Interesting read from the Mountain Press which is the local paper here in Sevier County....
With Wallace struggling on the mound, senior Devante Matthews, who threw a no-hitter against Collierville on Tuesday, approached head coach Casey Taylor about seeing what he could do to help the team. But a TSSAA rule limiting pitchers to 10 innings over a two-day span made Matthews' desires moot.
"Devante wanted to pitch today," Taylor said. "He is unbelievable. And he's actually so intelligent that he was working thorough how many innings he could pitch. Just to think that this guy wants to start on a day's rest is amazing."
"I wanted to pitch in the first game, but Coach Taylor told me that you can only throw 10 innings in two days (per TSSAA rules), which was a big shocker to me," Matthews said of his desire to pitch a second consecutive day. "So once he said that, he said there was no reason to start me for just three innings. We were just going to wait it out and see what happens, and things just didn't go our way."
With both Sevier County and Siegel facing elimination in the evening affair, the Bears were expected to start Linginfelter. But it was sophomore Holt Rader who took the mound instead. This meant that if the Bears were to lose, they would've played three state tournament games without their best pitcher playing anything other than first base. And that's exactly what happened, as Rader gave up six runs (one earned) on five hits and one walk and the Stars got out to a 6-0 lead after three innings. Charlie Brown relieved Rader in the fourth inning, giving up five hits and the other four runs en route to the Stars' 10-0 win in five innings.
After Matthews pitched in Tuesday's win over Collierville, many people were expecting to see Linginfelter pitch in one of the Bears' two games Wednesday. Following the Bears' loss to Siegel, Taylor said his first option was to have his ace pitcher start against Summit in the first game of the day. But Linginfelter said he wasn't comfortable in making the start.
"I'm not trying to act like the kids call the shots, but he said he didn't want to go, so he didn't go. There aren't too many teams that are going to go home saying they didn't throw their No. 1 guy, but the kid wasn't comfortable going," Taylor said.
"I'm not going to fight the battle and get into a back-and-forth with him. And since he didn't feel comfortable going, we didn't have many other options other than him. We wanted to make our defense as good as we could possibly make it, so that led to the decision to go with Holt and Charlie."
Taylor added that it maybe wouldn't have mattered if Linginfelter started or not, as the Bears' offense finished with a total of zero runs and just nine hits combined over both of Wednesday's games. But with a state title on the line, he knew his team's best option was to start Linginfelter. It just so happened that Linginfelter said he wasn't ready to go, which foiled Taylor's plans of how he had laid out his pitching rotation.
"The intent was for him to start Game 1 today. I asked him yesterday if he was ready to roll. He said he was a little tender and sore. I can't say that I expected for a guy to not want to go, but I just wasn't going to fight the battle. My thing is, if you're going to pitch today, you pitch in Game 1," Taylor said of his discussions with Linginfelter about making a start.
"During this game (against Siegel), we got down early, and he asked me if I cared if he got loose (in the bullpen). At first, I told him that would be fine. But then I told him not to get loose. I told him that if he was going to pitch today, he should've pitched in Game 1. If we weren't going to sell out to win Game 1, I wasn't going to have him pitch in Game 2."
Linginfelter, a University of Tennessee signee, came into the year as a likely early-round MLB draft pick. But Taylor said Wednesday that his ace pitcher not making a start in the state tournament was just another instance that added questions about his ability to handle a large pitching workload that has hurt his draft stock.
"His draft status has dropped drastically," Taylor said. "The question about him going into this year was whether he could handle a big workload. And then his advisor was recommending that he only throw once a week. What kind of workload is that? So with him just pitching once a week caused his draft status to go down."
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"The performance we got from Devante last night (Tuesday) was just amazing. But we just ran out of gas today. You could see it and feel it. And when Zach said he didn't want to throw, that led to a letdown in emotion because we're not going to be able to make a run at the state tournament without throwing our No. 1 guy," Taylor said.
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With his team struggling Wednesday, Taylor said he was already thinking to next year by the third inning of the Siegel game.
The Bears lose three seniors- Matthews, Linginfelter and Nathan Clabo- this year, and Taylor said the roster, minus those three players, will look very similar in 2017, as the team will be adding just one freshman.
And with losing his top two pitchers, he added that there will likely be more games next year in which the Bears will utilize multiple pitchers to get through a game rather than the complete-game performances that were commonplace for Linginfelter and Matthews this season.
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Still thinking of what next year will bring, Taylor added that Matthews' departure would leave the biggest void.
"The biggest thing we'll have to replace is Devante because he is such a special kid and such a winner," the coach said. "It's just amazing what he has done for this program and this school as a whole in all sports and in areas both on and off the field. He's such a class-act guy. I love him. He'll be the one we miss the most."
