Video: Travis Jewett previews Green Wave baseball season

We're live from our 2020 Media Day! #RollWave https://t.co/JFarT1F8s0

— Tulane Baseball (@GreenWaveBSB) February 4, 2020

Tulane baseball coach Travis Jewett held his annual preseason media day Tuesday, Feb. 4.

Opening statement…
“I want to welcome everybody. I know Clyde just said this, but I appreciate these opportunities. One, so you guys can get a little feel for what our team looks like, maybe encapsulate last year a little bit before we move forward. Anytime I get a chance to talk about the kids I certainly do like it. But I do appreciate you guys being here and covering us, that is awesome. Clyde, thank you for setting this up, I appreciate that a great deal. There are other staff here…I appreciate you guys being here, thanks a lot. I made mention of the five rock star players we have coming this afternoon. We don’t miss class for anything around here. Never, we don’t. If they miss class, they don’t even get to go to practice.”

“Last year. Before I move forward I kind of do want to talk about last year. I tell our kids a lot of the time, ‘last year’ are the two worst words in the English dictionary in a lot of different ways. But they are experiences from the past and we have to learn from them good or bad. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that, moving forward. Last year was really good in a lot of different ways. One, 32-26. Now, not 58-0 but on the winning ledger. You can see how it started to push forward there in that third year. A winning record, good. We have a building block in our pyramid of our program. One of them says ‘deserve victory,’ we did last year and certainly deserve it even more this year. That’s just because of who our kids are, how they go about their business. The way the team is coming together, that block in our pyramid of success is starting to show up.”

“We tied a school record last year for the most draft picks in a single season, which was six. We actually had seven players exit the program through the draft and or free agent signing, that’s good. That means the players inside the program are developing well. Of those seven players, none of them were drafted out of high school. That’s a good sign for development. You can come to a school like Tulane and grow your mind and your brain in the classroom but you can get inside of those white lines in our playground, we call it, and you can become the professional baseball player that I know that they aspire to be. That’s good, and I thank my coaching staff for that because a lot of that development comes from them, no doubt about it.”

“We had two unanimous All-Americans in Kody Hoese and Hudson Haskin, who was a freshman All-American. We had the conference player of the year, again. In the three years we’ve been here in this program we’ve had that two out of the three years now. So, Keagan and G, you guys are here let’s keep that going, okay?”

“First round selection. As I made mention in the draft picks, one of those was a first rounder. First one in Tulane baseball since 2008 and the highest draft pick in the American Athletic Conference history. That’s Kody Hoese.”

“A third-place finish last year, a half game out of second place in the American which was the fifth rated RPI conference in the country. So, again moving our ledger forward that way. It actually ties us for the second highest conference finish in the last 14 years. So, pushing us up that way. I think you guys that covered us last year, you know that swinging the bats was something that we did extremely well in a lot of different fashions. We set 11 AAC records offensively. I’ll run them down for you. Runs per game, OPS, home runs, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, batting average, total bases, runs scored, extra base hits, RBI and walks. We always talk about walks. Walks are good, and they are part of the offense. On top of that we also lead the AAC in 12 offensive categories in all games. Again, some repeats but: batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, runs per game, hits per game, RBI, doubles, triples, homers, we all like those, extra base hits, total bases and again walks per game.”

“Pitching. Pitching did get better last year in a lot of different ways. I would say that the length of it, the ability to be consistent with it, is still not quite there. I feel a lot better about it going forward. We punched out 501 batters last year, which ties for fourth most in school history so that’s good. I thought that we caught the ball extremely well. We tied for the league lead in fielding percentage as well as fewest errors. So there are some good components there. Now again, it’s “last year, last year”, we got to use those experiences, we’ve got to use those successes and we have got to move them forward.”

“Two new coaches. Jay Uhlman, in from Oregon. Long time successful coach out in the west coast predominantly was at Oregon before he came here. He’s our new recruiting coordinator, doing a good job that way. He’ll be our third base coach, our offensive guy. I’ll try not to screw him up too much and let him be. And he will work with our infielders as well. So we are excited to have him. And then Anthony Izzio will be our first base coach. He came over from Pearl River Community College in Mississippi. They played in the JUCO Division II World Series last year. He will work with our outfield and will certainly assist with the offense as well. Two really good pieces. They are really good baseball guys no doubt about it, but they are my kind of guys. They have great personalities, they smile, they have energy, I think our kids enjoy them, they work hard, they invest well, they are fitting in good. Coach Latham is back, you guys know. Doesn’t need much introduction. Latham is our pitching coach, Tulane hall of famer, all of those things like that. I feel good. Last year he had some more pieces, this year I think he has even more. I would expect to see that part of our game pick up for sure and I know he’s excited about that.”

“Sixteen… 16 new faces on this team. Ten of them from junior college. Six high school guys. Two catchers, one infielder, five right-handed pitchers and two left-handed pitchers. We are excited about them. Although we lost quite a bit last year, looking around going ‘those are good numbers’. One guy hit over 20 home runs and Jensen is gone and all of that kind of stuff like that. Let me stand here in front of you and tell you that the cupboard is certainly not bare, it’s not. We returned 363 hits, that’s a lot. 76 doubles, 15 triples, 42 homers, 238 RBI and a .309 batting average. “

“Other players maybe some that you haven’t heard about as much as the guys you’ll see here today. The Ty Johnson’s of the world. If you were here early last season, you understand what kind of player this young man is. Kind of our energizer bunny, long hair and earrings and smiles and likes to run around fast. He’ll be back, he has been healthy for the most part so far, so that’s good. So we’ll return him to those statistics we just added. And then just like in any good program, it’s kind of those young kids that maybe you don’t see on the field a lot, they are just freshmen. They kind of get in, they get out. Not a ton of experience but you watch them mature and use those experiences that we’ve talked about in the past to become better players. I think if I can name a few: The Colin Burns who looks to insert himself on the infield that was kind of a part time guy last year. Ethan Groff was a really good athlete that came in as a high school infielder that we redshirted, and he’s transitioned himself to the outfield, playing well. He brings a lot of different tools to the table. And then the names of like, Logan Stevens. Some of those sophomores that you probably heard of but who have elevated their game.”

“Last summer we had 11 players play summer ball across the country. Frankie Niemann won a batting title out in the West Coast League. David Bedgood set and broke a bunch of records in the New England Collegiate League last year for the Keane Swamp Bats. They were both all-stars. Hudson Haskin was an all-star in the New England Collegiate League, Grant Segar was an all-star. So we had some guys go out and perform well in the summer and because of that and because again the development of our team in a lot of different ways, but certainly on the field, right now we already have seven players signed up to go to the Cape next summer. So that tells you a little bit about some of our talent and maybe people will think about it that way.”

“With that being said, I’m really open to forward questions about this coming season. I’m sure there will be quite a few just in terms of what we lost, and what’s coming back. And then basically you guys try to trick me into answering questions that I’m not probably ready to answer just yet.”

On senior Keagan Gillies returning to the weekend rotation as the only returning starting pitcher…
“I’m not going to commit to the day that ends in ‘y’ about when Keagan will pitch because, first, because I haven’t spoken to him personally yet. But you’re right, I would say that between Keagan’s last fall, last early spring and this fall, this early spring, he’s Nolan Ryan-ish. In terms of, we don’t hit him, he throws strikes, he’s aggressive. Last year he didn’t have the year that he wanted. That could be a good thing because he’s back. We always look at those things and say ‘good, what are we going to do about that?’. We’ve got to learn. He trained hard over the summer. He did not go out and play summer ball, he needed to try to find himself a little bit. Find some things in his delivery that I think have helped him throw harder. I think the ferocity and the shapes of his pitches, his breaking ball in particular are much tighter and his confidence is high. So, I told this to Keagan last year and I tell this to the team all the time. And my wife told this to me back in 2005. I was at Washington State at the time and no offense to any Cougars listening right now, it was the worst team in the country when we got there. And I told my wife after I saw the kids the first day, ‘I don’t know if we are going to win a game’. But what happened is we won one game. We got what we asked for, or what we kind of thought would happen. And my wife said to me something really powerful and I try to share it with the kids especially in the game of baseball, where it doesn’t always go your way and often times it doesn’t and that’s simply this: Don’t hold your position so close to your ego that when your position fails a smidge, or a lot, or in between, that your ego goes down with it. You’ll just have a hard time trying to trudge both of them up to the top. Just trying to get Keagan to maintain his confidence and understand that his pitching maybe slipped up a bit last year but stay convicted and committed and invested in all the things that we talk about on a daily basis and then his position will get back here. He’s going to be just fine. I’ll tell you this, we’ve probably got a handful of guys that could start any of those first four games for us. It has not been determined yet. But I can promise you this, that name that we are talking about right now (Keagan) will be in there somewhere. I don’t know when and what inning, but you will see him.”

On how the team has worked on late-inning situations and keeping leads late in games…
“Find a closer! Last year, 32-26. We’ve said that a few times. I think 8,10,12 games where we have the lead, we have the ability to close the door. We have got a lot of capable people. I think any one of the people that we are talking about starting, one of those four guys that can only start three games can become the closer. We have a young man in Connor Pellerin who has Major League closing stuff. He also maybe didn’t have his best year last year, went up to the Cape this summer and worked with Coach Nicholson and the Orleans Firebirds. He came back much improved, he had some success there this summer which I think is good. He’s fed off of that. He’s driving the ball to the plate, to the direction of the catcher on a regular basis. Limiting the free passes of baserunners. Looking for somebody like that, maybe one of these starters can go to the end. But somebody that can throw strikes, has a little bit of veracity to them, can field their position, hold runners and things like that. I think that we have a handful of guys that we can get in there. We’ve got a junior college transfer that started out at Vanderbilt that I actually recruited while I was there, his name is David Bates. He’s shown an ability to be in the backside of the game with Pellerin and some of these other guys. Kind of a fastball, slider guy that could do it from not only a physical but a mental tough capacity to do it. If I could build an ideal pitching staff I would start in the back. I would start backwards and push the thing forward from there. If we don’t have guys at the end that can nail the door shut, it doesn’t do us any good. But in order to build your bullpen backwards, it’s not just ‘oh, this guy fits in the pen’. If he picks up a ball and throws 20 pitches and he can’t do it again the next day, then he’s not a bullpen guy. So, again just kind of how their arms work and recoveries and things like that become part of those things. But I do feel good about some of the pieces we have out there. It needs to be identified so that instead of giving away those 8-12 games we can actually pull them to the middle like we do with our ground balls, pull them to our belt and exchange and it will be great.”

On if there is any pressure to make an NCAA Regional in year four…
“Pressure! Lots of pressure. That’s a good thing. The baseball fans in this school should hold themselves up high. To be honest with you, Tulane baseball since 2005 we’ve been ‘eh’, just ‘eh’. But everybody thinks they went to Omaha and won it like the last 10 years in a row. So that’s good, those are expectations. That’s fine. I’ve been at Arizona State and Vanderbilt and I’m fine with those, you know. I know this, we have pressure and we have got to win. And our kids have pressure because they have to play well, but it’s how you handle it. I’m going to have, maybe the ‘funnest’ I’ve had in baseball this year, you know. I like these kids a lot, I think we all deserve victory. I know they do, for sure. Selfishly, and I was trying not to say the word ‘I’ in this conference too much but, I deserve victory too! How about that? So, yeah. A lot of pressure. The expectation is to try to play beyond the last game in the conference tournament to move ourselves into that. I think we have the ability, both mentally and physically to do it. Sometimes baseball is not like football and basketball. There are a lot of variables and we have to be good at what we do, we have to be multifaceted and we certainly have to pitch better. And we do have to close the games that we are talking about. We will have a different kind of offense, probably a little bit more multifaceted. I’m threatening the kids and the staff that I’m going to call a squeeze bunt at some point this year. Actually, I said 10 times. I’ve done it twice already in our scrimmages, so you might actually see us square around and bunt and hit and run and do some stuff a little bit different. But that’s just my comfort and confidence that the pitching staff is pushing towards me to say that we can do some things that way to try to win games in some different ways. Yeah, it’s pressure, but it’s good pressure. I felt that pressure when I first got here. It’s like, if you don’t do it, get someone else.”

On the additions of Luis Aviles and Trevor Minder to the team…
“Well they are good. No pressure to Trevor, he’s kind of supposed to be the guy to replace the All-American first round draft pick. We gave him the same number, the whole deal, same position, so here you go good luck to you. No, but he’s going to be an important piece to what we do. He can play shortstop pretty good too, now. Kind of that left-sided fielder, athletic kid, can catch a ground ball, play on the run, he’s got some punch in his bat. He’s good, you know I like a lot of things about him. I like his make-up for the game too, that’ll be good. And then you mention Aviles. We’ve got two junior college catchers in Aviles and a kid named Hayden Hastings, they’ve both been pretty good. I will tell you that our mound, our behind the plate defense and depth and our, what we call ‘green ocean’ patrolling in the outfield, I think that has picked up quite a bit. And then you feel pretty good about, you know, Burns is a good player and JJ is back and Mathews, so I think we’ve kind of tightened up a lot of different things in a lot of different ways. Those catchers have done a nice job. So it’s been good to see. And one is right and one is left, and Niemann is back and caught a lot of innings last year. He can certainly swing the bat. And we have a young freshman named Parker Haskin that’s here too. Left-handed hitting catcher, he’s Hudson Haskin’s younger brother. He’s played really well. He really has. Low to the ground kind of guy, he catches the ball well, he keeps it in front of him. Brings a little left-handed bat. So, I feel good about that too with our depth mound-wise and behind the plate. We can DH a guy and catch a guy like we haven’t been able to do in the past because of just the switching and injuries and things like that. So, I think it will give us a little ability to utilize our bench better and do some things like that, so I feel good about the depth there.”

On future games against LSU…
“I’m glad you brought that up. It’s obviously a point of contention for a lot of different reasons. When you play somebody home and home for so many straight years, then all of a sudden abruptly it stops, you know people have questions. It went away last year. This year, the schedule is to play them at Airline, but because of the state of the organization out there and the field and things like that, Paul and I just basically decided that wasn’t the place. So instead of playing there one game a year neutrally, the thing is now and this might be new to you, but we are going to play each other once a year, on the opposite site. So this year we will go to LSU and next year they will come to us. Just one game a year.”

On if the LSU series could return to an in-season home and home in the future…
“That was a Paul and I thing, really. I think he understands the nature of the rivalry. We certainly wanted to play. It’s not that I don’t think they did, it’s just that things can get out of whack at times. But I think basically between he and I, if we couldn’t do the neutral then that was kind of the next step and this is what we came up with. So, that’s how I see it in the future. You know now, will it ever switch back to the every year home and home type of thing? That’s not anywhere right here, right now. But at least the fact that in-state, great program that they have, the rivalry between the two I think is good for all the fans involved. Just glad to get it back on the schedule and glad that we can [play the game] every year, at least if it’s not here it’s a certain driving distance where all the fans can be involved.”