Oregon State Coach Mitch Canham: "I'm Already Ready for February"

If baseball ever stops blessing Mitch Canham, he has a bright future in comedy.

Yesterday, Oregon State's skipper opened his second preseason press conference sounding like Mitch Hedberg. When Jon Warren, a pinch-hitting play-by-play voice who runs the Beavers' flagship radio affiliate KEJO-AM in Corvallis, asked "Where are you now in workouts?", Canham's deadpan literal response earned laughter.

"Well, I did some triceps this morning, to uh, get activated, and hit the sauna."

In a conversation spanning nearly nineteen minutes, Canham discussed his team's workouts, upcoming scrimmages, practice routines, his coaching philosophy, and more. Here are three highlights from that presser.

Mitch Canham on his team's preparedness for opening day

"We scrimmaged last weekend. We're going to scrimmage again this weekend. So, you got bullpens Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for guys that are throwing Friday, Saturday, Sunday. A lot of live at bats, a lot of throwing runners on base to create some chaos. Situational stuff as well is extremely important. When you scrimmage, it starts to tell you a lot of things you need to work on, and you revert back to all those things learned about last year that are going to help you, and not just last year, every year, you're trying to get little nuggets and keep implementing them for what these guys need to get better.

They're showing us a lot of positive things, and also showing us some areas where we need to develop, not just for the players, but for the coaches, and Oregon State Baseball in general. You're just always trying to find ways to get better. So, continuing to build up, knowing that we only have a few more weeks until its game time. But the objective is making every day really feel like a game. As I hit on last week: energy, enthusiasm, just adding pressure more and more so that when we play game one, we've really already played game one. Not just making that first day more than it is."

Mitch Canham on whether this team is further along than last season's CWS team

"Well, with a smaller roster size than normal, and having a handful of new guys, which you're going to have, you're going to have freshman come in - you're going to have transfers come in as well - a lot of it is getting those guys up to speed, When they're really feeling comfortable in this environment that is their home, the best version of them comes out. They're not swinging to impress. They're swinging the way they should be swinging. They're not trying to impress everyone with velocity. They're pitching and throwing with command. So it takes time to get them comfortable in that situation. I do like where we're at this given time.

Obviously, you always want things to be better, but the main focus right now is getting guys up to speed. Like, what we learned and experienced last year, and we're asking those guys [returning players] to share some of that wisdom with a lot of the newcomers. Our kickoff dinner last week, the Diamond Dinner, was incredible. You look at Kreig [senior infielder Jacob Krieg], Hutch [senior pitcher AJ Hutcheson], Talt [senior outfielder Easton Talt], three guys that have been here for four years, something that's becoming more and more uncommon - to turn down potential of professional baseball to continue to stick it through here - they got a standing O at that dinner, as did Singer [senior infielder AJ Singer] for returning as well. All of our other guys felt that, like not only witnessed it, but felt that as well.

I was talking to Brady Kasper [undergraduate assistant coach] about this and he said 'I remember at the Diamond Dinner my senior year when I got that like warm round of applause. It really made me feel different about this place and appreciative of everything that I've been through here.', so it's cool kind of cool as these guys, now that we have a hot tub, cold tub sauna, you go in there and you see these guys sitting down talking. No phones in the training room, no headphones, the amount that they're communicating and sharing some of that wisdom, mentoring each other away from the field as well, it's really cool to see. It's what you want, makes you proud as a parent, you know? Puts a little tear in your eye, of joy, but there's still a lot more that needs to continue. Yeah."

Mitch Canham on this season's schedule

Was it any easier this year putting this year's schedule together than it was last year?

"Uh, I don't know. A friend of mine sent me some scripture today and it just talked about how sometimes the perceived pain that we have is actually such a blessing. I think about it too, like I'm taking care of my body on some little ailments, and at first we can consider these things difficult, and a lot more work or whatever, but I have a good network around me, and faith reminds me those are all positives now, because if I have to go to the training room now, I get to see the guys more. If you fall there's other people that are on that level too, so you can all build up together.

Going through that independent schedule, I'm glad it got recognition and people are talking about it, because I thought the way that our guys handled going through that, it's good for people to know its not easy, but also reasurring to know 'hey, wow, if they can do it, maybe we can experience and go through perceived hardship with grace, and handle it like warriors', so, it still requires a ton of effort, a lot of communicating. I built a lot of friends and relationships through talking with other coaches. You had a lot of weeks to fill and there was a handful of people that were very generous saying 'Hey, if nothing comes up, you can come jump in with us and we'll all get games in. It'll be great competition.', and so, just being creative with it.

Maybe it required - well, it did require - more travel. But that's okay. Like, instead of looking at it as a negative, this could be a real positive thing. We get to spend time in the airport, hotel rooms, our fans get to travel a little bit too. It's something that looking forward with the new pack, how that's going to naturally fill some weeks in the schedule, but there's still a lot of opportunity to schedule many weeks with high level competition."