Clemson Opens Fall Camp Looking to Replace Two Starting Pitchers
Starting pitching was one of the strengths of the Clemson baseball team last season.
Friday night starter Sam Weatherly and his miniscule 0.79 ERA was the leader of a starting rotation that also included Spencer Strider and Davis Sharpe. With Weatherly and Strider both being selected in the MLB Draft, the Tigers go into fall camp with two open spots in the weekend rotation.
However, there is good news. According to head coach Monte Lee the Tigers do have several viable options when it comes to filling those roles.
"We've got a number of guys that we feel like could fill that void, who they are, I don't know that quite yet," head coach Monte Lee said. "We haven't played yet."
One of those options is sophomore Geoffrey Gilbert. The left-handed hurler was one of the go-to guys in the bullpen last season and recorded 14 strikeouts in seven innings of action, while allowing just one earned run.
"Geoffrey's going to start this this fall," Lee said. "So we're going to develop Geoffrey as a starter and see if Geoffrey can be potentially, you know, one of those two guys that we lost but there's going to be a lot of guys competing for those opportunities, but we feel like Jeffrey could be in the mix to be one of those weekend starters."
Lee says that once he gets his team further along into fall camp he will start to have a better idea who the candidates are. He wants to see them all in some live game situations, and let the chips fall where they may.
"I think that once we get through a couple weeks of intersquads where I can see our guys start," Lee said. "See how they look, see some of these guys that we've got in that are returning and some of the newcomers and how they look based on hitters in live game situations with runners on base, then we'll begin to develop a little bit of a feel for who we think our weekend rotation could be."
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