Baseball is a simple game of timing. There are three basic facets of the game – hitting, pitching and defense – that must click in order to win.
Northwestern has lacked that good timing.
The Wildcats (5-17, 1-1 Big Ten) started the season pitching well, but struggled at the plate. And now that their bats have come around, their pitching has taken a turn for the worse.
“Baseball is a funny game,” sophomore Jake Goebbert said. “It is such a team game with so many individual performances. So, it is very difficult to have one aspect of the team struggle and be successful. If you look at the season thus far you can see that. Early on, we struggled hitting but pitched well. But recently we have struggled throwing the ball, but have started hitting the ball.”
Before NU’s 13-4 win over Purdue last Saturday, the team had lost eight straight games. In five of those eight games, the Cats allowed their opponents to score in double-figures.
The offense still managed to put up a fight in most of those high-scoring games, but could not keep up once its opponents pulled ahead.
“We had some struggles in the field, struggles at the plate, and struggles on the mound,” sophomore Chris Lashmet said. “But we learned from our mistakes and built on the loss. It is not as if we played terrible, either. Yes, (coach Paul) Stevens was disappointed in the losses, but he told us to find a way to win a game, which we did against Purdue.”
During its eight-game losing streak, NU learned its offense and pitching cannot be on different wavelengths if the team expects to win games.
And while the Cats’ pitching and hitting have been in flux, to blame their current struggles on either of the two disregards the team focus of baseball.
“Offensively, those things will happen when a swing of the bat will turn a single digit game into a double digit one,” Stevens said. “But over that span you will not blame it on one particular area, whether its defense, pitching or hitting. You win and lose at all facets of the game. Successful games are built around throwing strikes, making plays and finding a way to score runs.”
Now that the Cats’ pitching has turned around, their hitting needs to return to the form it began the season with.
When the offense failed to score more than six runs in seven of the first eight games, the pitching kept games within two runs for five of the first eight games.
With two solid pitching performances against Purdue to build on, the Cats are becoming more confident that they can pitch and hit with the same efficiency.
“It’s too early to tell if Saturday was the first step in putting the two together,” Goebbert said. “But I truly believe we are very talented young group of individuals that are looking forward to the rest of the Big Ten season to show them what we are made of.”
