‘Best at being the worst’: Why this Fort Mill baseball coach is key to an SC title run
Ryan Smith is the worst pitcher in South Carolina.
There’s no way to sugarcoat the sabermetrics. Through Dixie Youth Baseball district and state tournaments, the lineups he pitched to cranked out hit after hit, run after run. They outscored opponents 113-13. They run-ruled teams, where umpires stop the game early with the score so far out of reach, as often as they didn’t.
Those lineups who dug in against Smith, in those tournaments, are a clean 10-0. Yet game after game, his manager rolls him out there to get pounded by 8- and 9-year-olds.
“It feels fantastic,” Smith said.
It’s an odd development for the former Charleston Southern pitcher, now head coach of the South Carolina All-Stars out of Fort Mill. Smith leads a dozen local rec leaguers turned all-stars, turned district and then state champions. Now the team heads to Laurel, Miss., for the Dixie Youth Baseball World Series on Aug. 7-11.
It’s an experience Smith wouldn’t trade, even as it’s upended his most fundamental understanding of the game he loves.
“My job was to not allow hits,” the former high school and college pitcher said. “This is the opposite. Here I’m trying to just serve up meatballs and get rocked.”
The coach in coach pitch
Baseball can be a complicated game, but one part hasn’t changed much in nearly two centuries. Pitchers try to get batters out and keep teams from scoring. Except in that small window between tee-ball and kid pitch, known as coach pitch.
“There’s a defensive (kid) pitcher next to me, and I will pitch to my own team,” Smith said. “So I pitch to these boys during the games.”
Players get three strikes, or five total pitches, to put a ball in play. Line drives into gaps are ideal. Homers are ecstasy. The worst possible result is a strikeout. Smith aims for an “infinite” earned run average, something that would get typical pitchers cut from teams. It’s gotten Smith all the way to Mississippi.
“You want to be the worst pitcher ever, in the sense that you’re throwing meatballs down the middle,” Smith said. “But you do have to have control.”
In the pitcher’s head
If any pitcher could compete with Smith’s horrendous stat line, it’s Kevin Nesteruk. Nesteruk pitched for the past two rec league championship teams, even besting Smith’s squads. His son Easton is the all-star catcher. Nesteruk, an assistant coach, simplifies his approach to poor pitching.
“Get rocked,” he said. “Throw meatballs and get rocked.”
Challenges vary as skill level increases. Rec league play often involves players just trying out the sport. By a state championship, players mean serious business. John Nunziato coached multiple rec league championship and all-star teams in Fort Mill before his sons moved on to travel ball.
“The challenging part about pitching to players that age is that some have already developed bad habits that need to be broken,” he said. “Also some players that age are nervous of getting hit by the ball.”
In some ways, Nunziato said, rec league pitching can be more challenging than all-star pitching.
“We once had a player who liked to play in the dirt and we tried to explain to the parents that maybe baseball wasn’t his thing,” he said.
Jeff Shelley coached teams this age for half a decade in Fort Mill, many as the pitcher. His teams played in plenty of championship games, winning their share.
“I was proud that my ERA was about 15.00,” Shelley said. “Which is also kind of funny as a pitcher. There’s a little bit of pressure, too. Every now and then you get a little wobbly. You’d be surprised at how nervous you get.”
All that experience led to some unusual mechanics.
“I would literally aim at their right thigh,” Shelley said. “Just instinctively, reflexively, to not get hit with the pitch, they would swing. And hammer it down the third base line.”
Arnold Owino, whose son Gordon play first base for the all-stars, coaches Fort Mill rec teams across several sports. When he manages a coach pitch team, he lets another parent pitch.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” Owino said. “You feel a lot of sense of responsibility.”
Pitchers face everything from batters who refuse to swing to parent commentators.
“Every now and then you strike a guy out and you feel just absolutely terrible,” Shelley said. “The worst is when you hit your own guy. That is the worst, and it does happen.”
Especially since the batter doesn’t get to take a base. He just stands in for another pitch, if there’s one left.
“It just seems so basic,” Shelley said. “You don’t want to lob it and throw a rainbow. That creates bad habits. You don’t want to throw it too hard and blow it by them. It’s a fine line for each guy.”
At the all-star level, though, there’s also the chance a pitcher and team get hot. A few hits in a row is like gas on a fire, Owino said.
“He feels that pressure,” Owino said of Smith. “He does a great job of wearing it, and really communicating with the kids.”
The batter’s eye
Second baseman Calvin Krantz, 9, imprinted several baseball stitches into Smith’s elbow earlier this month in batting practice. In 10 games, Krantz has 15 hits and 12 runs scored. He isn’t intimidated when Smith toes the rubber.
“No. Not really,” Krantz said.
He’s thinking extra bases.
“Double. Single, or triple,” Krantz said. “It would be rare to get a home run in districts because we’re playing a lot of hard teams, but I’m feeling a double or single.”
Henry Herchek sees all sorts of pitching. The defensive pitcher (he fields, but doesn’t throw pitches) masks up right beside other teams’ coach pitchers. Herchek expects to square up and hit the ball hard off Smith.
“I got a double,” Herchek said of his best hit. “It was over the shortstop’s head. It almost got past the left fielder, but he got it.”
The only intimidation comes, rarely, after the pitch.
“Sometimes,” Herchek said, “when I don’t swing at good pitches.”
No player faces Smith more often than his son Chase, 9, who plays shortstop. It’s a matchup dating back years now.
“We usually come here early for practice to see if I can hit one over (the fence),” Chase Smith said.
He’s bounced three off the bottom of the fence where the team practices. He’s hit ground rule doubles. That confidence carries into games, where Chase has a team-high 21 hits.
“I’m just trying to hit a line-drive double,” Chase said. “Not a single. I don’t like getting singles.”
He doesn’t feel too bad ballooning his dad’s ERA. Or worry that dad might get the best of him during an at-bat.
“It’s not like MLB if you hit it off him,” Chase Smith said. “It’s much harder to hit off MLB players than just coach pitch.”
Money ball time
A term that’s become synonymous with baseball analytics is one Smith borrows more from basketball shooting contests. His fifth and final pitch to a batter is the “money ball.”
“When you’re down to the money ball, it’s a little nerve wrecking,” Smith said. “You can tighten up a little bit. But you’ve got to just loosen up and focus on the target.”
Sometimes Smith focuses so hard on the batter, the ball heads straight at him. Like when he plunked Gordon Owino on a money ball at states for the rare hit by pitch, strikeout combo.
“To be fair,” Smith laughed, “he leaned into it.”
Coach pitchers agree the key to being terrible on the mound is knowing where each batter wants the ball. With the all-stars Smith often can dictate where the ball is hit to avoid the defensive setup, or induce either a grounder or fly ball based on what his team needs. Or, just slot one into the sweet spot of a power hitter.
“He’s the worst, but actually he’s the best,” Nesteruk said. “He’s the best at being the worst.”
After years of pitching to batters he hoped to fool, the frustration now comes when Smith puts one all but on a tee for a batter — who doesn’t swing.
“I’m like, what are you doing?” Smith said. “Rip it. I put it on a platter for you. Knock it out of here.”
It’s all part of the transition from trying to pitch the best he can, to pitching his worst.
“It’s a big change for him because he’s trying to let the kids hit him,” Owino said. “I’m not sure if he’s letting them or if they’re just doing it, but he’s doing a good job and they’re scoring a lot of runs and hitting the ball pretty well.”
