Portal Combat: Bakich prepared to go to war to keep his players

Bakich glares at an umpire Sunday (Photo by Susan Lloyd).

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Jun 11 13:58:28 GMT-05:00 2024

Portal combat might as well be mortal combat, considering the effect it has on a college baseball program.

Clemson’s season ended Sunday with a Super Regional loss to Florida, and head coach Erik Bakich and his assistants will spend the next few days trying to construct next season’s roster. Who stays? Who goes? Will other schools come after Clemson’s players? It all counts, as Bakich told Mickey Plyler on WCCP this morning.

He also asked for help with NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) money.

“All day yesterday, we had our final team meeting yesterday, and then we did half the team's individual exit meetings yesterday. We got the other half today,” Bakich said. “But yeah, it's portal combat out there. And I told the team our No. 1 priority right now is making sure we can take care of our own players. And before we go out and do anything of bringing in new players out of the portal, we need to make sure our own players are taken care of. And so, we're going to need some help doing that.

“We're going to need the Clemson community again to be that 10th man again one more time, and help us out financially to retain our best players and make sure we don't lose anyone. We lost a guy last year, we don't want to be in that position again and we will need some help to do that for sure. So, I am asking the Clemson community again for your help to be the 10th man and help us out with some NIL to make sure we don't lose our best guys.”

Clemson loses players like Blake Wright, Alden Mathes and Jacob Hinderleider, meaning the Tigers will have to replace a lot of power.

“I was counting up the home runs we're going to lose. So, the number of just the seniors and with 67 (homers) you throw Will Taylor on top of that, because we think there's a good chance he's going to get drafted high enough where he's going to sign,” he said. “That’s 74 home runs that we need to replace next year. And some of those we've got coming back, whatever they hit this past year, are going to hit some more. But that'll be a big target. We need to replace some power and target some power in the portal for sure.”

Pitching will also be a priority.

“You can never have enough pitching. You want some lightning bolts in the back end. We know Austin Gordon or feel pretty confident that Austin Gordon has put himself in a really good position to be selected high enough to where he's going to go,” Bakich said. “He ended up being so valuable. His numbers, just as a reliever, were like All-American type numbers, and so we need to look at who do we have on our current roster that could be that lightning bolt, shut down guy at the back end, and is there anyone in the portal that we can target to be that shutdown type of guy? So, we're on it.”

However, the Tigers might not need to dip as far into the portal this season as they did last year.

“We have a bunch of high school kids coming in and we have a nucleus of sophomores that are moving up the ranks that are good players as well,” Bakich said. “So it's that balance of we have to let some of the players in our program develop and have a shot as well, but we also need to fill some holes and plug some gaps and need some instant help as well. So, it's going to be very strategic of how we do this. It's not going to be easy, but we'll get it done.”