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COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 16, 2019Tim CorbinAustin MartinDrake FellowsJulian InfanteOmaha, Nebraska Vanderbilt - 3, Louisville - 1 TIM CORBIN: That was a well-pitched game by both sides, but certainly our guy was very good. I thought he threw a lot of strikes at the beginning of the game and continued to pound the zone, make it tough on a very good hitting team, a very offensive team that does not strike out, that does not give up. The sixth inning obviously was a big inning for Vanderbilt. We had the bases loaded and one out, and him having to navigate through Fitzgerald and Binelas, two very good hitters, and he got the pop-up and settled in and got the ground ball and got over to first base. Once he got there, I thought he did a nice job bouncing back in the seventh, got us deep into the ballgame. The difference for us today was the big hits by Marty, and he put us on his back a little bit with the lead-off home run, threw the first punch, and then certainly the two-run home run. But Detmers is tough to solve. I thought we did a good job against him in terms of running the pitch count up, but he was a kid that did not break throughout the game. He's very good at what he does, and that's an excellent team. So we were fortunate. Q. Austin, you're supposed to have jitters and all this for your first College World Series at-bat. How much had you thought about the first pitch and the first at-bat, and what did you think about when you visualized that first pitch? AUSTIN MARTIN: I mean, not much. I just tried to keep it simple. Yeah, you're right, I definitely did have jitters. I mean, I feel like everybody would, coming into this amazing environment. But I just tried to keep it simple, just tried to see the ball as well as possible. Q. Austin, do you typically like to swing at very first pitches in an at-bat? And also, could you kind of take us through the game-winner there that you hit in the seventh? AUSTIN MARTIN: I mean, I swing at them if they're strikes. Usually you'll see pitchers try to just get that first strike away just so they can get into their rhythm. So I'm always ready for that first pitch. In the seventh, Julian started off with a double. It was a huge, huge hit by him. But once again, just not trying to do too much. I have eight other guys behind me that can swing the bat very well, so I mean, fortunately it just happened to be me today. Q. Drake, what was your game plan against that lineup today? Coach talked about how difficult those guys are to navigate. You were able to do that very successfully. What was the plan, and how do you feel like you executed it? DRAKE FELLOWS: I feel like the plan was just to go out there and attack the hitters and just getting all my pitches over for strikes, especially the fastball command wasn't really there last week, and I think that was just the plan of attack, to just keep the location down and attacking the zone and not getting too wild. And then the offense gave me a little bit of boost, as well, with A-Mart's two home runs which gave me a little bit more cushion, a little more comfortable to just go out there and attack the hitters. Q. Austin, the go-ahead home run in the seventh, seemed like it kind of got in on your hands a little bit. How were you able to adjust and get the barrel on it? AUSTIN MARTIN: It was an off-speed pitch, so I had a little bit of extra time. Coming into that, I actually talked to Harrison and he was telling me that he was attacking in. Thanks to him, I took his advice, took a couple steps off the plate, a couple inches away from the plate, so I gave myself a little bit more room. I saw the spin early off my front shoulder and just tried to put the best swing I could put on it. Q. Drake, how much of a lift does that lead-off home run give you guys, not just for you personally given that it's in support of you, but just as a team to get off to a start like that against Detmers? DRAKE FELLOWS: It's huge. That gets everybody going and you know everybody in the lineup can do some damage, and for Austin to lead off with the first pitch for a home run is huge and gives everybody that confidence that they need. Q. Julian, Louisville's coach in here a minute ago said we lost to their best player, talking about Austin. I'm not asking you to vote on the best player on the team, but what does that depth mean, to have more than one guy be that caliber of player in this lineup? JULIAN INFANTE: It means simply today, Austin was the best player for us, and he did perform amazing. To say that, it's true. He did a great job. But again, our lineup, I think we can do some damage 1 through 9, and that's exciting for us. But at the end of the day, it's just we're all good players and we all approach the game the same way, and there's no best player and there's no player on this team that thinks they're the best player. Q. Four of your last seven over the last two games, all four are home runs. How much discipline does it take for you? You've got 11 in your career. How much discipline does it take for you to keep that in perspective when you go up to the plate on Tuesday? AUSTIN MARTIN: I don't try to think about it too much. I try to separate every at-bat into a different AB. At the end of the day, you just don't try to do too much when you're at the plate. The results will happen. Q. Tim, I don't know if clutch is the word, but could you just talk about what Austin did in terms of doing that in his first College World Series game? And is it possible a .400 hitter can be overlooked with JJ also on the team? TIM CORBIN: I guess it depends on your game plan and your perspective and what you want to do. I don't think so. He certainly doesn't get overlooked because people realize he's a good hitter. He's a very competitive hitter. He's a very competitive player. The ball to him has a tremendous amount of meaning. That's on the offensive side of things and defensive side of things. He's just as good a competitor as we've had. But I don't want to throw the word "clutch" on him because I think he's so consistent in what he does. It's just game after game, he doesn't take games off, he doesn't take pitches off. He's just a very good focuser, if there's such a thing. He focuses so well from pitch to pitch, and everyone, their goal is to play that way, but he does it. Q. A little bit along that same line, you understand what this is like and the tension and the kids have to feel and starting out like that. How much do you enjoy just watching a kid go up there, feeling what he must have been feeling in his first at-bat and doing what he did so quickly? TIM CORBIN: Well, I'm happy for him that he can do that. I think this is a very difficult game to play. I think it's the toughest one all teams have to play. To start off in this environment, we've done it four times, but it's not easy. I told them when they got through that game, that might be the most difficult game they play, regardless of what happens after this. But it's real. There's an adrenaline rush, and to settle in, and Austin in that moment right there, his ability just to center on baseball, not understanding the rhythm of the pitch and the speed, and Detmers has that good spin rate to his fastball, that's a clutch moment. Those are different people that do those things. That's not common. Q. What would you say has been the biggest catalyst for Austin going from where he was last year being a really nice, quality player for you guys to being on another level this year? TIM CORBIN: Doing better academically, centering. I mean that. Brain, development of the brain. It's the one reason kids come to college. I think once you start to understand routine, you start to understand mental organization, then you start to understand what success is, and it's just doing a lot of small things right on a daily basis, and he's done that. I can't tell you it's always there. Now, he's always a competitor. That's from his parents. That's innate. But how he's been able to develop as a person and baseball player is very much the development of his brain. Q. What can you tell me that gets players and your approval of the Vandy whistler coming to games and doing what he does? TIM CORBIN: I'm not going to engage in that. I'm just worried about my team. Q. On Drake, it seems like there's this, we're just going to stick with him. He's 90, 100 pitches almost every game. Is there just a trust that's been built there that you're going to stick with him deep into the innings? TIM CORBIN: No doubt. We trust the kid, and I don't think when you trust someone -- just because they don't have a game or potentially two games to their liking or to our liking doesn't mean you dismiss the kid and the fibers of the kid. He's a very competitive young man, and in a lot of ways I felt like if he had two tougher outings, he wasn't going to have a third. I just felt like he would pitch well today, and Brownie did, too. That's not just me, that's Brownie. But I think the strength of our team is the ability to keep everything consistent and keep harmony within the team and have a lineup that's consistent, have a rotation that's consistent. When a family is upside down and something is different every week, then you just can't have consistency in thought, and they do, because of that. Q. With Austin's little mini-power surge here that he's on the last couple games. Does that come as any surprise to you, that he's been able to hit those four in a row now? TIM CORBIN: No, it doesn't really come as a surprise because I think he can get to the middle of the ball consistently, just like JJ. So I know JJ -- the question I get asked a lot is, are the numbers surprising to you for JJ? They're not surprising because if he wasn't taken out seven weeks last year, there would have been double-digit home runs with him, too. But JJ in time learned how to get to the ball and not have to recruit power, and because he didn't recruit power, then power came to him. And I think Marty is learning that. I think there's a time in a hitter's life where you start to understand how to hit the ball, and the swing that he took today, I thought that was a very good pitch. What Marty did that he couldn't do in February, March and April was slide his hands inside the ball in order to generate back spin, and that just takes time. He's, what, 260, 270 at-bats into this, and that's where kids learn if they can just bottle up a lot of at-bats they understand how to increase power without manufacturing it. Q. (No microphone). TIM CORBIN: Take your pick. The second one is where he slid his hands in. The second one, was that centered? Yeah, okay, good swing either one. Q. Back to Drake, he's obviously established that rhythm early in the game it seemed like. How important is that for him to get off to that good start early in the game? Is that something that was kind of a key versus his previous outings when he's maybe struggled a little bit? TIM CORBIN: Yes. I think what was helpful to him was the fastball command and how he got to that quicker into this game. The first and second and third inning he had some quick innings, and I think that gave him a shot of adrenaline himself and some confidence. That always concerns me first game, pitchers being a little bit wild and so on. But I thought he did a nice job of getting to the glove and being the aggressor. Q. This is the last one on Drake, but with that bases-loaded jam, you guys go to calm down a little bit, what did you maybe sense about his demeanor there and what did he execute specifically to get out of that jam? TIM CORBIN: That's just good pitches. That's a very difficult group of hitters that he was facing. Fitzgerald is a very good player and a very good hitter, and Binelas, he's not a freshman. He doesn't look like a freshman, he isn't a freshman. But I think just the placement of the fastball. He got in on Fitzgerald and that was a big pop-up, and then it was just the location. The location of the pitch was the key for him, and he was able to do it in a very tough situation. Your question about his demeanor, it stays the same all the time. He's a pretty flat-lined kid. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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