Illinois baseball (13-15, 3-6) will once again stay in-state for their midweek matchup. This time, however, they travel to Bloomington-Normal for a rematch against in-state rivals Illinois State (10-16, 2-7).

The Illini last played the Redbirds a week ago in Champaign. That game was a thrilling fireworks show, as the offense was all over the place with home runs coming left and right. However, in the end, it was the Redbirds who pulled out the 12-9 win.

Since then, the Redbirds have lost three in a row. The Illini have not been much better, having been embarrassed by one of the weakest teams in Division I baseball, the Northwestern Wildcats, who are No. 267 in the NCAA’s rating percentage index.

The Illini lost two of the three games in Evanston over the weekend. They lost by a walk-off on Friday, and they lost on Sunday after giving up a go-ahead three-run shot in the eighth inning.

The Illini have to start compiling wins, and there is no better time than the present. The Illini have now lost 12 of their last 19 games. They have not won a series since mid-March when they took two of three against Southern Illinois.

It’s not like the offense has not shown up, they certainly have been hitting well as a team. However, the team has at many times been unable to create runs when given opportunities.

A statistic called Weighted Runs Created Plus, or wRC+ for short, shows how above average player is at creating runs, with 100 being average. The stat adjusts for the ballpark and era played in.

Illinois’ best hitter on that metric — among players with over 20 games played — is sophomore catcher Camden Janik, who has a 126 wRC+, which is 26% better than the league average. That puts him at 27th in the Big Ten.

The biggest issue for the team seems to be the pitching right now, as the team has the second highest earned run average in the conference. Behind them are those same Wildcats that took the series from the Illini.

Illinois has also been somewhat unlucky, specifically junior righthander Riley Gowens. A statistic was invented, called batting average on balls in play, or BABIP, which measures a player’s batting average on a ball hit into the field of play. It does not utilize anything that does not get impacted by the defense, (home runs and strikeouts).

Gowens has the fifth highest ERA in the Big Ten at 5.93. However, his BABIP is .370, which is the third highest in the conference. Eventually, it could regress to the mean, but it does imply that at many points, his opponents are getting lucky.

Regardless of the numbers, the Illini have to improve if they want any chance at playing in the conference tournament. First pitch is at 5 p.m. in Normal, Illinois. The time is listed in Central Daylight Time.

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