Senior right fielder Mitchell Okuley scorched last week, hitting .406 with 4 doubles and a .531 slugging percentage. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Preparing to play three-more offensively-blessed baseball teams in this weekend’s Las Vegas Invitational, the Buckeyes should benefit from the reality of light air in the desert…and the percentages that better pitching usually beats good hitting.
Given the experience of last week’s eight-game opener with some of the country’s best baseball teams, the Ohio State Buckeyes should benefit from their 4-4 start, if only for the fact of what good baseball men, like Yogi Berra, have said it for a century.
“Good pitching will always beat good hitting, and vice-versa.”
And at times the Buckeyes had both.
That’s not meant to be funny, that’s actually what Berra once said, and he wasn’t alone. That statement is one of baseball’s most famous malapropisms, oft-uttered when nothing else will explain why sometimes good pitching works…and sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter.
“You take your chances in baseball,” said seven-time champion Yankee manager, Casey Stengel. “And sometimes you take a shower. They both work.”
Sophomore Landon Beidelschies turned in the first week’s pitching gem against ASU…7 innings, 1 run, three hits, and 7 strikeouts…in an 11-4 win.
But back to the present. The Buckeyes are on the road again this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the Las Vegas Classic…against three more teams that like to swing the bats. And three more candidates for post-season baseball, in Cal Berkeley, Pitts, and Oklahoma, who on a local note, beat up a common opponent on the Buckeyes’ schedule coming up on April 23, taking 3 of 4 games from the Wright State Raiders in Norman – 20-0, 14-9, and 10-3. WSU won the Sunday finale, 12-2.
On Friday the Buckeyes meet the 6-1 Cal Berkeley Bears, a team with a cumulative batting average of .321, and fresh off three straight wins over UConn.
On Saturday the Buckeyes play Pitt, an ACC team currently sitting 7-1, and as a team batting .293, coming off a weekend series win over Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, in Corpus Christi.
And on Sunday they hook up with Oklahoma, a team they beat last year in the Frisco Classic finale, and the Sooners are swingin’ it good, too, hitting at a .341 clip.
These numbers, while impressive, need to be taken with a grain of salt, as well. They’re warm-weather numbers, and particularly in the west where the light air of Arizona makes the ball carry better. Cal also played in Arizona as part of the MLB series.
But light air has nothing to do with actually making contact, and the Buckeyes, after their opening hiccup against Boston College, warmed up significantly by the end of the road trip.
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Collectively they’re hitting .264 as a team, led by Mitchell Okuley (.406), Tyler Pettorini (.345), and Henry Kaczmar (.303)…with freshman Zach Fjelstad having made a good debut, hitting .400, but in limited at bats (4 for 10). It’s a small sample size, yes, but enough to split the series with hard-hitting Arizona State, who finished the series hitting .354 as a team.
“When we were able to sink the ball (Saturday) we got them to hit some ground balls,” said Bill Mosiello of ASU. “Up until then I didn’t know they were capable of hitting ground balls. That’s a scary lineup.”
But again, you throw it and see what happens.
Fast forward now and a week of having the experience sink in. Regardless of numbers, good pitching is still effective against good hitting and the key to making the adjustment is another baseball cliche’, called, ‘trusting your stuff’. Like Casey said, you throw the ball according to your training, knowing that pitches down in the zone with movement are tougher to hit than the ones that are up. Do that and the percentages are much more in your favor.
Publisher/editor Sonny Fulks writes the Big Ten and Buckeyes baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
It’s projected that the weekend starters for Friday and Saturday will again be Landon Beidelschies (1-1, 3.27 ) and Colin Purcell (1-1, 4.32), and junior Gavin Bruni will get the Oklahoma start, seeking his second win (3.86 ERA).
Collectively, teams are hitting .307 against Buckeye pitching, and the cumulative earned run average is 6.35. Considering all the extra base hits by Grand Canyon and ASU, the slugging percentage is somewhat inflated with pitching in the desert air (.500), and after a pair of walk-free games against Southern Cal and Brigham Young, Ohio State pitching finished the trip with 64 strikeouts, compared to 32 walks. Too many!
But what an opportunity – Cal, Pitt, and Oklahoma? What Bill Mosiello recently described this way, “We want to see what we’re made of,” and they’re going to know soon enough with this weekend in the West, followed by yet another trip to the coast next week when they play Cal Poly for four, followed by a date with Cal State Fullerton.
For years the marquees on the Vegas strip would read, “the loosest slots in town”. That’s a totally different game than Cal, Pitt, and Oklahoma will play this weekend, despite the fact that like Casey said, you still take your chances.
This is act two…of seeing what they’re made of.
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