The status of CCU baseball: Gilmore’s health, incoming transfers & the draft’s impact
Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore said he feels better than he’s felt in a decade as he battles to control pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, and believes the Chanticleers can return to being a factor on the national stage next season based on his returning and incoming players.
The recent selection to the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame has a checkup Monday through Wednesday at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and anticipates good news.
Gilmore began cancer treatments in March 2020. The cancer is not operable or curable at this time, Gilmore said, but it can be managed for many years.
“I feel great. I feel better than I did 10 years ago for sure,” said Gilmore, who has been on the road recruiting for the past week. “Right now I’m on a once-a-month maintenance drug. I’ve been off chemo now for 90 days. The whole thought process is they’re hoping I responded so well to the medicine and we had beaten it back a good bit, they’re hoping the maintenance drug can hold it in place for a good while.
“We’re hoping and praying and have our fingers crossed and every other thing that I get a great report and things are holding in place and I don’t have to move to another medicine.”
CCU looks strong post-draft
Coastal Carolina comes out of the 2021 Major League Baseball draft and transfer period looking pretty good for the 2022 season, in Gilmore’s estimation.
Senior Parker Chavers was drafted in the seventh round and signed with the Chicago Cubs this past week, and fourth-year junior relief pitcher Alaska Abney was selected in the 15th round by the Cleveland Indians.
In addition, pitcher Shaddon Peavyhouse and is transferring to North Carolina for his redshirt senior season, rising senior catcher B.T. Riopelle is transferring to Florida, reserve infielder Fox Leum is in the transfer portal, and catcher/outfielder Alex Gattinelli has graduated and will not return after tying for the 2021 team lead in home runs with nine.
Peavyhouse, who Gilmore thought had a chance to be drafted, recorded a 3.61 earned-run average in 20 appearances in 2021 with 49 strikeouts and 25 walks in 47 innings. He held opponents to a .223 batting average. Riopelle batted .270 with eight home runs and 11 doubles last season, when the 2016 national champions went a disappointing 27-24 overall and 9-12 in the Sun Belt Conference.
Although a couple of players who are joining the team for the 2022 season received free agent offers from MLB teams, Gilmore said he is not losing any of them.
“We’ve been able to hold onto our recruiting class,” he said. “We’re unbelievably excited about this group of people coming in and the guys we have coming back. Barring injuries and unforeseen things you can’t predict, on a sheet of paper, this coming season should be a very good opportunity for us to put a major challenge out there again.”
The Chants should have a lot of quality pitching depth.
After recording the three highest team ERAs in the past 17 years in the past three seasons — it was 4.87 in 2021 — the Chants have loaded up on pitching between returning players, transfers and the incoming class.
The Southern Conference’s reigning pitcher of the year, Elliot Carney, is transferring from Wofford. Michael Knorr is transferring from Cal State Fullerton, where he was a weekend starter, and righthanded reliever Colin Yablonski is transferring from La Salle after being named Atlantic 10 Second Team All-Conference.
“We did very good in the portal with the transfers,” Gilmore said. “We got four or five fifth-year senior guys, most of which are pitchers, that kind of leapfrogged to the front of the pack with experience and fantastic ability, all those guys.”
Reece Maniscalco, a graduate student who was expected to be CCU’s top starter in 2021 but only pitched 7 2/3 innings due to injury — with a 1.17 ERA — returns and should be at 100 percent.
A lot is expected of rising sophomore pitcher Riley Eikhoff, who was injured in 2021, and other returning pitchers with a high upside include Aaron Combs, Luke Barrow, Keaton Hopwood, Jacob Maton, Teddy Sharkey, Matt Joyce and Jonathan Blackwell.
Conway’s Will Smith is expected to make a contribution after two injury-riddled seasons.
“There’s some good stuff going on there. There’s some good arms and good ability,” Gilmore said. “We’ve still got a lot of pieces of coal and we need to make some diamonds out of these guys in eight or nine months. We’ll see what happens.”
Incoming freshmen pitchers include Matthew Potok from New Jersey and St. James High pitcher Ethan Salak, who joins St. James catcher Derek Bender in the class. “Those are two local kids I definitely feel will help us,” Gilmore said.
Among returning position players, rising junior shortstop Eric Brown has been among the best players this summer in the heralded Cape Cod League.
Gilmore elected to ABCA Hall of Fame
Gilmore is one of seven individuals who will be inducted into the ABCA hall as the class of 2022 during the 78th annual ABCA Convention on Jan. 7 at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago.
He surpassed 1,000 wins at CCU in his 26th season this year and has 1,254 wins as a collegiate head coach, which ranks 24th all-time and fourth among active coaches.
Gilmore also received the 2021 Jerry Kindall Character in Coaching Award by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in late May.
“It’s the pinnacle of personal achievement so to speak recognition-wise,” Gilmore said. “The fact this is voted on and presented by your coaching peers, it’s an incredibly humbling moment in my life. I’ve never cared about personal attention and things like that, but the Jerry Kindall award was very, very meaningful to me, and this one equally so.
“This is about a life’s journey, it’s not just one season or one period of your life, it’s your whole life, an accumulation of all the things you’ve done over 30-something years. . . . To be one of the select few who get into the ABCA Hall of Fame is a very surreal moment for me.”
Gilmore has had help from several others along the way to his HOF selection, including administrators and donors who spearheaded the building of Springs Brooks Stadiun for an opening in 2015, loyal assistant coaches including Kevin Schnall, Drew Thomas and Matt Schilling who each spent at least 15 years on staff, talented players who bought into and helped cultivate the culture and program, and his wife, Cathy.
“She has been incredible over this life’s journey of supporting me,” Gilmore said. “She teased me the other night when they called me to tell me. As soon as I got off the phone she said, ‘Well you need to call them back. I’ve never said this but I think I deserve this award because I’m the one who talked you off of the ledge or from jumping off the bridge after some losses you’ve had.’ So we had a good laugh out of that.”
“. . . When I was at Aiken the people there were awesome and since I came here to Coastal it’s been awesome on steroids. The last 10 or 15 years once we kind of turned the corner and started moving in a great direction, they’ve been unbelievably supportive of us. . . . There’s a lot of pieces of this award that need to be chopped up and shipped out to a lot of different people.”
Major coaching change
Longtime pitching coach Drew Thomas resigned late in the season and has been replaced by former collegiate head coach and pro scout Jason Beverlin, who spent the past three years as a regional scout in the Carolinas for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Thomas declined to comment on his departure from the team.
“We’re going to miss him. He was an incredible part of our run for many years,” Gilmore said. “As I would say about all of the assistants that were part of the 2016 team, without them we wouldn’t have won it. There’s no doubt. He had an integral part in that.”
Thomas spent 15 seasons with the Chants baseball program, the past 10 as pitching coach following five seasons as a volunteer assistant.
His pitching staffs were ranked among the nation’s top 20 in earned-run average five times.
Some of the heralded pitchers he helped develop and often helped move onto the professional ranks include Anthony Meo, Alex Cunningham, Andrew Beckwith, Mike Morrison, Bobby Holmes, Ryan Connolly and Cody Wheeler. He and his wife, Jaymie, who survived breast cancer in 2016, have a son, Henry, and a daughter, Lila.
“The 70- and 80-hour weeks, is it worth it when my children are of the age they are and they’re the most influential? . . . Does he want to do what I did and that’s miss the majority of that part of their life?” Gilmore said. “I think he came to the conclusion that in fact he didn’t, and kudos to him. I commend him and anyone else that looks at life and realizes the sacrifices.”
Beverlin the 2014 National Consortium for Academics and Sports Giant Steps Award winner, compiled a record of 179-177 in six seasons as the head coach at Bethune-Cookman from 2012-17, winning four Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament titles.
“We’re very blessed and fortunate to have found coach Beverlin and talk him out of scouting and get him in here,” Gilmore said. “Hopefully we can circle the wagons here and find a way to win with him in charge of the pitching staff.”
This story was originally published July 18, 2021 at 3:32 PM.
