Paul Stevens played a game of musical pitchers and lost Tuesday.
The Northwestern coach used six pitchers through the first eight innings of its non-conference matchup against Wisconson-Milwaukee before turning to his closer, junior Dan Schwartz, with a 4-2 lead in the top of the ninth.
Schwartz couldn’t covert the save opportunity, and the Wildcats (14-23) eventually lost 5-4 in 12 innings to the Panthers (18-18).
Stevens said he utilized so many pitchers to find “somebody that can help us on the weekends.”
“We’re in a scenario right now that we’re going to run a lot of guys out there to see who steps up,” Stevens said. “This is definitely an opportunity for us to get a little bit of an idea on guys, and that’s what we’re doing.”
The loss dropped the Cats to 0-3 in midweek games since the Big Ten season began.
“We’ve got to make some plays, we’ve got to make some pitches and it just didn’t happen in the ninth inning for us,” Stevens said.
After senior catcher Pat McMahon hit a three-run, wind-aided homerun over the right field fence to give the Cats their first lead, Schwartz came in to try to close out the game.
He struggled from the beginning, which led Stevens to try and calm his pitcher down. On the way out to the mound, Stevens signaled for everyone in the bullpen to come back to the dugout, signifiying that Schwartz would go the rest of the way.
Schwartz ended up allowing two Wisconsin-Milwaukee runs, both unearned, and the game went to extra innings.
“I didn’t throw enough strikes and they got hits when they needed to,” Schwartz said.
Junior Ryan Myers started for the Cats and gave up a run in two innings. Junior Andrew Smith took over for the third and fourth innings, also allowing a run. That is where the pitching carousel really began, as four pitchers pitched an inning each without allowing a run.
“I thought they did a great job,” Stevens said. “I’m very pleased with a lot of things I saw from a lot of people today.”
While NU pitchers seemed to find their rythm in the loss, the Cats’ bats went cold.
Junior third baseman Caleb Fields and McMahon went a combined 6 for 10 from the plate, while the rest of the team combined for two hits. The Cats didn’t manage a hit in the three extra frames.
Because NU started the season with a poor overall record, non-conference losses at this point don’t impact the team very much.
“These are good for practice,” McMahon said. “You wan’t to win every game, but these help out because game reps are always better than practice reps.
“We’re in first place (in the Big Ten) right now – so the games coming up are real big.”
Reach Abe Rakov at [email protected].
