Baseball
Coach Paul Stevens thought the future of his pitching staff looked bright coming into this season.
But with a combination of an early departure and an injury, a trio of sophomore starters have been forced into prominent roles earlier than expected.
The pitching staff was supposed to consist of First-Team All-Big Ten selection J.A. Happ; junior Dan Brauer, who was coming off a 6-5 season with a 3.02 ERA; sophomore George Kontos, who started eight games last season; and a combination of senior Evan Blesoff and sophomores Ryan Myers and Andrew Smith.
But Happ left school early after the Philadelphia Phillies selected him in the third round of the Major League Baseball Draft. Then Brauer had arm surgery and was lost for 2005, leaving Blesoff and the sophomores to fill the rotation.
“I’m not going to sit there and tell you that we were worried,” Stevens said. “But I think you’re always concerned when you lose two players of the caliber of those guys and you’re looking at starting three sophomores on Big Ten weekends.”
This season the sophomore group has started 31 of the team’s 44 games and is 9-13 with a 5.25 ERA.
But Smith said the pitchers’ ages didn’t add to the pressure of being thrust into the starting lineup.
“It’s not necessarily that we were sophomores, it was that we didn’t have a lot of experience,” Smith said. “We’re all going through the same things for the first time.”
With Happ and Brauer gone, Kontos suddenly became the most experienced starter in the Wildcats’ lineup with eight career starts.
Kontos said his experience as a freshman made it easier when he became a full-time starter.
“If anything it made me more relaxed,” Kontos said. “Last year I came in as a freshman and was the fourth starter, so I pretty much got all my jitters out then. So I came into this season pretty confident and relaxed about what I needed to do.”
In 11 starts Kontos is 4-4 with a 4.45 ERA, the best of all starters, and two shutouts.
As one of Kontos’ sophomore counterparts, Myers had only one start in his career. But this year he has started eight games and is 3-4 with a 6.55 ERA.
Rounding out the triplet of sophomores is Andrew Smith, who has a 5.10 ERA and is 2-4.
“Any given weekend George (Kontos), Ryan (Myers) or Smitty (Smith) can be lights out and can be the ace of this staff,” Blesoff said.
With the addition of Brauer into the rotation next year along with the experience the staff gained this year, Myers said he is looking for improvement from the staff next season.
“We’ll each have one more year of experience,” Myers said. “We just need to get more consistent. We all have the ability to go nine innings, but this year we’ll go nine innings, then the next game go three innings. If we can just be more consistent, next year we’re going to be scary.”
But Stevens said even though the future may look good for his pitching staff, he’s not going to think about it.
“I thought the future was going to look pretty bright with J.A. Happ coming back and Brauer and all that last year,” Stevens said. “I don’t really have the time with all the injuries going on now to sit here and dream about what might be, because most of my dreams lately have turned into kind of nightmares.”
Reach Abe Rakov at [email protected].
Illinois-Chicago (29-17-1) vs. NU (21-23)
3 p.m., today
Rocky Miller Park
