It is “officially” UK softball and baseball season as Monday’s media day marked the start of both team’s 2017 campaigns. 

At media day, both head coaches, UK softball’s Rachel Lawson and UK baseball’s Nick Mingione spoke to the media to preview the teams upcoming seasons that being either this week or next week.

Both coaches will be dealing with new circumstances this season as it is Mingione’s first at the helm of UK baseball, and as for softball, Lawson, in her tenth season, will be dealing with a lot of new faces and changes on the diamond.

Here is more of what each coach had to say on Monday along with video of the baseball team’s Evan White, Connor Heady, Logan Salow and Zach Logue.

UK baseball’s Nick Mingione:

Opening Statement:

“Three words that we talk about all the time in our program are family, winning, and development. Here’s what we’ve done just to kind of recap since I was hired eight months ago. We’ve created a family atmosphere. How have we done that? The first thing that we asked for was that we change our locker room. We had an equipment room in our locker room. With the blessing of our administration, we cleared it out. We basically have created an environment where our guys get to spend a ton of time together.

“Then development. I sat here eight months ago and we talked about how everything rises and falls on leadership. Mitch Barnhart was one of the main reasons of why I wanted to come here. Here’s what we’ve done: we’ve spent the last two semesters investing time in our players and how we have them become better leaders.  

“Here’s what we did: we created standards. When we got here, we sat there and looked at our program and one of our goals is to win the Southeastern Conference. Well, how do you do that? We’ve basically decided that we have to get a run and a half better. That means either offensively or defensively. What we did was we created standards and we have accountability with those standards. We’ve taught them what it means to compete and how to win games. We have certain game goals that we’re trying to accomplish offensively. We have goals that we want to accomplish defensively. What we’ve done by doing that is educate them. They’ve gone out and poured their hearts and souls into our program and have done an awesome job so far. The word that I keep hearing is ‘energy.

“Offensively, we have eight of our ten starters returning. There’s eight, but the truth of that reality is if you have a family atmosphere, then you have to believe in brutal honesty. You guys probably know this, but we’ve addressed this with our team. Out of those eight guys coming back, we actually finished in the bottom half of our league – and this is just the brutal truth – in average, runs, doubles, total bases, slugging percentage, hits, plate appearances, on base percentage, RBI, steals, and walks. So if our goal is to win the league, then we have to get better and we have challenged our positional players with that. They’ve gotten better and they’ve responded. It’s really neat.

“A couple of the guys I do want to mention. (Preseason All-American) Evan White. I’m going to save you guys the question. He’s going to play first base for us. Can he play the outfield? Yes. This guy is gifted. 

“Our pitching staff. All of you know this: we lost all 30 SEC starts. We actually lost all 42 weekend starts. I couldn’t be more impressed with our pitching staff. When you have 18- to 22-year-olds and you present them with a challenge, then there’s tremendous opportunity and it’s like a carrot dangling in their face. They all want it. They’ve been awesome. I’m going to mention six guys on our pitching staff. 

“Our schedule, it’s a challenging schedule. Nobody is going to accuse me of having a cupcake schedule in my first year. I want to say 26 games of our 56 are against teams in the top-25.”

On how the team can get 1.5 runs better on offense:

“We’ve put an emphasis on commanding the strike zone. If you’ve got a group of hitters that just want to swing at everything you don’t put any pressure on the opponents – their pitchers, their defense – so we chart how many times in our scrimmages we chase pitches and who chases them. There are eight ways to get a quality at-bat and we’ve educated them on those eight ways. Hey, even though you may make an out you can have a quality at-bat.” 

On which pitchers have really jumped out to him:

“Justin Lewis, Zach Logue, Sean Hjelle, Logan Salow and Zach Pop are the guys and then you start mixing in a Zack Thompson. No real surprises. The guy who the players mentioned as being much better than a year ago is Logan. They said it’s just so difficult to see his slider. It was interesting to hear because our players have seen our players more than we have as new coaches.”

On the projected starting weekend rotation:

“Still up for debate with five scrimmages left but we’ve prepped Zach Logue, Justin Lewis, Sean Hjelle and Zack Thompson in starting roles. One thing about our scrimmages, we’re building pitch counts so if we get to a point where a guy has pitched three or four innings (and is done for the day) our bullpen will be prepared to pitch three or four innings, especially early in the year. We’ve had a lot of scrimmages but I know that in the heat of competition guys can get 5-to-50 percent better or worse. We’ll find out where those guys are.”

UK softball’s Rachel Lawson:

Opening statement

“I’m real excited about 2017. We have a new look to us in 2017, but I have the same staff. My staff is here, Kristine Himes and Molly Johnson-Belcher, so they’re here with me. Kristine has been with me the entire time. Molly has been here the entire time as a player and as a coach. She’s been around forever. She was around here before me. So the staff is completely intact and we are really looking forward to the season. This is going to be a completely different season than everyone is accustom to the last couple of years. We have a completely new look in 2017. First, we are going to have a lot of people playing new positions. A lot of the people returning are playing a position that they did not play at last year. But, in addition to 2017’s new look positionally, we have a lot more team speed – it’s been something we have been working very hard on.

“I scout the other teams’ offense, and one of the things that I like to do is I always focus hard on the teams last 15 or 20 games. For us, if you look at our stats from the last 20 games – one of the things that people don’t realize is that we are returning four out of our top five hitters – so that’s something that’s been a well-kept secret for 2017. And of those, we have Abbey Cheek, Jenny Schaper, Brooklin Hinz and Katie Reed – so of those, we are returning our top three RBI producers if you look at our last 20 games, which includes the postseason. I’m very excited about that

“The big question that I’ve been getting asked all year is how do you replace Kelsey Nunley. And it is a very good question – but I think one thing when you think of Kelsey Nunley, is that she was not only exceptional, but she threw a ton of innings, and they were all very productive innings. So, we have to figure out how are we going to get as many innings out of our pitching staff as we can to try and help with replacing all of the innings that we will need to replace Kelsey Nunley. I feel very good about the staff that we have put together. It is going to have a different look, but we are very versatile. It’s a lot of different people doing what Kelsey Nunley could do by herself. She was a workhorse, she was very big and she was very strong, but there are more than one ways to get things done. Luckily, we have Meagan Prince coming back. She is going to be the anchor of this team.

“The goal, always, is to be standing in Oklahoma City. I believe if we can do what we need to do throughout and we are intelligent, mindful and we are plugging away- I believe that we are going to have the staff that is going to be able to stand there at the end of the season.”

On winning being made from within the program:

“If you would have asked me that question five years ago, I would have said it was an organic process. I would have said leaders are leaders and what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen and I have since changed my tune. We do a really good job at UK – our strength and conditioning is top notch – we really do a good job with our nutrition – I think that’s a really great piece, but I think one of the other great things is we’ve made a big commitment to leadership.”