Sean Kenny: "I think depth is what we do best, quite honestly"
Sean Kenny didn’t want any preconceived notions when he took over as Georgia’s pitching coach early last summer.
So, when head coach Scott Stricklin asked if he wanted to go over the staff he’d be inheriting, Kenny politely said no.
He wanted to see and find out for himself.
“Just like anybody you want to go in it without a bias, or A, I think this guy is going to be a closer, this guy is going to be a starter,” Kenny said. “I just tried to take it as a blank page and I think it ended up working itself out where we all had the same idea, but it was good for me to look at it and say hey, what about this guy, what about that guy.”
Kenny says he’s liked what he’s seen, particularly when it comes to the handful who figure in the equations as Georgia’s starting rotation.
He feels there’s actually some depth.
Kevin Smith is penciled in as Georgia’s Friday night starter, with freshman Emerson Hancock scheduled to go on Saturday when the Bulldogs open their season as week from now against Georgia Southern.
Tony Locey and Chase Adkins are battling to be the Sunday starter. After that, there’s a number of hurlers Kenny is gaining confidence in, including sophomore Tim Elliott, who appeared in 15 games as a freshman, going 1-0 with an ERA of 5.93, but has looked great this preseason and is coming off a scoreless four-inning effort in a recent scrimmage.
“I think depth is what we do best, quite honestly,” Kenny said. “We’d love to have great stuff from top to bottom, and we may not be on the high end of stuff but what we’ll be able to do is outlast people because of our personnel. We feel really good about one through however many we have.”
Kenny comes to Georgia with some impressive credentials during his recent five-year stint at Michigan.
Last year, the Wolverines led the Big Ten with a 3.46 ERA and 562 strikeouts while limiting opponents to a .231 batting average.
Georgia, meanwhile, ranked dead last in the SEC in team ERA (5.03), 12th in walks (237) and 13th in strikeouts (477).
“The one thing we did was map out what’s important to me and I think the message was if you made me pinhole it was just to simplify, take a step back,” said Kenny, when asked about his first message to the staff. “We did talk about last year. We didn’t throw enough strikes, we walked too many people, we kind of addressed that early and the we were all done with last year.”
So, the plan moving forward …
“Throw strikes, stay aggressive – it was a very simple message,” he said. “There’s a lot more that goes into that obviously, but we started very, very simple and that’s we have to do a better job of attacking the strike zone, we have to do a better job of playing the percentages and make them hit it. That’s kind of what we stayed consistent with regardless of result, we have to hammer the strike zone.”
Kenny feels his starters are ready to go.
After being limited to 55 pitches during this weekend’s final series of scrimmages, Bulldog starters will have their pitch counts set at 75 for the opening three games against Georgia Southern.
According to Kenny, everyone’s on the same page.
“I will say they could not have been more welcoming. They made the transition for me personally as smooth as it could possibly be,” Kenny said. “I think your job as a coach is to earn that trust and demonstrate knowledge early, but they were as welcoming as any staff could be, so it was very smooth.”