It’s crunch time for the MSU baseball team. With the season winding down and the Big Ten Tournament approaching, the Spartans desperately need wins. They found two of them during a four-game series at Purdue (27-22 overall, 18-9 Big Ten) last weekend, while only letting one game slip.
Lansing — The cities of Lansing and East Lansing filled the ballpark and emptied the kegs Thursday night at Oldsmobile Park in Lansing for the second annual Crosstown Showdown between the MSU baseball team and the Lansing Lugnuts.
David Grewe has what I would imagine to be an exciting problem on his hands. Grewe, the MSU baseball coach and one of those great guys who you hate to see lose, has a team of studs who sometimes play like duds.
When the Lansing Lugnuts and the MSU baseball team peer across the field at each other in their respective dugouts, they’ll see players of a different level and a different age.
The first three innings of the MSU baseball team’s game against Toledo on Wednesday at Kobs Field looked like the makings of an offensive slugfest.
Perry Costello says umpiring baseball games is like any other job — it’s nice to get noticed. So when Costello received a call from the International Baseball Federation, or IBAF, in November 2007 telling him he was selected as one of only two American umpires to work at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, it was only natural that the DeWitt resident felt a chill go up his spine. “I’ve worked a lot of big events,” said Costello, who has lived in the Lansing area his entire life. “But after (IBAF director of umpires Dick Runchey) talked to me and offered it to me, it made my neck hairs stand up and I said, ‘OK, that’s pretty cool.’
There’s no denying it: Chris Roberts was slumping. Through the MSU baseball team’s first 10 games of the season, the sophomore left fielder was hitting .167 and he wasn’t feeling like himself.
Before this season, Chris Cullen bounced around the MSU baseball team’s pitching staff without any firm role. But with a little help from pitching coach Tom Lipari and some offseason work, the senior right-hander has developed into arguably the team’s most dependable starting pitcher, a place head coach David Grewe plans to keep him.
MSU baseball coach David Grewe went into this weekend’s series with Michigan saying the matchup wasn’t a rivalry because one team — the Wolverines — always comes out on top.
When the MSU baseball team and Michigan meet for four games this weekend, they’ll travel a short distance to each other’s home fields, but MSU coach David Grewe won’t refer to the cross-state showdown as a “rivalry.”
Though it may seem strange to admit, representing a northern school in the Big Ten, MSU baseball head coach David Grewe calls his a squad a “warm weather team.” So, with a temperature of above 60 degrees in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s game against Central Michigan, it was only natural for MSU’s bats to explode.
In a game featuring two dominant pitching performances, it was an awkward ending to Sunday afternoon’s doubleheader between MSU (13-16 overall, 4-7 Big Ten) and Ohio State (18-11, 7-4).
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.”
More than any other sport, the game of baseball is based on numbers. From batting average to earned run average, every player is judged by the numbers he puts up on the diamond. In the case of junior catcher Kyle Day, the offensive numbers he has put up through 26 games jump off the stat sheet. He leads the Spartans with a .355 batting average, five home runs and 28 RBIs.
With a young season and an even younger opening-day roster, Lansing Lugnuts manager Clayton McCullough isn’t as worried about his team’s performance on the field as he is their adaptation to the grind of the professional game.
With a win on Wednesday, the MSU baseball team put a stop to an opponent’s winning streak that the Spartans started.
From the small town of Paducah, Ky., to the super-sized campus of MSU, junior catcher Eric Roof and freshman shortstop Jonathan Roof always have been on the same team.
After dropping both games of a doubleheader to Illinois on Saturday, MSU baseball coach David Grewe declared Sunday’s twin bill against the Illini as “Survival Sunday.”
The snow had melted, the grass was green and it was a perfect day to open a new baseball season Wednesday at Kobs Field. Too bad the MSU baseball team forgot to come out of hibernation. The Spartans fell to Eastern Michigan 10-3 in their home opener, losing to a team that came into the contest with a 1-17 record.
There haven’t exactly been the most beautiful days for baseball. With the typical erratic Michigan springtime weather coming through, cold temperatures and snow have forced the MSU baseball team to cancel and postpone scheduled East Lansing games.