IU Baseball Excited For Home Opener After 11 Straight On The Road
The first three weeks of the regular season have taken the Indiana baseball team to Florida, Arizona, Ohio and Alabama.
Understanbly, this weekend’s home-opening series at Bart Kaufman Field against Middle Tennessee State, which starts Friday at 3:05 p.m. ET, comes at a welcome time.
“We’re excited we don’t have to travel,” IU head coach Chris Lemonis said, smiling. “That’s the biggest piece, but we’re excited to play here. It’s one of the nicest parks in the country with a great fan base, and we have a lot of comfort in playing at home.”
Aside from the grind of playing on the road during the first month of the season, IU’s home-opening series also gives it a chance to get back on the winning track after some recent struggles. Since tying 6-6 with Florida on Feb. 24, the Hoosiers (4-6-1) have lost three out of their last four.
However, the 11-game road trip to begin the season was intentionally scheduled to challenge Indiana in facing NCAA Tournament regional-caliber teams.
“We’re playing really good programs and really good teams, and it’s just trying to figure our team out,” Lemonis said. “We had a lot of unknowns to start the season, figuring our pen, figuring out our end-of-the-game, figuring out some of our lineup. It’s helped us in those ways.”
Just about every aspect of the team remains a work in progress, from the lineup to the bullpen.
For now, though, IU appears to have its weekend pitching staff rotation set.
Sophomore left-hander Tim Herrin (1-1) is scheduled to start Friday, while junior right-hander Brian Hobbie (0-1) will be first to take the mound Saturday (first pitch 2:05 p.m. ET). Freshman lefty Andrew Saalfrank (0-1) is expected to start Sunday’s rubber match (first pitch 1:05 p.m. ET).
The batting order likely won’t change either, based on the production rather than the results over IU’s last four games.
Indiana registered 26 hits across its series against Samford last weekend, producing 18 runs off those hits. However, the number of runs scored fell from 10 to 5 to 3, the 10 runs coming in the Hoosiers’ lone win of the series.
However, giving the batting order’s ability to produce hits, sophomore catcher Ryan Fineman remains confident the Hoosiers will pull out of their slump.
“I mean, I think we’ve hit it well all year,” Fineman said. “The averages don’t show it, but we’ve really been hitting the balls hard. Saturday, I thought we hit the ball best with 7-8 lineouts. Can’t really do much more than that.”
Sophomore infielder Tony Butler attributes Indiana’s recent struggles to an inability to put together a complete.
Butler said will play well offensively for six, seven or eight innings, only to follow that with a lull that lasts a few innings, resulting in needing to pull both the offense and defense together.
“You don’t win ball games at this level without having a full game from both sides of the team,” he said. “We’ve really got to put a full game together.”
Middle Tennessee (7-6) ranks 78th among 295 Division I teams in team batting average at .292, while its pitchers own the 35th-highest era at 7.28.
However, what’s arguably more beneficial than any statistic for the Hoosiers to overcome their recent struggles is the opportunity to play in Bloomington this weekend.
“It’s beautiful, it’s 65 degrees over the next two days,” Lemonis said at practice Wednesday. “It’s nice to be back home and to really get some work in and tune up for a big weekend.”
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