The Clemson baseball team couldn’t have asked for a much better start to the season.

At the halfway point, Erik Bakich’s team is 28-4 overall, 4-2 in conference play and ranked No. 6 in the country. The Tigers swept the rival Gamecocks earlier in the season and have also won each of their first two ACC series, including one over No. 11 Wake Forest.

While Clemson certainly continues to rack up the wins, over the past few weeks, a glaring issue has reared its ugly head. The Tigers are in need of a new Sunday starter.

Left-hander Justin LeGuernic has served in that role to this point, but the sophomore has struggled mightily in each of his last three starts. LeGuernic failed to make it out of the first inning two weeks ago in a loss to Notre Dame, and then again failed to get out of the first in last Sunday’s comeback win over Wake Forest.

LeGuernic did have a solid outing out of the bullpen in last week’s midweek win over The Citadel, then struck out four in two innings of work out of the pen in Wednesday’s win over Presbyterian. However, that success as a reliever hasn’t translated to when he starts.

With the Tigers set to hit the road for its first true road series of the season this weekend against a dangerous Georgia Tech team, the Sunday spot is something that needs to be addressed.

Bakich fully believes the Tigers have options, and it’s possible the staff holds one of its better relievers this weekend to start on Sunday. Drew Tittsworth, BJ Bailey and Joe Allen could be potential candidates to fill the role.

“We are obviously going to need to make that a point of emphasis,” Bakich said. “We may need to address that and hold one of those guys back.”

The team also has a couple of guys coming off of injuries. Noah Samol has now made three midweek starts and freshman Talan Bell made his debut on Wednesday. Transfer Michael Gillen is also set to be back at some point in the future.

“We have a couple more pitchers that are coming back on,” Bakich said. “Michael Gillen will be back after that. He has started throwing already.”

Getting those guys back could help offset any loss to the bullpen if one of the relievers slides into that Sunday spot.

Right now, it appears that Bakich and pitching coach Jimmy Belanger are playing things by ear. When the starting rotation was released for this weekend’s series against the Yellow Jackets, no starter was announced for Sunday.

Whoever Bakich decides to go with that day very likely depends on how things play out over the first two games of the series.

“We do have depth,” Bakich said. “We just got to figure out what the best formula is, and TBA might be the formula. If we got a chance to win the series, we got to do it. But the recipe is not to not get out of the first inning with your Sunday starter two Sundays in a row. That is certainly not it.”