The MSU baseball team’s biggest challenge this weekend at Oldsmobile park was Mother Nature.
The Spartans (31-16 overall, 12-12 Big Ten) managed to play just two of the four-game series with Ohio State (30-16-1, 16-9) as the rain kept both teams off the field.
MSU won 12-5 Friday, then lost 6-4 Saturday. Saturday’s game was originally scheduled to be a doubleheader, but after a three-hour rain delay the teams could only squeeze in one game. The doubleheader was postponed until Sunday, but Mother Nature wasn’t buying it.
“I’m happy to have the day off,” senior center fielder Chris McCuiston said. “But we would have liked to play two (Sunday).
“I think it’s definitely a disadvantage.”
With Saturday’s loss, the Spartans were mathematically eliminated from regular-season Big Ten title contention. But the team is on pace to make the Big Ten Tournament.
McCuiston said the team can’t dwell on what went wrong to kill MSU’s regular-season dreams. Instead, he said they have to spend the remaining six games to prepare for a tournament run.
“We’ve had some trouble playing all nine innings,” McCuiston said. “It’s just those little intangibles that hurt us. We put ourselves in position to lose sometimes.”
The “little intangibles” have been stolen bases, defensive errors and failing to score with runners in scoring position.
In Friday’s win, the Spartans stranded seven base runners, committed two errors and allowed three stolen bases. In Saturday’s loss, MSU stranded eight base runners, committed two errors and allowed four stolen bases.
Senior second baseman Jared Koutnik said the Spartans can’t expect to win if they continue to strand runners in scoring position. He said the team must improve in situational hitting.
With MSU hitting more than .300 as a team, the problem has become getting good pitches to hit.
“We’re not seeing the pitches we did at the beginning of the season,” Koutnik said. “We’re not getting fastballs on fastball counts. Everybody is seeing breaking balls.”
Koutnik said MSU needs to find its rhythm, but rain cancellations are making that difficult.
“We’re trying to get back on track, and we’re not playing enough for that,” he said. “You can only do so much in practice. We want to get some momentum going into the tournament.”
Spartan manager Ted Mahan said the cancellations also have hurt the pitching staff. He said the missed starts could cost the team down the road.
MSU travels to Kalamazoo on Tuesday for a 3 p.m. game against Western Michigan. But that time could change, as Mahan said he is trying to turn the game into a doubleheader.
Mahan said being knocked out of the regular-season race was to be expected. He said dreams of a title were unrealistic, but splitting the series against Ohio State was damaging.
“It’s like you didn’t play at all,” he said.
“We entered .500 and we’re still .500.”
