Everything From Danny Hall As Georgia Tech Baseball Opens Up Practice
Baseball season is getting closer on The Flats.
Georgia Tech is looking to make a return to the NCAA Tournament and the Yellow Jackets journey towards that started today when they opened up practice.
Georgia Tech's Danny Hall spoke with the media today and here is everything that he had to say.
Opening Statement
"Exciting to get started again. We have been waiting for this day for a little while. We felt like we had a great fall and that we are in great shape. Our guys have put a lot of work in, our coaches have put a lot of hours in to get this team ready to go and we are excited about getting ready to go."
1. On his evaluation of the team and the newcomers
"I think we are a great team honestly. I think the two transfers have made a big difference on defense. Payton Green and Mike Becchetti and Drew Burress is a fantastic player and we are very fortunate that he bypassed the draft and came here Matthew Ellis has a lot of experience catching. But there are some other guys, Tyler Minnick is sitting right there. You know, they always say that you have to be strong up the middle and I am real confident about where we are at in the middle of the diamond.
2. On what he is looking to see out of the team in the weeks leading up to the season...
"Just kinda getting ready to go. I want to see the things that we have emphasized and come in to play. We have a major emphasis on throwing strikes and challenging hitters. There has been a major emphasis on defense. We do have a lot of new faces offensively and I think we will be a good offensive team again. We'll see how those guys stack up and see whose going to Gardner some at bats once we start playing.
3. On what he learned in the fall...
"I think that the transfers that we got in are all good players. I think that when you bring in as many newcomers, so we had 12 transfers and 14 freshman, so 26 guys on our roster as first-year players here, you always wonder how the newcomers, especially the transfers are going to mesh with the guys that are here and I think that we have had great leadership.
We have Ben King and John Geisler who have been here a long time and they do everything the right way. They are hard workers and are great in the classroom, they competed at a high level for us last year, so they know what it takes to compete for 56 games and also compete in our league. So I think they have done a great job of getting everybody transitioned.
But I think we are in a good spot. The only two position players that played a lot were Giesler and Tyler Minnick but I do think the transfers have hit the ground running and now it is time to get them ready to go compete."
4. On the Pitching...
"I think we are in great shape. We have a really deep pitching staff and a lot of the guys you saw pitch last year including the guys that were hurt like Logan McGuire, who is trending in the right direction. He is throwing and throwing well, Cam Hill had a great summer and I think he is confident, King threw a lot of innings for us last year, Finateri threw a lot of innings for us last year, but I think we can kinda just go and I think every pitcher in our program right now from the fall until right now have all made great strides."
5. On if Aeden Finateri could be a possible starter...
"It is possible We are stretching everyone out right now and I think you know that Coach Taylor is doing a really good job of stretching everybody out. I think we will probably go into that first weekend with a really good plan and here is our starting rotation and here are the guys that can help us in the bullpen. But it can change day-to-day, week-to-week and I think we have a lot of interchangeable parts.
But I do know that one of the things that we are looking for is to have starters that can go fairly deep into games and not have to go get somebody out of the game."
6. On the freshmen he has been impressed with so far...
"We'll go out there today and there are a couple of guys that we redshirted last year that have a pretty good chance of making our roster, I think Caden Gaudette and Carson Ballard, I think both of those guys have made massive improvements.
7. On if he still feels the same excitement on year 31 of the job...
"Yeah, I think that is the great think about my job and I get asked the question all the time and I am just a sports guy. That is what I like to do. I like to watch sports, go to football games and basketball games and that is the exciting thing, each year the faces change and it is about taking those guys and certainly maximize their potential but create an environment and experience for them that you know will serve them well as athletes and competitors at Georgia Tech and then serve them down the line when they are like me and have families and kids.
There is nothing better than this and I would never wanna do anything different than that and the opportunity that I get everyday to you know try to make everybody's day better.
8. On what he has seen from new pitching coach Matt Taylor...
"Extremely focused, extremely organized, very accountable, holds our players accountable to a standard and a work ethic you know that he expects them to kind of live up to. I think he is well versed in everything and just a different voice and different personality. But I think the biggest thing is that he raised the bar on his expectations for what a good pitcher at our level should look like."
9. On adjusting to the transfer portal...
"It is just a different recruiting model. We have always prided ourselves on recruiting at a high level with freshman and getting them in here and developing them and putting them in the fire to play, but that is just not a good formula these days. There are guys that are 23, 24 playing college baseball so theyd expect an 18, 19 year old kid to have experience and the competitive fire someone who has played three or four years in college baseball, it is just not going to be a good recipe.
We knew that last year that we had a really good freshman class coming, with the draft being in July, it forces you as a coach to make a lot of decisions with portal players, not knowing what freshman could show up but we did a really good job of anticipating that we could lose some of those freshman, three of them did sign contracts and then you wait to see what you are going to lose of your current players. I think we knew when we got on that bus coming home from the ACC Tournament that we were not going to the postseason and that is a very bad feeling as a coach when you know that is not going to happen and then like, ok, what do we need to do to make this team competitive and the answer was that we had to get in the portal.
With that being said, the portal is hard to navigate from a standpoint that there is a lot of schools that I would just say it like this, have collectives, that have a lot of money, and those collectives want those teams to get the best players in the country and the ones that have a collective running and have a lot of money, they can get the best players. That is just quite honestly.
We are not at that level so in knowing that as far as collectives, we probably have to be the Tampa Bay Rays. We have to make great evaluations and we need to get the right guys that are the right fit for Georgia Tech, which is a big piece of the puzzle. It is a school that prides itself on academics, guys that come in here have to be able to navigate the academic piece of it but yeah, it is a different recruiting model and something that we have to continue to do.
Now, will we bring in 12 players like we did this year, probably not, but when we feel like there is something that we need to improve upon, not necessarily a quick fix but something that we can go into the transfer portal."
10. On how to get Georgia Tech back in the postseason...
"That is always the goal. We always say that we want to be the best team in our state, the best team in our league and if we are those two things, then we are going to get into postseason play. What is it going to take? It is going to take a collective unit of pitching, hitting, defense, base running, and all of the other things that go into it, we have to be able to execute at a high level.
Our league, it continues to get better and that is a great thing, that is why guys come to Tech and one of the things that drives me, to get our team ready to compete at a high level against other ACC teams. So, I think that is it, we just have to get ourselves ready to play at a high level and execute at a high level and if we do those first two things and kind of take care of our own business, then I am hoping in late May that we are hosting a regional or going somewhere to play in a regional."
11. On what he has seen from the chemistry among the new players...
"I think it is good. I think our guys get along and we meet with our guys at the end of the fall and I felt like this team was very close. But again, I will tip my cap to the Ben King's and the John Giesler's that have been here a while and know what the expectations are and I am very confident in our team and is in a good spot.
The big thing that you will find out when you get knocked down a little bit and then we will find out how close is this team and their chemistry once we start taking some bruises and getting knocked down a little and can this team bounce back and be accountable to getting better at everything."
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