Illinois baseball struggles with situational hitting
Kevin Vongnaphone | Senior photo
Illinois’ Cody Sedlock (29) throws a pitch during the baseball game v. Indiana at Illinois Field on Friday, Apr. 17, 2015. Illinois won 5-1.
March 8, 2016
Tweet: .@IlliniBaseball has been focusing on situational hitting all season.
After each game, Illinois baseball head coach Dan Hartleb says there is always something that his team needs to work on. The common theme this year is that the Illini need to work on situational hitting.
The Illini left 25 runners on base over the three games this weekend, and those 25 were evenly distributed across the three games. The Illini left eight on base against Central Michigan and Villanova and nine on against Stetson.RB
Senior Adam Walton said that the statistic is not always representative of how well the Illini hit.
“We left a lot of guys on base,” Walton said. “But I thought our situational hitting was pretty good for two out of three games. It is baseball, you are going to leave guys on base. You can’t always get that big hit with two outs.”
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Walton was not happy with the Illini’s situational hitting on Saturday. The Illini had seven hits and Stetson walked four batters, but the Illini only scored four runs – two of which came off errors.RB
“I thought we swung the bats well on Friday,” Hartleb said. “We had a lot of hard outs. I thought we didn’t do well with situational hitting on Saturday.”
Illinois rotation is getting the job done
So far this season, the Illinois baseball starting rotation has done its job.
Cody Sedlock, Doug Hayes and Andrew Mamlic combined for five career starts entering this season. Sedlock had all five.
Nine games into the season, Sedlock sits at 2-0, Hayes at 2-1 and Mamlic at 1-1.RB Each pitcher has given up five earned runs in his respective three starts combined, and none of them have an ERA over 3.00.RB
While they aren’t throwing complete games, the three starters have been eating up innings and handing the game off to the Illini bullpen. This weekend at the Stetson Invitational was no different.
“I thought (all our pitchers) did well,” Hartleb said. “Overall all three were very productive. That’s all you can do is ask your starting pitchers to keep you in the game and give us the opportunity to win late.”
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