Illinois baseball (15-11, 4-5) cruised through its midweek matchup against an in-state opponent, Illinois State (12-15, 4-2). On Tuesday night, Illinois defeated Illinois State 8-2.
This matchup was the 95th all-time meeting between these two squads and the 53rd in Champaign. Illinois has dominated the recent matchup history against Illinois State, as it’s won the last 12 of 15 matchups. Tuesday night was no different for Illinois.
Bullpen day for Illinois
The midweek matchups for Illinois have served as bullpen games to help the team develop pitchers that don’t normally see the starting rotation during the weekend series. Tuesday night was the same, as Illinois used eight pitchers.
Despite this, Illinois had seven shutdown innings during this game, with redshirt senior left-handed pitcher Payton Hutchings earning the win. The Coal City native only pitched a single inning, but he allowed zero hits and zero earned runs. He was also able to add a strikeout to go along with his solid inning.
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“We go out at the starter, and we’ve been able to go bullpen days on this,” head coach Dan Hartleb said. “Hopefully, to bring guys along a little bit, get them sharp, and it’s worked out well for us so far.”
Hutchings wasn’t the only one who had a solid performance on the mound; junior right-handed pitcher Mitch Dye also had a solid performance on Tuesday. Dye entered the game during the sixth inning, replacing freshman left-handed pitcher Nolan Girard.
The Springfield native, Dye, had two players on base but kept his composure while on the mound and struck out three hitters during his lone inning.
Illinois turned to sophomore left-handed pitcher Zach Bates to close out the game. Despite Illinois State getting two hits off of him, Bates got a single strikeout during his time in the ninth.
Scoring in bunches
The way the team has been able to score lately is with big innings. This occurred multiple times during the Michigan State (17-10, 4-5) Series, and it happened again during the game against Illinois State.
The Illini got on the board first in the second, earning a 3-0 lead before they went cold at the plate. This happened while the pitchers kept Illinois State’s bats at bay.
“[I] thought we did a good job when we were in some tight situations as far as coming up with big pitches and turning some double plays,” Hartleb said. ”If you look, we put too many men on base, but then we didn’t panic, and we were able to throw some good pitches and overcome that.”
During the fifth inning, Illinois scored five more runs. Sophomore outfielder Collin Jennings continued his strong string of games with another home run Tuesday night as well. Jennings is now tied for second on the team with six on the year.
By the time Illinois State even got on the board, the game was already out of reach. Illinois still held onto its six-run lead during the eighth inning. That score stood at the end of the game, with Illinois winning 8-2.
What comes next?
Illinois continues a home stretch this weekend with a three-game series against Maryland (14-15, 3-6). The first pitch for game one on Friday is at 6 p.m., and the second game on Saturday is at 3 p.m. The series finale on Sunday is at 1 p.m.
All three games will be streamed live on Big Ten Plus. They will also be live on the radio at 1400 am WDWS.
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