What happened to Maryland's pitching?
- Thread starter knight82
- Start date
Our pitching was not THAT bad. ERA only dropped to second in the league because of the late season swoon. https://bigten.org/stats.aspx?path=baseball&year=2023&conf=true
Our starting pitching was good, it was our bullpen that sucked and ultimately cost us a spot in the postseason.
I put this comment in a thread on the main board. Part of it is that in college baseball this time of year, most teams don't have a ton of pitching and have to sacrifice innings and games while working for a bigger goal.
Their pitching wasn't as good as last year, including some of the guys who returned from last year. And unfortunately they had to go the last quarter of the season with only two of their weekend starters available. Freshman Kyle McCoy, who is going to be a stud, kind of disappeared; I'm really not sure what happened with that (he's the guy who got hit in the face by a Brito line drive, but he pitched after that). He started the first game of the B1G tournament, went 2/3 of an inning, and we never saw him again. That game and all his other starts were done by "bullpen committee." They got away with that until they didn't.
In a tournament, you have to play the long game. On Saturday, Wake had saved Rhett Lowder for them. He is unbeatable and nearly unhittable (14-0 this year). Once they were down, they saved their better pitchers for another day, knowing they couldn't win that game no matter who they put out there. So the back end of the bullpen got battered. Guys I'd never heard of were on the mound, ha ha. It doesn't matter if you lose 11-6 or 21-6. It only matters if you win or lose, and what arms you have saved for the next games.
Then, yesterday, they gambled that they could get away with the B-level pitchers against George Mason, saving what was left of the A-level staff for Wake Forest (It probably didn't help that they weren't back in bed after the Saturday night game until 2-3 a.m due to weather delays). I didn't think that was a good idea, The guy they started has been smashed by Tuesday mid-majors all year (although he did start the B1G Championship game, which they won). They lost yesterday because the offense was only able to score ten against a mid-major's third pitching option.
They had a great year, winning the season and tournament championships. They were clearly the best team in their conference. And it wasn't entirely fair that they had to go play Wake Forest when both Iowa and Indiana got far easier berths. But it was over. They should have been able to beat George Mason, but I don't even know who would have pitched against Wake after that.
ETA: managers don't do stuff this, for some reason, but I thought that Lowder is so good that they should have conceded that Saturday game by throwing the back end bullpen guys for 9 innings, and challenged Wake to beat them with their other pitchers on Sunday. I guess waving the white flag on Saturday isn't a good optic...
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....and people wonder why our relief pitchers are running to the portal.
Dang, I didn't check after Maryland got beat (by George Mason, LOL). I was sure Iowa would win that one.
Good luck Hoosiers...
