WVU baseball off to 30-4 start
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Winning baseball.
You want to know why West Virginia’s team is at 30-4, owning the best winning percentage in the country?
The answer is both simple and complex.
It isn’t because they are mauling people game after game. It isn’t because their pitching is overwhelming opponents, although it is. It isn’t because Armani Guzman is making impossible plays in right field and Skylar King is running everything down in center.
It isn’t because Logan Sauve is hitting home runs or Grant Hussey has become as good a first baseman as he is a home run hitter.
No, that’s not all it is.
It isn’t because they are beating their opponents, but more because they are not beating themselves.
At the college level — believe it — more games are lost than are won. You don’t find that statistically. You find it by watching and first-year coach Steve Sabins understands it.
“You watch a lot of college baseball and a lot of games are lost,” Sabins said as he took time out from preparing for a trip to play in-state rival Marshall at 6 p.m. Tuesday to chat with the media. “Games are screwed up … Balls are thrown down the right field line, outfielders run past ground balls, double plays aren’t turned.
“A lot of times, in the moment, it’s one small mistake, but it’s the additional out given to the offense that leads to the three-run homer that beats you.”
It’s baserunning mistakes, not moving a man over from second to third with none out, throwing to the wrong base. Do it once, maybe you get away with it. Do it over and over, it catches up with you.
It doesn’t only happen in college games – Have you watched the Pittsburgh Pirates lately? — and that means over the past 20 years or so.
“We make a huge emphasis on that during the fall,” Sabins said. “It’s not a secret sauce. It’s attention to detail and holding players accountable for playing quality baseball all the time.”
We’re not talking about analytics. We’re talking fundamentals. Little things that often are overlooked.
“It starts when you play catch warming up for the game. You can play sloppy catch. You can play quality catch. We have a whistle during the fall. If a ball hits the turf when it’s not supposed to hit the turf, we blow the whistle and everybody yells ‘BALL ON TURF.’
“Then we pull the video from when the ball hit the turf and we watch it the next day. It doesn’t matter. The play may be over, you recorded an out at first base but throwing the ball back to the pitcher and he short hops the pitcher or the pitcher drops the ball, that’s a ‘BALL ON TURF.’
“It can be a catcher dropping a strike or bouncing the throw back to the pitcher.”
The idea is to make sure you do the little things right and the big things follow.
“There’s a million of those things in the fall and if you don’t concentrate on it in the fall, you have more of it happening in the spring,” Sabins said. “It’s hard to do all the time in the fall but that’s what good staffs do. You try to push yourself as a staff and not look past little things.
“The reason is the game is about most of the time not beating yourself.”
Certainly more goes into winning than just that.
“I don’t think you ever change, whether you are winning or getting your butt kicked,” Sabins said. “You have to have some process in mind you believe is the right way to do things and then try to execute that on a daily basis. I remind myself of that. Every player has to play to win the game and every coach has to coach to win the game.
“You have to stay aggressive. We’re not strictly winning games because we’re good and more talented. We win because we prepare better, are fearless and play with aggression and have a chip on our shoulders. That’s what’s allowed us to win up to this point.”
To Sabins, you have to be proud to win, but to keep it going requires a certain humility, a down-to-earth approach where each day is a challenge and it isn’t about your last win but your next one.
“It has to be the makeup of the kids; not falling in love with themselves, not being satisfied, having a goal in mind,” Sabins said. “If you are satisfied with winning series, or being the road game winning percentage leader (WVU is 18-1 on the road this year) or being the Pitcher of the Week or actually care about what other people think like polls.
“If you care about that stuff, you become complacent and say ‘Hey, we have the best winning percentage in the nation.’ There’s only one goal in this thing and at this point it appears this group of players has a bigger goal they want to accomplish and that can only happen by believing you can do it and setting a precedent for what that looks like.”
When all that comes together and adds to the talent that a winning team necessarily must have, something special takes place and, to date, that’s what happened with Mountaineer baseball, but it is just mid-season and the great teams are able to hold all together through the bad times as well as the good times.