Bowling Green Hangs On To Beat Pesky Vikings

Today two schools in BSB territory faced off in a mid week inter-conference game that ended up being one of the better games I’ve seen so far this year. A battered and bruised Bowling Green squad managed to squeak by a young Cleveland State team 6-5 in ten innings. Freshmen Nick Bruns and Patrick O’Brien combined to pitch all ten innings for Bowling Green, tallying eight strikeouts and only recording one walk the whole game.

Bowling Green head coach Danny Schmitz proudly remarked, “Nick and Pat really provided us with a great pitching performance today, and since we only have eleven healthy pitchers at the moment we really needed them to go out and do that.”

Catcher Ryan Schlater started off the scoring blasting a shot over the left field fence to put Bowling Green up 1-0 in the bottom of the second inning and by the end of the third Bowling Green was up 4-1. The Vikings scored two in the seventh and then in the eighth inning Bob Suitca singled into centerfield to score third baseman Kyle Shaffer and tie the game up. The game remained tied until the bottom of the tenth inning when Bowling Green Senior Tyler Elkins of Hamilton, Ohio doubled down the third base line to score Jon Berti and win the ballgame for the Falcons. The win improves Bowling Green’s record to 10-17-1 overall while Cleveland State falls to 8-20 on the season.

Even though Cleveland State lost today their head coach Kevin Kocks was fairly optimistic.

“We’re a young team, we have mostly freshman and sophomores on the roster… I’m encouraged by today because we gained experience.”

When asked about the Vikings past weekend in which they took two games from Horizon League favorite Wright State Kocks had this to say.

“After this weekend (against Wright State) we are building for the future. Wins like that prepare us for the future, building a program takes time... our goals are still to win a conference championship, which is very much still in reach, and to get better everyday.”

Senior centerfielder TJ Blanton went 0-4 on the day to snap a 21-game hit streak. The hit streak was the longest in the MAC and ranked in the top 10 nationally. Patrick O’Brien earned his second win on the season to improve to 2-2 while Pat Shedlock gets the loss to drop his record to 1-3 on the year.

Bowling Green travels to Ann Arbor today to face the University of Michigan (19-11, 4-2) and then to Toledo (21-10, 8-1) this weekend to face their arch rivals. Cleveland State plays Kent State (18-16, 6-3) today and at Valparasio (11-19, 2-1) in a conference series matchup this weekend.

Weekday Games: Cleveland State & Michigan

This week Bowling Green welcomes Cleveland State to the Stell Tuesday and then travels up to Ann Arbor for a game Wednesday. I don't have extensive previews for either but I will put up records and such.

For a preview of the Michigan game however go check an interview Mgoblog.com contributor Formerly Anonymous had with me. In the interview he discusses the matchup and gives a preview of how the game will go.

Anyways. Here are the matchups for Tuesday and Wednesday.

4/13/10

Bowling Green (9-17-1, 3-6)

vs.

Cleveland State (8-19, 2-4)

4/14/10

Bowling Green (9-17-1, 3-6)

vs.

University of Michigan (18-11, 4-2)

I'll be posting a preview of Toledo in the next day or two for everyone. By the way, I would love it if you became a fan of Roll Along Baseball on facebook! Thanks for the support!

Recap: Ball State

Well... Friday and Saturday were both full of facepalm moments for Bowling Green, as they were outscored by a, no joke, 44-15 margin. Ball State put up 32 runs Saturday alone. No lie. The Ball State Cardinals put up 32 runs Saturday and setting a record for the most runs ever scored by an opponent against Bowling Green.

The crazy thing about this weekend was that just as Bowling Green looked like a cellar-dweller this year in the MAC, freshman walk-on Michael Fahle hit a grand slam home run in his first ever collegiate at bat in the bottom of the 9th Saturday which seemed to spark the club and push them to a victory Sunday. Although Saturday was for a long time a lost cause, that home run was the start of nine positively amazing innings for the Falcons. Ball State is a great baseball team capable of making the NCAA tournament this year and while getting one win from this team might sound discouraging, the journey of the weekend might get this team going finally.

4/9/10

Bowling Green: 6

Ball State: 12

Box Score

4/10/10

Bowling Green: 10

Ball State: 32

Box Score

4/11/10

Bowling Green: 9

Ball State: 3

Box Score

Game 1 Recap

After all the baseball I saw Saturday and Sunday, Friday seems like a long time ago. Basically, another bad loss by Bowling Green that followed the same pattern as most of BG's losses. Bad pitching, bad fielding, and hitting that can't capitalize on opportunities. Bowling Green left 12 on base and also committed four errors. The starting pitcher Brennan Smith only threw 2.1 innings, giving up eight hits and six earned runs.

- TJ Blanton extended his hitting streak to 19 games.

- The game lasted 3 hours and 29 minutes. Ouch! I was getting tired just watching the game. It felt like a Red Sox-Yankees game.

- Jon Berti went 3-4 and really had a good day at the plate.

- Ball State's starting pitcher Perci Garner hit 96 mph on the radar multiple times. The kid was a scholarship quarterback for Ball State and walked-on to the baseball team last year. Now he's quit football and is on scholarship for baseball and a draft prospect for this June's MLB draft. He has a mid-80s slider and a nasty curveball that makes hitters knees buckle.

- There were over ten scouts at Friday's ballgame, presumably to see Perci Garner and All-American second baseman Kolbrin Vitek, who is projected to be a 1st or 2nd round pick in the upcoming MLB draft.

Game 2 Recap

Wow. Saturday's game. Wow. I have seen lots and lots of baseball in my life... but I've never seen all the things I saw in one game.

- I haven't seen one team score 32 runs.

- I've never seen 42 total runs scored in a game either.

- I've never seen a pitcher with an ERA of 243.00 until I saw the stat line for pitcher Justin Warrington after Saturday's game.

- I've never seen a player walk up to the plate in his first ever collegiate at bat and hit a grand slam... that cut the deficit from 26 runs to 22 runs.

- This game lasted 3 hours and 21 minutes... somehow beating Friday's game but nonetheless taking forever. This series would've made Joe West cry.

Game 3 Recap

Losing the first two games of this series by a combined score of 44-18 the Falcons had a new look to them Sunday dominating and winning the final game of the series 9-3.

- The team came out and played the best defense I've seen them play this year. Jon Berti and Logan Meisler combined to make at least five outstanding defensive plays that held Ball State to only two runs in the first and one run in the ninth.

- Ball State imploded in the sixth inning, committing all four errors. The team kind of looked tired after the whooping they layed on BG the day before.

- TJ Blanton recorded a hit in every game this weekend extending his MAC best 21-game hitting streak.

- Kevin Leady is the ace of the Bowling Green staff. He now has four of the nine overall wins by Bowling Green this season. He threw 45 pitches in the first inning alone but rebounded to go seven full innings... striking out seven and only walking three despite the fact he got into nine full counts on the day.

What Does This Mean?

Bowling Green drops to 9-17-1 overall and 3-6 in the MAC after this weekend... putting them in 5th place in the MAC East and 10th place overall in conference. To make the conference tournament Bowling Green needs to finish 8th or better in conference. Bowling Green needs to start winning weekend series and it has to start this weekend against I-75 rival Toledo. Unfortunately for BG, Toledo is 8-1 in conference and 21-9 overall, boasting both the best conference and overall records in the MAC.

Bowling Green just doesn't have the pitching depth to keep up with their opponents this year and if the bats don't have a great day the team is going to lose. It's point blank as simple as that.

Preview: Ball State

First off, sorry this preview took so long. I had a lot of school work this week and for the next two weeks I'll be pretty backed up, so posts might be slightly sporadic. I'll still be posting the basics though at least.

How have they played?

Ball State is coming off a tough 12-6 midweek loss to Indiana Tuesday and it 11-16 overall but is 5-1 in conference play. The team is the favorite to win the MAC West this season and so far has backed up the hype taking care of Miami and Ohio, going 5-1 in the two series, two teams they are supposed to beat. The defense is good, having only committed 39 errors in 27 games played, compared to Bowling Green’s 49 errors in 24 games this season. That could play a significant factor this weekend especially since the weather might be chilly, every baserunner will be crucial. One interesting weakness though is that Ball State strikes out a lot. They are second in the MAC with 229 strikeouts so far this season. They rank in the middle of almost every other statistic in the MAC however. The relief pitching has performed very well this season, and the bullpen of Ball State gives them a direct advantage in the later innings over Bowling Green once the starting pitchers have been replaced. This is a solid team that plays to win but is not great. They just get the job done.

Common Opponent

Up to this date Louisville is the only baseball team that has played both opponents. Bowling Green played Louisville in a very cold opening-season series in Kentucky, getting swept by the Cardinals, although the last game was an extra inning affair that the Falcons could've easily stolen. Ball State stole the last of a three game series back in the third weekend of March at Louisville. This was a quality win for Louisville as they were ranked #7 nationally at the time. There aren’t any inter-conference teams to compare these two with yet.

Key Players

Kolbrin Vitek is by far and away the best hitting on the Ball State roster this season, boasting a .413 batting average in 109 at bats. He also leads the team with seven home runs, 31 RBI’s, and a whopping .716 slugging %. He is to the Cardinal lineup what TJ Blanton has been to the Falcon lineup; their stats as of today match up almost evenly. The pitching staff of Ball State has a lot of good pitchers. There really aren’t any dominating top pitchers aside of relief pitcher Morgan Coombs, who has a 2.11 ERA in five appearances and 21.1 innings pitched. That being said, the Cardinals have eight pitchers with significant (10+ IP) playing time that have an ERA under six. Meanwhile, Bowling Green only has four pitchers with such a distinction. If it counts for anything though, Justin Warrington has a 99.00 ERA in two appearances for Ball State, and hasn’t recorded one single out but has managed to walk four and allow four earned runs. Can he please pitch against Bowling Green this weekend please?

Conclusion

Ball State is the type of team I wish Bowling Green would play more like. Efficient defense, efficient offense, efficient pitching. Bowling Green has showed flashes of all three of these things this season… just not in the same game. Hopefully things will turn around for Bowling Green this weekend, but they have to play darned good baseball to do it. If Bowling Green wants to make the conference tournament they need to start winning conference games and weekend series.

Prediction

As much as I would love for my sister on sibs and kids weekend to come down and see a Bowling Green series win, I just don’t see it happening. Ball State will win the Friday and Saturday games while Bowling Green steals the final Sunday game.

Weekend Review: Eastern Michigan

Bowling Green went into this weekend needing to win this conference series, and unfortunately for them they only won one game. There were a lot of positives to take out of the series though that showed the Falcons are not nearly as bad as their record indicates.

4/02/10

Bowling Green: 1

Eastern Michigan: 4

Box Score

4/03/10

Bowling Green: 8

Eastern Michigan: 9

Box Score

4/04/10

Bowling Green: 4

Eastern Michigan: 3

Box Score

Defense

The defense of Bowling Green is something I have been critical about as of late, but this weekend they only committed four errors in the three games. Now maybe it was because of the fact that Eastern has an infield that is field-turf so the bounces are very predictable, but honestly I don't care because there was good baseball being played and that was very nice. Unfortunately though for BG, Eastern played defense just as well this weekend, only committing two errors in the first game and none the rest of the series.

Pitching

The starting pitching this weekend for Bowling Green was awesome, and just based off of the starting pitching and defense the Falcons should have at least won two games this weekend.

- Brennan Smith went 7.2 innings Friday, striking out six, walking three, and giving up only six hits and two runs (one earned).

- Michael Frank had the worst outing for a starting pitcher, going five innings, striking out three and giving up three earned runs. The main concern is the fact he gave up 10 hits in the five innings, but he got out of jams really well though.

- Kevin Leady pitched the Sunday game and absolutely carried the squad through 7.1 innings, striking out ten, walking just two, and only giving up three runs.

The relief pitching and lack of scoring is what doomed the team though.

- Ross Gerdeman gave up a three-run home run in the 8th inning that put the Eagles up 4-1 in game one. Gerdeman did redeem himself though getting a tough 1.2 inning save Sunday afternoon in BG's lone 4-3 win on the weekend.

- Charles Wooten blew multiple late-game leads Saturday, hitting two batters and giving up six earned runs off of six hits in just three innings of work.

Offense

The wind was blowing out in Ypsilanti this weekend, where seven long balls were hit in the three games, with five coming during game two. I saw at least three home runs leave the park that had it not been for the jet stream at Oestrike Stadium, they would've just been regular fly balls, granted deep fly balls, but just fly balls.

- Interesting development with the lineup, TJ Blanton, argueably BG's best hitter, was moved from his traditional nine spot in the lineup to hit fourth, second, and fifth this weekend.

- Bowling Green was really shut down Friday night, with only TJ Blanton scoring in the 4-1 loss. The game was a pitching duel until the first home run of the series was belted by Eastern DH Matt Skirving.

- Saturday was a slugfest in which Bowling Green had home runs from Blanton, Mark Galvin, and Patrick Martin. The offense was spread out very nicely for the Falcons, as they scored at least one run in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th innings. Unfortunately though the pitching couldn't match the effort they gave the day before, as they gave up 18 hits and nine runs, including a walk off single by Bo Kinder in the bottom of the 9th.

- Sunday was a quiet but solid performance by the offense, as they scored three in the 6th and one in the 7th. Matthew Pitzulo had the best day for BG, going 2-4 with a double and two RBI's.

- TJ Blanton got a hit in every game this series, extending his hitting streak to 17 games which is now the longest active hitting streak in the MAC.

Verdict

Bowling Green is now 8-14-1 overall and 2-4 in the MAC. The hope of winning the MAC is quickly fading and the focus needs to now be on making the postseason MAC championships so they can try to qualify for the NCAA's. The defense looks to be back on track now after this series where the errors were kept to a minimum. This team is a good team and when they can get the pitching, offense, and defense working together they can compete with any MAC team.

Whats Up Next?

Weekday game against the Big 10 dark horse candidate Michigan State. A win over Jake Boss and company would really be impressive and look very good for Schmitz's squad.

The upcoming weekend series is at home (!) which means you can follow along at home on the computer with my liveblog that can be found by clicking the '2010 gameday central' button on the baseball home page, or you can go to this site and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Ball State (11-15, 4-1) will be taking on Bowling Green on Friday at 3 p.m. Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. at Stellar Field. My preview of the Cardinals will hopefully be up by Friday. Normally it would be sooner but school is getting down to the end here and I have a lot of work to do.

How Important Is Defense?

Watching Bowling Green play baseball this past weekend versus Northern Illinois I started to wonder, how big of an issue is defense in the MAC? Both teams committed quite a few errors during the series, espicially Bowling Green who committed nine errors in three games. The Falcons could have probably swept the series if it wasn't for crucial errors at key times which allowed NIU to score nine unearned runs over three games and win two of the three games.

So for the past week in between classes I calculated how many errors per nine innings each MAC team had, compared that with the team ERA, and also threw in the fielding % of each team. I then lined them up in a chart. I also got the data of a few major division one programs and compared them to the MAC teams.

In my "Other Teams" category I threw in Michigan and Ohio State in this area and then a team ranked in the top 30, 20, 10, 3, and the number 1 team in the nation. As you can see the best teams in the nation are all at 1.00 E/9 or below, and the only team in the MAC even close to that number is Miami University, who average 1.27 E/9.

If I were to look at the teams and their E/9 combined with the team ERA, I would have to give the defensive advantage to either Toledo or Central Michigan so far. Of course the strength of schedule has been different for a lot of teams so far so the numbers might not completely accurately represent every team in the MAC but it at least gives us an idea of who plays the best team defense (pitching is included) in the conference.

Miami's 1.27 E/9 is hard to ignore though and it shows that if they can get a strong outing from their pitching they have the baility to play with any team in the conference. Teams like Bowling Green and Ohio though will almost always have to sore more than six runs if they have a chance at winning a ballgame.

I will be doing a post soon on offensive statistics which will probably be more detailed and have a lot more categories in it and then after that I'll be taking a look at both the team offense and the team defense of each squad in the MAC and try to take a stab at who has the best team statistically speaking this year.

Not surprisingly, Bowling Green is towards the bottom of the conference in this category with only Ohio, who is 3-18, beneath them. If Bowling Green wants to make a run at another MAC title this year, the team has to play better defense overall, whether it's a position change for some players or giving the bench more opportunities out in the field something needs to be done. No team can expect to be consistently competitive while averaging 2.28 errors per nine innings unless they have a nasty pitching staff and consistantly hot bats. While the Falcons can hit the ball better than practically every other team, their .316 batting average is good enough for second in the MAC, you can't expect an offense to score 8+ runs a game.

If Bowling Green can pull the defense together and average less than 1.6 E/9 than I believe they can finish the season above .500 overall. That being said however, the turnaround must happen this weekend against Eastern Michigan.

I will try to update the E/9 for every weekend series from now on and track Bowling Green's progress.

Weekend Series Preview: Eastern Michigan

I lived in Ypsilanti for the past seven years so my knowledge of Eastern’s sports is pretty extensive. Basically all you need to know about the athletic department is summed up in one sentence. Eastern is a division 2-caliber athletic department competing in division 1 sports. Losing and a lack of attendance continue to be the staple of a department that is constantly in the shadow of the school six miles away in Ann Arbor. That being said however, the baseball team does have a rich history and actually made the NCAA tournament within the last three years. That was the lone year Jake Boss, now the Michigan State head coach, was there.

How have they played?

This year so far EMU is doing just about as well as any MAC team as they are 10-14 on the year and 2-1 in conference play. Their best win of year so far was an opening day upset of #25 Kansas in the horrendous baseball stadium we call the Metrodome, formerly (thank God) the home of the Minnesota Twins. The Eagles also won the middle game of a series versus the University of West Virginia 23-0. Unfortunately they also happened to lose the other two games of the series by a pretty sizable margin.

Common Opponent

Up to this date West Virginia is the only baseball team that has played both opponents. Even with one very protruding loss to the tune of 23-0(!?), WVU is 3-1 against EMU and BG, beating the Falcons 10-7 just last Tuesday and winning two out of three the weekend before against the Eagles.

Key Players

Eastern only has four players hitting above .300 on the season, with Daniel Russell leading the team with a .362 batting average. Zack Leonard is the big cleanup man for EMU though, collecting 28 RBIs, two home runs, and eight doubles while being the only Eagle to start all 24 games.

There isn’t really any one player offensively who jumps out at you from the statistical data, and from the pitching side things don’t look much better. Steven Young is the only person on the team that has an ERA lower than five, and through only 10.1 innings of work he has an ERA of 0.00. 10.1 innings is not a lot of for a team that’s played 24 games, so calling him the ace of the staff is probably a reach. Junior Corey Chaffins is without a doubt the workhorse of the staff having thrown two complete games in only six starts. He has faced 171 batters in 42.2 innings pitched, and what’s even more remarkable is that the next closest stat line is from Jordan Glover’s 110 batters faced in 25.1 innings pitched. Chaffins has an ERA of 5.48 however and a WHIP of 1.47, which actually is not a terrible whip but not a great one. Brett Cisper (7.71 ERA, 2.20 WHIP) is the team’s closer, having collected four saves already. This staff looks shaky which can only mean good things for a Bowling Green team that’s looking to bounce back from a sub-par weekend series versus NIU.

Conclusion

Even though Eastern has just about as good of a record as any other MAC team, they shouldn’t end up at the top of the league if their lack of pitching continues. If Bowling Green can play good defense this weekend they should be able to score 8+ runs in every game, meaning this should be a sweep for the Falcons. Let me restate that, if Bowling Green is going to be a legitimate contender at the top of the MAC then they need to at least take two in Ypsilanti if not sweep the series.

Prediction

Bowling Green will take two out of the three games this weekend, and improve their record to 9-12-1 overall and 3-3 in conference.