outing. I think he has made a lot of progress from the fall to the spring. I would say he would be pitching in some high-leverage situations for us early in the year.
Q: Where do you feel Brandon Smith is in his injury rehabilitation?
SF: I think he has one more step, one more click to be back to where he was before. I think Coach Lemonis talked about it yesterday. That first outing was 89-91 [mph]. As a freshman he was probably in that 91-93 [mph] range, velocity wise. Same thing with his secondary stuff. Just a tick more. He’s got room to get one more jump with his changeup. One more jump with his breaking ball to be back where he was. From a strength standpoint, he is way stronger now. His body is more mature. He is a presence out there. He is a veteran. So, he is going to throw in some big situations for us as well. We will bring him along the right way for him. Just to make sure we don’t rush it. I think he’s ready to go in short bursts at the beginning of the season. Then we will build on it from there.
Q: Which of the fifth and sixth year seniors do you think have taken a step forward or are they just doing what they have always done?
SF: A little of both. We have some veterans. There is nothing like the last nine outs of a game. There is nothing like the last nine outs of an SEC game: the chaos, the crowds, and the adrenaline. So, to have some guys that have done it before is certainly a luxury. The guys that will come to everyone’s mind are Riley Self and Spencer Price. I will say this about Riley, he has thrown the best that he has thrown for us, since I have been here, [during] this spring. He has changed his body. He looks more athletic. He is more athletic. His delivery is cleaner because of that. His arm is working better because of that. Last weekend, he was in the 88-91 [mph] range. I know he came in as a flamethrower early in his career. He has been very successful the last couple of years pitching at 85-87 [mph] with a lot of movement, a lot of finesse, and a lot of moxie. He is throwing harder than that now. I would think his margin for error is increased. He has a chance to be more effective because of that. We know how tough he is. We joke all the time that we put him in the stickiest situations. We do and he handles it. That’s why we do it. Spencer Price is the same way. Probably nobody in college baseball right now has a closer as experienced as Spencer. Or has as many saves under his belt for a career as he does. We know that his stuff is not as premium as a lot of the other guys on our stuff. But, the will to win, the knowledge, the knowhow, and the toughness is there with Spencer. [He has] one of the best sliders on our team. I don’t want to sell that short. I think when everybody thinks of stuff they think of fastball and velocity. You’re not going to see that from Spencer. You are going to see somebody that comes at you with toughness. He knows how to close out a game.
Q: Is everybody available to play going into this first week?
SF: We have two or three guys That for whatever reason, weather, over the break they got sick, there are multiple things. They are just a little bit behind in throwing programs. Other than those two or three, we are a full go right now. I expect those guys to be back by opening weekend. They just haven’t thrown in the scrimmages yet. They will work their way in the next 10 days or so and jump right back into the mix.
Q: What is it like returning with the same coaching staff this year?
SF: It’s been great. It is a joy to come to the office every morning. My dad told me growing up ‘You need to pick a job that you love getting up in the morning and going to work’. That’s certainly the case here. I’m surrounded by a great group of guys. We hang out together when we are not at work. We’re finishing each other’s sentences right now. So, it’s a little scary. It’s great for recruiting and understanding expectations. It’s great for knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses to help practices and games go smoother. I think just all the way around having the staff continuity is a bonus. It’s certainly been a blessing for me to have those guys around me.
Q: How does Landon Sims fit into what you all are trying to do this year?
SF: He is a very important piece. We call him “The Hybrid” a lot of the time. He’s building his innings like everyone else. We know he can go to the bullpen. He’s a guy that you feel like could be electric in one or two inning stints. We also feel like he’s a guy if a starter goes five innings, you can put Landon in, and he can finish the game. He can go four innings like the piggyback starter I was talking about before. It is just a luxury to have him. He should be mentioned in the same breath as those other three [Christian MacLeod, Eric Cerantola, Will Bednar] as far as talent, competitiveness, and what he means to our program. He has got a chance to be the heart and soul of this pitching staff a variety of different ways.
Q: Could Landon end up in a weekend rotation spot this year?
SF: No question. There’s 89 reasons why Landon Sims could be our Friday night starter. He can do it and he will do it at some point. It could be this year. It could be next year that he’s the anchor of the staff. He is a guy that we trust and a guy that all of his teammates trust.