It’s all about pitching, and freshman Chase Herrell proved he had plenty of upside in 2024. Now he has to get “better”. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Was the season disappointing? Yes, to some. Is it fixable? Pitching fixes everything in baseball. And how much will they lose to the portal and the draft? The three most-asked questions after a second season of Bill Mosiello baseball.
With Bill Mosiello 2.0 in the record book now, I’m personally impressed over the past week at the number of post-season emails and comments about the team from Bill Davis rail birds, and those who’ve never even seen a game at Bill Davis, yet obviously have more than a rooting interest in Buckeye baseball.
From Ironton to Elyria I’ve heard from those who watched the Big Ten Tournament on BIG Network, saw what I saw (what everyone saw), and came away wondering how you can run-rule the eventual tournament champion in the opening round…then get handled by an Indiana team that tried to hand them the game in round two, and the same Nebraska team in the elimination game.
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There were three primary questions from those we heard from…well, four actually, but my opinion doesn’t count, We’re just there to write what we see and to compare it to the rest of the conference.
But I will answer this question relative to Bill Mosiello, from long-time follower Don Motz, who asked: “What do you think of Mosiello’s baseball?” And I’ll answer that this way…I don’t think it’s so much about Mosiello’s baseball as it is about the culture of baseball from which he, and everyone else, recruits and develops.
I personally like Mo’s baseball savvy, because he has that knack of teaching you something that you’ve never previously considered. For instance, when he told me earlier this spring that there was no such thing as momentum in baseball – that momentum lasts only as long as the quality of your next start (starting pitcher). He’s right, of course, because one bad inning early in the game can undo whatever optimism (call it momentum) you have. It’s not fun trying to come back from 5-0 in the second inning. And the fact is that the term ‘momentum’ is kind of a lazy generalization that a lot of us use when we don’t know what else to say.
Baseball-wise, Bill Mosiello doesn’t miss much. A straight shooter, he tell you that baseball has never changed. You have to pitch and get some timely hits.
But baseball-wise, he doesn’t miss much. He may not be the best dancer, but Bill Mosiello never dances around an obvious issue on the field when you ask him about it. He’s a pretty straight shooter, and that’s being fair. “You have to pitch, and you have to have timely hitting. Baseball has never changed,” he says. And he’s right.
Pitching is 80% of baseball, and every coach, manager, and administrator in baseball says the same.
But to the three questions…the culture of youth, and amateur baseball is more revealing with each passing year. High school baseball doesn’t prepare many of the freshman for the kind of competition they’re going to see in the Big Ten Conference. These are kids who’ve never worried about making their high school team, that have never had the privilege of actually being coached on their summer ‘travel’ team, and don’t understand that failure to execute at this level matters more than it did at Wagon Wheel High. You can throw a ball by the cleanup hitter at Wagon Wheel with the bases loaded, but you can’t do it here.
You can’t walk the leadoff hitter at this level and not have it come back to bite.
And there’s no such thing as a breaking ball count at the Division I level. Every pitch is a breaking ball count because you use whatever pitch it takes to set up the pitch with which you ultimately get the hitter out. So, you have to execute. And you have to change it up the second and third time through the order.
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And from those who question if they’re getting the best talent from Ohio high school baseball…it doesn’t seem to matter which state you recruit from. They all need to play more baseball.
Two, in his post-game interview after losing to Nebraska in the elimination game, Mosiello mentioned that “we have to get better”, and “we have to get tougher”. John, from Columbus, asks how long will that take? He mentions…that it’s been a long time since 1966 (the year OSU won the national title).
Well, when he was hired Mosiello said that there was no five-year plan…that he intended to improve from day one. The problem is, the only way you can prove you’ve improved is to win, and they haven’t won yet. Truly, they have to get better, and they have to get ‘tougher’ mentally. And the question of toughness goes back to that earlier statement about kids coming out of high school where they never had to worry about their spot on the team…about overcoming adversity because there isn’t much adversity for the average kid with $3,500 to spend on ‘travel’ baseball. You’re going to be on the team, and you’re going to play. No worries!
They need pitching to build around mound ace Landon Beidelschies. “He’s tough, one of the best in our conference,” says Nebraska coach Will Bolt.
But at this level there is adversity, and the constant reality that the pitcher you face, or the batter you face, is as good or better than you are. So you have to execute, and not just throw. You have to be better.
Mentally tougher means that you can play above that one bad inning against Indiana after you come back from a five-run deficit.
Mentally tougher means that you come into a game and don’t walk the leadoff hitter, one of the cardinal sins of pitching.
And to me, personally…I think it means that as a pitcher you occasionally drop someone in the batter’s box who stands too close to home plate – old school baseball. Sometimes you have to create more strike zone to pitch to, and there’s only one way to do it.
Three, this sounds like a lot of pitching priority, but I’ll use Mosiello’s words from last week….”We have to go out and find pitching, pitching, pitching, and more pitching. We have to get better on the mound.”
Tom, from Columbus, frequently writes to us because he enjoys the day-to-day coverage of baseball, and and he wrote, “What do we need that we don’t have now?
Freshman Isaac Cadena showed an impressive freshman season with a .263 average, 3 homers and 20 RBIs in just 80 at bats.
Let me first say that the freshmen – Herrell, DeVooght, Brown, and Jake Michalak – are all talented. But they’re young, and they need to pitch. I’m trusting that they’ll get the innings they need this summer, learn from being around others, and come back in the fall with a little more hair on the baseball.
But the Buckeyes also need experienced outs via the portal, and those will be hard to find. Because, who’s going to give them up? The one advantage that Ohio State has is obvious, and immediate opportunity. So if you’re talented and buried on someone else’s depth chart, and you want a fresh start there’s no better place to get it than Bill Davis Stadium – not unlike what first-year coach Mike Gambino did this year at Penn State. No one played the portal better than his finding an Adam Cecere at Wake Forest.
And at the same time you need to continue to develop talents like Landon Beidelschies, Blaine Wynk, and an Isaac Cadena, who proved he’s a player in the wings by hitting .263 with 3 homers and 20 RBIs in just 80 at bats.
But everyone wonders…can they keep as much of their core talent as possible, and together as a unit. Henry Kaczmar will be draft eligible this summer, because of his age, but his presence in the lineup in 2025 will be a huge component to the improvement that people will question next year…with Kaczmar, Pettorini, Matt Graveline, Trey Lipsey, and Josh Stevenson.
They just have to play better…tougher. Better than 29-26.
Like Nebraska.
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