A single text from Grant Smith not only made his former Head Coach Nick Mingione’s day, but it also revealed the deeper DNA of Kentucky baseball’s unorthodox offense.
Smith was the shortstop in 2024 during the Cats’ historic year, which resulted in him signing a contract with the Chicago White Sox.
As pro baseball gets closer, Smith is starting to speak to other teammates and a story he was told prompted the text to his former skipper.
“I got this text from Grant. ‘Dude from (censorship sound effect),’ I’m not saying the school, ‘told me today that they hated playing us. Thought something different was gonna happen every pitch, had them thinking about a bunch of different things at once and was happy when the series was over’,” Mingione said. “I’m like, that’s the greatest text I’ve gotten in a long time.”
Part of what joyed Mingione about the text is that it’s the design of his offense.
The one commonality to this offensive approach is pressure. Whether it’s stealing, fake bunting to steal, bunting or even trick plays, the Bat Cats are consistently pushing the envelope.
“I don’t care what the analysts say about Major League Baseball, I don’t care, we are dealing with 18 to 24 year olds and we want to create pressure and we have to,” Mingone said.
This approach has now worked for two consecutive seasons.
In terms of stealing, the Bat Cats have led the SEC for two years in a row with 94 stolen bases in 2023 and 120 in 2024.
While it appears to look like the ”Wild Wild West” on dirt, there is a very methodical and mathematical approach for stealing that the Wildcats utilize.
“If the catcher’s a 2.0 [seconds] and the pitcher is a 1.3 [seconds] that’s a 3.3 [seconds], and we know if our base stealer is a 3.3 [seconds] or less, it takes a tenth for the tag. Then we’re stealing, we’re going,” Mingione said.
What this mathematical conversion means is that it times the first movement of the pitcher to when the ball touches the catcher’s mitt. Then it’s added the time it takes the catcher to catch the pitch and throw it to the intended fielder.
If the base runner stealing the bag is quicker than that time, they get the green light to steal.
Another part of Kentucky’s offense that’s garnered this reputation is sacrifice bunting. Like stealing, Kentucky has led the way in the SEC for both the 2023 season and the 2024 season.
During the last remaining weeks of preparation, the team participates in scrimmages against one another, and this gives Kentucky pitchers the chance to face the offense.
“It’s kind of mesmerizing, the stuff our hitters do to the defense,” Jackson Nove said. “I‘m glad I’m not on the opposing side of it.”
With so much roster turnover, though, it’s now become a question of whether or not this offense will change as well.
With that said, despite there being 29 first-year players on the 2025 roster, it was crafted specially for this offensive approach.
“We are definitely up for the challenge,” Mingione said. “We got a bunch of guys that we feel like can just plug and play right that we’ve been doing.”
Amongst those transfers and first-year players is over 100 career stolen bases.
While the execution will have to be there once play begins, it certainly appears like Kentucky baseball is not fading away from its approach that’s so unpredictable it makes opponents eager to be done playing it.
The Bat Cats will begin their season on the road with a doubleheader against Lipscomb on Friday, Feb. 14, with first pitch of game one scheduled for 1 p.m. ET.
