5 Days 'til Aggie Baseball: Yeskie's pitching staff is revamped for 2023

It’s that time of year! The Texas Aggie baseball team is set to open up the 2023 season on Friday against Seattle at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park. We're counting down the days with our 2023 Aggie Baseball Preview Series.

Pitching coach Nate Yeskie pieced together a staff that got the Aggies to the Men's College World Series a year ago, but in 2023, Texas A&M figures to have a more pronounced presence on the mound with the expectation of returning to Omaha.

Key notes from Nate Yeskie interview

• College Station is awesome. The people have been great. I think anytime that you go to any of the sporting events around here, you can tell that the university has been embraced by the community, and I think there is a lot of back-and-forth between the two. If you go to a soccer match, a basketball game or a football game, there is such an energy that’s going on. Those things are great. My wife and I have enjoyed it. Our daughter loves it, and she’s playing basketball now in the local rec league now on top of horseback riding, which she has picked up since we’ve been here. She’s more of a Texan than we are. She has two pairs of boots now and is always asking her mom if she can wear them to school. It has been good.
   
• There is a little more velocity across the board when you look top to bottom at the guys that are here. I would even add that there is a little more experience, whether it be transfer portal guys or someone like Chris Cortez, who has some more miles on his tires now. Nathan Dettmer has been through a full year in the SEC. That makes a difference as a starter. Experience is so invaluable because the game is the greatest teacher. As much as you can look around and think of the great coaches that have been part of our game, it’s the game that really gets a player’s attention when things don’t go their way.
   
• I like our blend of lefts and rights. I think we have more opportunities to play matchups with teams. If teams struggle with left-handers, we have more than one or two that we can throw at you on that side of the ball. Whether it’s curveball guys, changeup guys, slider guys, there’s more of mix of opportunities to put those things into action than we had last year.
   
• With the experience, we should get a little more depth. I think we have guys that can start ballgames. At times last year, we were trying to figure out who is going to go in the midweek, and then when we got into conference play, we were trying to figure out who would go in game three on the weekend. I can’t tell you how many years it has been since we’ve had to experience that, so we’ve got a little better of a grasp on who those candidates are now. It has not been by default but through competition that guys are going to earn those opportunities.
   
• Dettmer has said more about how he wants to develop and how he wants to use his stuff and the things he’s seeing and feeling in the last 30 days than he did in the first nine or 10 months. Nathan shows up and goes to work. We’ve been trying to encourage him to give us more feedback and insight. I need them to put it into their terms so I can see it through their eyes. If you’re a coach that is just telling guys to do things, if they can’t conceptualize it, that’s doesn’t help. If their body can’t do it, we’re spinning our wheels again. If they don’t understand how to apply some of those things and put it into action, you’re not getting anywhere with that. Nathan has provided some good feedback with some of those things that have really kind of helped him out.
   
• Cortez has always been about pointing him in the direction of something that he needs to tackle. That’s what he goes after. He really does that, and sometimes, we have to pull back the reins on him because if he knows he wants to get better at something, he’ll approach it as if it needs to be done today. That’s great, but good things take time. I certainly like the development of his secondary stuff. He has taken a good step forward. When he decided to come here, he had never been to Texas A&M or the state. He was sure it was a place he wanted to go. He believed in what we wanted to do as a staff, and to his credit, he has taken advantage of the opportunities. When his playing days are over at A&M, I’m sure he’ll say it was the best decision he has ever made in his life.
   
• Justin Lamkin has a steady heartbeat. He’s very even-keeled. I always say that he runs the same. There are no highs with him. He’s analytical in a good way. He pays attention to what goes on around him and tries to absorb everything he can. When he realizes a mistake has been made, he applies that moving forward so that he doesn’t make the same mistake. In our scrimmage on Sunday, we went out to talk about the lineup and situation when there were two outs and runners at first and third. Something we had just sent out to the pitching staff the night before in a group text for left-handers specifically happened in that play, and he executed it perfectly. I really like where his mind is at. I don’t think he looks at it as, “I’m a freshman. He’s a senior hitting.” He just looks at it as, “I have to make good pitches and do my job.”
   
• Troy Wansing has been really good. He got out of the gates a little bumpy when trying to feel himself out in the fall. Down the stretch, he was much better. His stuff as upticked from last year and since he has gotten in the door. He has tried to refine something. Through trial and error, we have found some things we’re going to try and add to his approach that I think are going to help him execute against rights as well as lefts. Troy’s body has really changed, and Jeremy McMillan has done a great job with him and many other guys on our team. Troy has taken instruction and any constructive criticism and put it to good use. We’re seeing him go deeper into outings, and he’s got some swing-and-miss with two or three different offerings. It has been fun to watch his growth and development, and I’m excited about what we’re going to get out of him.
   
• Matt Dillard is a transfer from Sam Houston that is throwing the ball well. Evan Aschenbeck is a transfer from Blinn that has done really well. Ty Sexton has thrown the ball well in stretches and done a decent job. We’re going to continue to see how this thing unfolds because we have an idea of how these guys are going to best fit into some holes. If the starters get you deeper into games, that obviously makes it easier, which I’d like to believe is going to be the case this year. We certainly have more weapons on the backside as far as weapons that can shorten games in a hurry.
   
• We have to remind some of our pitchers that there will be days in practice where the offense wins and days when the pitching and defense win. Somedays, there is a blend of both. It’s good for our pitchers to face our lineup. It’s good to be challenged. Other than being a senior in high school or a senior in college, typically, you’re playing up for the rest of your career. Unless you’re a guy like Jaime Moyer at 50 years old in year whatever in the big leagues, very seldom are you playing against guys your own age. You’re always playing against guys that are older, and there are going to be challenges that you’re going to have to face. For our guys to face those challenges and know how to daily it up in this conference when you face some older teams, the more that we can face those types of challenges right now, we’ve only gotten better because of it. I encourage guys like Austin Bost to talk to our pitchers and share what he’s seeing because it will be good feedback. When you talk about instincts as a player, those come from dugout discussion or on bus rides and plane rides. Our players are certainly in a good spot right now, and them challenging each other is only a win for us.
   
• We have a numerically coded system, and you can set how it’s coded to however you structure your sign system. We signal it in, and there are 20 seconds from the last pitch to the next. Once the pitcher gets the ball back in his hand, he has to be ready. The hitter has to be back in the box with 10 seconds left on the pitch clock. We’ll send a sign in, and it will buzz into a wristband that all nine players are wearing. You’ll see catchers and infielders looking at them. We can program for how long it stays on the wristband. The numbers that are set in there will tell them what we’re trying to do. Outfielders will know whether it’s a breaking ball to a pullside guy. Infielders always appreciate that stuff too. If a guy like Trevor Werner is hitting and I’m playing third base with a right-hander on the bound, I want to know if a breaking ball is coming because you’re going to want to get that head out. I think this system helps. It helps with pace of play and sign stealing. There has been so much technology being used at the major league level, but it was going on at the college level for a long, long time. We just don’t get a lot of the same media coverage. Guys have been trying to disguise it forever. The schools that have had access to games on television or video coverage have been able to pull your signs apart in a heartbeat. In an effort to protect yourself, you took longer and longer and longer. It got out of hand, but they’ve reeled it back in. It’s a little bit like speed dating for some of our guys because it happens so fast, but we’ve found a happy medium with how we’re able to manage it.
   
• You can still pick off as many times as you want. Last year, you could step off as many times as you wanted. Call it an arm fake or whatever. You could use 20 or 30 of those per hitter, which was always strange. We wanted them to limit it at that time. Now as you’re going through it, you get one step off through the at-bat. The hitter gets one timeout. I think of Dylan Rock a lot last year when he would get to two strikes, we wanted to take back control of the at-bat. He would not be given the same opportunity this year. We’ll see a quicker pace of play. I’m curious to see how this plays out over the course of the season. There have been some studies about a lack of recovery time between pitches in regards to a health standpoint. Time will tell.
   
• There is always going to be a blend in pitching. A college team with a 95-mph guy is pretty common. You might see three or four of those. Pitchability is going to always be there, and those are always going to be the guys that find themselves on the field. The velocity is a nice piece to have. You can get stronger and you can throw faster, but if you can get people out, that’s pitching.