Northwestern’s batting order has struggled over the past week, but it reached a new low Tuesday when it compiled just three hits against St. Xavier’s.
“We just got to start finding a way to hit the ball better,” senior first baseman Paul Snieder said. “We really haven’t had any hits the last four games, so you just got to find a way to put the ball in play and stream together some hits and runs. You’re not going to win if you only have three hits in a game.”
Snieder’s logic has held true over the past week. The Wildcats (10-19, 3-6 Big Ten) have scored four runs or less in each of their last four games, and they have four losses to show for it.
Unfortunately for the Cats, some of their hottest bats from the early spring season have begun to cool off. Freshman right fielder Walker Moses has seen his batting average plummet from .370 before NU’s series win over Nebraska to .315, and sophomore designated hitter Jack Livingston’s has fallen from .357 to .303.
Livingston and Moses are not the only NU players with their tires stuck in the mud right now. Snieder, who was on the watch list for the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award last season after he hit .347 and drove in 42 runs, is hitting just .264 this spring.
“Right now Paul just has to sit and relax and find a way to do the things that he is capable of doing,” coach Paul Stevens said. “On Saturday he had three hits, and on Sunday and (Tuesday), he didn’t have any, so it’s a work in progress with him and he has just got to find a way to get the barrel to the ball.”
When asked about his recent slump, which includes three hitless performances in his last four games, Snieder acknowledged that things haven’t gone so well of late.
“I just got to work on it, keep swinging the bat and hope that good things come around in the near future,” Snieder said.
Snieder and company were spellbound Tuesday by St. Xavier hurler Andy Kovarik, who held them to just three hits and three unearned runs over eight innings.
“We hit the ball hard a few times (Tuesday) at people,” Stevens said. “They just had some of our kids played really well. We had some hard balls, but the bottom line is we still only had three hits and we only scored that many runs and that’s just a little disheartening right now that we’re in this kind of a slump and we’ve got to find a way to work through it.”
Stevens and Geoff Rowan both mentioned the difficulty of facing a slower pitcher like Kovarik, who relied on an assortment of offspeed pitches rather than a blazing fastball to stymie NU, but the senior catcher said the Cats need to adjust to different styles on the mound.
“Every game you have to make in-game adjustments,” Rowan said, “and that’s something that we have to look forward to going into this weekend.”
The Cats’ slumping offense will certainly face a challenge in the Golden Gophers’ pitching staff. Minnesota has the second-most strikeouts in the Big Ten and has surrendered the third-fewest hits and the fourth-fewest walks in the conference.
In particular, the Golden Gophers (17-17, 3-3) have two aces that they will likely trot out against the Cats this weekend. TJ Oakes has been phenomenal all season long, with a 5-2 record and a 1.46 earned run average. He is one of very few starting pitchers to surrender fewer baserunners than innings pitched. He is joined by DJ Snelten, who despite a modest 3-2 record has held opposing hitters to a .203 batting average.
Coming off four straight losses, NU will have to figure out some way to support its talented pitching staff. The Cats have wasted several strong efforts of late, compiling just eight runs and 16 hits combined in their last four games. Yet Rowan vehemently denied his team is in a slump.
“No, no, no. It’s like I said: Fighting against adversity,” Rowan said. “Now we’re so focused on this Minnesota weekend that we’ve got to try to turn it around in terms of the Big Ten and try to make the tournament.”
