The main takeaways from David Pierce's introduction
Last Thursday, the Longhorns introduced new baseball coach David Pierce at a press conference on the UT campus. Pierce, the former head coach of Tulane, barely had time to catch his breath after flying in from Los Angeles, California, where he was coaching the Team USA Collegiate Team. After working through around 30 minutes of audio from Pierce, here are the main takeaways that caught our attention:
1) After talking to former Rice player Adam Zornes, who was recruited by Pierce and played under him at Rice from 2005-2008, and others around college baseball about the new Texas head coach, something that popped up pretty consistently was how much he cared about his players beyond just what happens on the diamond. This statement during his introduction before the question and answer session really stood out:
“The thing I want you to understand is I coach baseball, but I really coach people. Baseball is my platform; it’s my opportunity to see young men grow as the day they walk in and become first-rounders in all aspects of life. It’s not just about baseball first-rounders,” said Pierce. “It’s about becoming great citizens, great young men, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and just be great family men. That’s what I cherish and that’s what I love to look back at and see how well all these guys are doing. We have such a great foundation to start with.”
2) With just 11.7 scholarships and a shorter time period than the other big three sports to work with, college baseball coaches really have to be efficient at recruiting. It’s pretty much impossible to get eyeballs on every top prospect, and using evaluation time on prospects that end up not being targets can make the process tough. That’s why networking is so important for these coaches, and it’s something that Pierce clearly values.
“Our recruiting, we’ll utilize every resource we have. From our major league scouts to our high school coaches to our select and club teams [and more],” said Pierce. “We’ll start from the inside, and we’ll work out through the state and we’ll work out from there nationally when we need to. We have plenty of resources to make sure we can handle that.”
With deep roots, and a staff with deep roots as well, in Texas, the new Longhorns head coach will place an emphasis on using those roots, and in-state network to evaluate arguably the best state for baseball talent first. As college baseball has become more competitive, head coaches, who used to hardly ever recruit at all, are becoming more hands-on when it comes to getting on the road and recruiting. Pierce won’t be on the road as much as his assistants, but he’ll see the guys he needs to. Think of it like this: professional organizations have area scouts, who are in charge of an area and submit reports, and then crosscheckers decide which prospects they need to see in order to add further evaluation.
“My involvement is every day with my staff. I may not be at same amount of games they go to, but I’ll pick and choose the places I need to go to or see the person that I need to see,” the new Texas head coach said about his recruiting. “The recruiting is not just at the stadium. Most of my recruiting is networking. If there is a player in the Northeast, I have contacts, so I usually make that contact and reach out before I ever consider going to watch a player. So we utilize our networks and try to be as efficient as possible. I like doing stuff on campus, and I’ll do that as well. When you start, like in this position, I’ll hit the ground running and I’ll be at some stadiums shortly. Not as much as the assistants, but I will be involved.”
3) Somewhere, there were Texas fans watching Pierce’s introduction on LHN and saying out loud, “what about bunting and the offense?” After looking through the numbers and talking to people around college baseball, we’ve gathered that Pierce builds an offense around what he has, but also tries to build an offense that can score in a number of ways. That being said, you can bet Texas, like all programs, will try to put an extra emphasis on guys that can rack up the extra-base-hits.
“First of all, our offensive philosophy is very simple – we want to try to have the ability to score multiple ways. We really, truly feel like we prepare to score against multiple types of pitchers, and have that ability to score with the running game, the short game, with the hit-and-run game, and we were fortunate to drive the ball out of the park last year. Doubles in the gap change the game. We want to make sure we’re freed up, and we’re confident in our swings and do everything possible to be successful.”
During Pierce’s two seasons at Tulane, the Green Wave elevated its slugging percentage from .347 to .423.
4) Pierce has a versatile background that includes being a hitting coach and a pitching coach at the division-one level, but he’ll probably serve as the pitching coach at Texas. When we asked Pierce a two-part question about his offensive philosophy and the roles of his pitching staff, he gave an in-depth preview of how Texas’ pitching staff will be constructed...
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