The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Quotes from head coach Augie Garrido
03.04.2015 | Baseball
Texas preparing to open four-game set at Stanford on Thursday
Head coach Augie Garrido
On responding after two losses this past weekend: I think we really learned a lot in that [San Diego] series. I think that the players took on the responsibility to grow from it, and that's what really matters the most. You don't like to see it happen, but when it does, the opportunities to mature and learn from what happened [become present]. It was very subtle, it was more about them controlling the environment, and trying to and failing a lot. You do fail a lot. They stayed right there with it until it paid off, and I think they pace that [San Diego] played the game [got to us]. Our players had never really felt the negative side of the tempo; even though we talk about it, they never had been beaten by it before. That was frustrating and defensive on our part.
So, there were a lot of things that they were doing that we hadn't had to respond to in the past very many times. But, if you're going to play one of the California schools, you better get ready to play that way, because it's three-and-a-half to four hours every time you walk out there. That whole idea of tempo is to frustrate and distract the players that are not used to it from their game. Our pitcher, our defense, standing around for long periods of time while the coach gives 19 [signs] per batter …. That is the way they play, if you play UCLA, who is number four in the country now … it's going to be worse than that [with regards to tempo].
It was a very valuable experience, and I think our players responded well to it. We had a very good practice on Monday, and another really good one yesterday. We'll just see. Stanford is not as deliberate. A lot of that was my fault too, I've played that coach so many times, and I didn't do anything to give them a heads up. I didn't do anything special to get ahead of it like I should have been. Sometimes you only see that in hindsight, you don't see that coming, but I should've. I think we all have to share in what happened and what we're going to do to fix it, and we all have to accept that responsibility.
On the mental side of baseball: In the whole mental game you have to simplify being in control, that's what it's about. When you get out of control, sometimes it's hard to recognize that. That's where it all starts. You have to recognize you are not focused on the process that enables you to perform at a high level. When you do learn to recognize that, then there are go to things. For example, the first one is the breath. We do yoga here, for one reason and it's not to get more flexible, it's to learn how to use your breath. When everyone gets excited … it's going [very quickly], it's like that little train that goes up the hill, you can do it, you can do it, you can, something like that. But, with real breath [it is much slower and controlled], and it has a calming effect. You see all entertainers do that. All performers learn how to use their breath, but it is not common for baseball players. They don't get it at an early age and they don't know how to use it. Now they have a better understanding of the importance of it, because we got out of control, didn't recognize it and continued to complain about it instead of fixing it.
The next thing to go to is a clearing mechanism. A clearing mechanism is something you do physically, let's say for a hitter and then we'll go to the pitcher. With their feet, they kind of sweep out the box, but it has to have a symbol attached to it. And the symbol is, I'm cleaning all of the bad stuff out of here so I can start over. Then they have another go to thing, you see a lot of them look at the bat. They're looking for something specific on the bat, and when they see that, it is a go to place to get themselves ready for the next pitch. If you rush through this, you don't do it.
An example, you see [Michael] Cantu, he has a little routine and then hits the bat. Well, we have that on film too, and fifty-percent of the time, he didn't do it. Why didn't he do it? He's done it his whole life. [It's Because] he's rushing. That's what [San Diego] got going, and we didn't do a good job of using the process involved to get back in touch with our self and be our self.
In hindsight you can see the following, how many line drives did we have to the opposite field? That's the first clue, that means everybody is jumping out at the ball. The only thing you hit are little looping fly balls sliced to the opposite field, and you saw some of those. That's just it, in 16 innings [we hit very few balls hard]. We hit more balls hard in 2 1/2 innings on Monday than we did in 16 innings. And it was off about the same kind of pitching. We saw the ball better, we were familiar with the tempo. We learned a lot about the importance of controlling the environment and being in control of yourself when it is your turn to perform.
On bouncing back against Stanford: It's all about competing. We're pretty good, but we've got a lot of work to do, and Stanford is going to be a great place to try and find out even more about our team. They won't play the same type of game, but their objectives will be the same. [They will try to] distract the pitcher, distract the catcher, to get our team out of character, because that's what you do. That's what we try to do, but if you don't get any runners on, it is hard to mount an attack. We only had the lead-off hitter on twice, that's not enough … All in all, it's just a great opportunity to say, you can't do it this way men, you've got to compete.
On if pitcher Chad Hollingsworth will pitch this weekend: He will start the first game. We are moving French back because he threw later in the week last week.
On if he is glad they lost those games so that the team could learn some lessons: No. But, the value is, if we would've won those games, we wouldn't have taken apart every detail like we did, and got back to work on those details. Winning kind of sweeps dirt under the carpet, but when you lose, you really start to pay attention.
