After losing five starting position players and two pitchers from last season’s 26-28-1 squad, coach Paul Stevens has been forced to use underclassmen to fill the void.
Northwestern has started eight underclassmen in at least two games this season, and sophomores have started 13 of the Wildcats’ 17 games on the mound to begin the year. NU (9-8) has won three of four games coming into this weekend’s series against Indiana (14-6), with underclassmen pitchers recording the wins in two of the three.
“It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before,” Stevens said. “We go through this quite a bit here. We’re not just stockpiled with 40, 40-some people in the program, so you’re always going to be rotating some young guys in.”
Freshman second baseman Jake Owens has started all 17 games, is batting .269 with 10 RBIs and has drawn a team-high 11 walks. He is second on the team with 67 at-bats.
“When we were coming into the program, coach was very open with us about how everyone gets a shot at playing time,” Owens said. “And that’s the truth. He gives everyone an equal opportunity, and I knew if I worked hard I could earn a spot.”
The Cats have averaged more than six runs per game, but have scored fewer than two runs six times this season. NU has scored more than 10 runs three times this season.
Stevens said the inconsistency may not be because of the youth of his team, but rather the pitching of its opponents.
“Good pitching shuts down good hitting any day of the week,” Stevens said. “In some of the cases where we haven’t had the 16 hits or whatever we swing the bat pretty well. We’ve hit a lot of hard balls at people.
“We need to understand how to hit in certain situations and how to efficiently generate runs, whether it’s by the big inning or manufacturing runs by the small ball.”
After losing pitchers J.A. Happ and Dan Brauer, who started more than half of NU’s games last season, the Cats are relying on a trio of sophomores to pick up the slack. Sophomores Andrew Smith, George Kontos and Ryan Meyers started 11 games in their careers before this season, but now make up three-fourths of the starting rotation — senior Evan Blesoff is the fourth.
Kontos started nine games for NU last season, going 3-5 with a 5.91 ERA. He is 3-1 with a 2.79 ERA in five starts this season.
“I’ve been very pleased with Kontos, Smith and Meyers,” Stevens said. “They’ve shown a lot of poise at times, and I think they’ve shown the ability to get people out.
“But they are going to go through those growing pains that young pitchers go through.”
NU opens the Big Ten season against Indiana on Saturday in a four-game series that was pushed back a day due to impending inclement weather.
“There’s a lot of guys that haven’t been in a Big Ten series and there’s a lot of guys that have,” Stevens said. “This weekend is going to be an experience for a lot of guys that have heard about it, but haven’t seen it. We’ll get an opportunity to see how they can think on their feet.
“Right now I’m not expecting anything more than I’ve seen or anything less.”
Reach Abe Rakov at [email protected].
