Following an underwhelming 24-30 record his first year, Maryland baseball head coach Rob Vaughn knew something needed to change — starting with himself.
Reflecting back on a season in which the Terps missed the conference tournament for the first time since 2013, Vaughn said he realized he hadn’t been tough enough on his players. Taking over for John Szefc, he inherited a veteran squad. Vaughn admitted he wanted to be liked by his team and overestimated the maturity of 22-year-old players at times.
That desire may have produced a lighter practice regimen than necessary. So Vaughn stepped up the training intensity going into this season. The effects weren’t immediate.
“There’s been some rough practices,” Vaughn said. “There’s been some days where I come home and tell my wife, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to win one game this year.’”
But a week out from their season-opening tournament in South Carolina, Vaughn said he believes the Terps are turning a corner. Despite 18 newcomers to fill a roster riddled with holes from the MLB draft and graduations, Vaughn said he feels the adjustments to his coaching style have readied an inexperienced roster.
His plan is straightforward, revolving the program around one concept: overcoming adversity.
“At the end of the day, what this game is really about is how do you handle adversity,” Vaughn said. “You’re going to hit that time where you’re 0-for-10 and you’re just in a funk and you’ve got to figure out a way to grind it out and pull something out of it.”
[Read more: Maryland baseball fell well short of expectations and made 2018 the start of a rebuild]
Maryland ran into plenty of those situations last season — the Terps were shutout in four games and crumbled late in others.
In its last series — with a trip to the Big Ten tournament on the line — Maryland allowed four runs after closer John Murphy was ejected to blow a 5-2 lead over Indiana. The eventual 6-5 loss set up a lackluster sweep to end the year, and the team missed postseason play.
Vaughn admits he was trying to be someone he wasn’t at times last year and, therefore, wasn’t the most effective coach. But now he knows that his team needs to be put through tough situations in practice to succeed in the in-game scenarios they fell short in last campaign.
“[This year] it’s been a lot more focused,” starter Hunter Parsons said. “You know, really paying attention to the details, making sure that the timing wasn’t okay there on that play, but that the timing was perfect.”
[Read more: Maryland baseball’s Nick Dunn picked by Cardinals in fifth round of MLB draft]
Parsons is one of four seniors who will feature heavily in 2019, overlooking a lineup with 11 true freshmen and seven junior transfers.
The Terps are without their top five hitters from last season. Second baseman Nick Dunn — who led the team with a .330 batting average — was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the fifth round. Outfielder Marty Costes was drafted in the 22nd round, and first baseman and pitcher Kevin Biondic, outfielder Zach Jancarski and outfielder Will Watson graduated.
That leaves shortstop AJ Lee as the most reliable option at the plate with a .232 average in 2018 and with infielder Taylor Wright and outfielder Randy Bednar as the only other players returning with an average over .200. So, the team will look to newcomers to fill in the lineup.
Infielder Kody Milton shows the most promise of the incoming freshmen class after blasting eight home runs and hitting .514 as a senior with Severna Park.
Additionally, Maryland lost staples on the mound in Biondic and Taylor Bloom. Both went undrafted after their senior seasons, but Biondic later signed with the Boston Red Sox after surging as the Terps’ top pitcher with a 2.59 ERA in 2018.
Parsons returns as the Terps’ Friday night option after a breakout junior season, tossing a 3.44 ERA with a team-high 62 strikeouts. Murphy also returns as a key reliever and junior Tyler Blohm is expected to feature heavily in the rotation as well, but the two of them are the only returning pitchers with an ERA under 5.00.
“Getting back here from the summer and seeing all these new faces was kind of a shock at first,” Parsons said. “I’ve been here for three years and I’ve lost so many guys that I’ve seen every day, and now it’s a whole new slab of new guys.”
Despite a few rough practices early in the offseason, Vaughn said his team has since recovered. He notices improvements — both mentally and physically — to his young core through practices focused on overcoming adversity.
It’s a welcome change for the returning players, whom Parsons said went through a reality check after missing the postseason in 2018. Those players, now tasked with leading an inexperienced group, are determined to not let history repeat itself.
“It definitely sucked going home,” Parsons said. “You’re running back games in your head, you know if we did something different this game, then we could have been in the Big Ten tournament. … It stunk but we’re ready to go this year.”
