New head coach Monte Lee and new pitching coach Andrew See have their work cut out for them in their first year at Clemson.

The two must find the right combination on the mound to replace All-American and ACC Pitcher of the Year Matthew Crownover, as well as All-ACC pitcher Zach Erwin. The two combined to win 17 games last season.

In all, the Tigers lost all three weekend starters and their midweek starter to either graduation or to the pros from last year’s NCAA Tournament team. Though eight pitchers return with experience, only one—Clate Schmidt—has significant experience as a starter. In his three years at Clemson, Schmidt has started 25 games, though he had just six last year.

“We want to match these guys up and force them to compete against each other to win jobs,” Lee said. “Clate is going to go against Charlie (Barnes) and they are going to go toe-to-toe. Those guys are fighting for Friday and Saturday. We have a number of other guys that are fighting for Sunday and midweek.

“We want to find out who is our first guy out of the bullpen. Who is our long reliever, short relievers, lefty-lefty matchup guys and closer? All of those roles have to be defined.”

The Clemson coaches have an idea of who they think will fill in those spots, but they want to see how those guys can compete against each other, and who can earn it on the mound. Besides Schmidt, who says he is ready to go after fighting off cancer in the off-season, and Barnes, the Tigers return Patrick Andrews after he missed most of last year with an injury.

Also back is lefty Alex Bostic, righty Paul Campbell, lefty Pat Krall, righty Drew Moyer and lefty Hunter Van Horn. At some point in the last two years, all eight of these guys have pitched or started in a game and have had success.

“The biggest thing I’m looking for at this time of the year is the pitch execution,” Lee said. “I know early, during this time of the year, we are going to come right after these batters with fastballs. We are going to mix some pitches, but our hitters know the majority of the pitches coming across the plate are going to be fastballs so they typically will get some hits. But the biggest thing I’m looking for is when we call a fastball away, do you execute the fastball away? When we call it in, do you get it in? When you get ahead of the hitter, can you put him away?

“That’s the big thing. Do you execute pitches? If you execute pitches you have a chance to have a quality start. If we execute pitches then there should be a lot of balls put in play with weak contact and we should play pretty good defense behind that. To me it all goes hand-and-hand. I’m just looking for guys to execute pitches and see how they shake out.”

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