Third baseman A.J. Shindler dives for the ball during the game against Eastern Michigan April 2 at Kobs Field. The Spartans defeated the Eagles, 5-3.
For the MSU baseball team and head coach David Grewe to right the ship this weekend and get on track for the Big Ten race, they’re going to have to go through the “best of the best.”
Ohio State (16-10 overall, 5-3 Big Ten) comes to Lansing to battle the Spartans (12-14, 3-5) on Friday in a four-game weekend series to be played at Oldsmobile Park.
For Grewe, it’s the perfect opportunity for his team to come together and prove its capabilities against a premier opponent.
“All their guys are good, which is kind of a scary thing,” he said of the Buckeyes.
“They don’t have the really high guys and then some of the lower guys; all their guys are good, scrappy baseball players in the sense that they’ll all get two-out hits, they’ll all compete and they’ll all battle for it. I don’t think there’s an out in their lineup, so we’re really going to have to pitch it well this weekend. Traditionally, they’ve been the best team in the league — Ohio State’s been it.”
The Spartans’ pitching has been somewhat of an inconsistent spot this season, with a staff earned run average of 4.7.
Two veteran pitchers — junior Mark Sorensen and senior Mike Monterey — have struggled in their outings, going a combined 2-5 in 12 total starts.
In contrast, the Buckeyes’ staff has four arms — freshmen Andrew Armstrong and Dean Wolosiansky and juniors J.B. Shuck and Jake Hale — with three wins or more.
Shuck, a crafty lefty as well as a .319 career hitter, has 40 strikeouts in 36 innings.
“We’re going to have to get the bats going because they have some pretty good pitching,” senior third baseman Steve Gerstenberger said.“Their starters are all pretty good so we’re going to have to find a way to get it going offensively.”
Gerstenberger said the pitching has been effective enough for the Spartans to get victories, but he and his teammates haven’t been able to string together consistent offense to back their guys on the mound. MSU has had strong outings in games against Quinnipiac (10 runs), Rice (9), Missouri (14) and Connecticut (11), but since they returned to East Lansing in March, they’ve only scored more than six runs three times.
“At times, we’re playing way above our level of competition,” junior catcher Kyle Day said.
“The consistency — we’re still finding that we need to bring that every single game. (Last weekend at Northwestern), the first three games we played well, we played hard, we played with intensity and the last game we played OK. But OK’s not good enough. A championship team doesn’t just play OK. Most teams we could have beaten at OK but (now) we have to play at a championship caliber.”
Friday’s first pitch is scheduled for 5:05 p.m.
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