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Aaron

IU Baseball at Illinois: Another Massive Series

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Once again a huge series but this time on the road against a red hot team. I am driving to Champaign tonight for the game so will not be able to post again but can provide a good recap.

Illinois' starting staff reminds me of the one from our College World Series year with more or less 3 aces. We had Slegers, Denato and Hart that year all of which were Friday aces at some point. Illinois has 3 guys named Andy Fisher, Ty Weber and Cyrillo Watson. First 2 are sub 3 ERA's while the last one is sub 3.50. Any of those guys are legit aces. With that said we probably have our best staff since that 2013 year with Milto, Gordon and Saalfrank. The key is for Milto and Gordon to pitch like they have all year and not get banged around for 4 runs early as they did last week. These are probably all going to be like 3-2 games and the key is going to be the starters pitching well. 

Illini also have a good lineup but no Bren Spillane who went on to be drafted last year and hit over .400 most of year. The one area we have a huge advantage is HR's as Illinois has only 29 on the year and only their top hitter Zac Taylor with more than 5.  Illinois is mostly the ultimate small ball team but they do have almost as many doubles and triples as us. 

Neither bullpen is fantastic and basically mirror images. Illinois like us has a lock down closer, one good middle guy (much like we have Lloyd to close and Manous) and a bunch of mediocrity.  

The key is going to be if IU's power or Illinois small ball wins the day. Should be a fun series with 2 very evenly matched teams and if IU wants any chance of winning Big Ten and hosting a Regional gonna need to come away with another series win on the road. A series win will be worth roughly 80 RPI points and will move us from 29 up to around 20 and put us in position to be in contention to host. Anything less and we will remain in the mid to high 20's which will keep us locked into tourney but almost certainly as a 2 seed going somewhere else. 

Time to see what this team is made of.   

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1 hour ago, Aaron said:

Once again a huge series but this time on the road against a red hot team. I am driving to Champaign tonight for the game so will not be able to post again but can provide a good recap.

Illinois' starting staff reminds me of the one from our College World Series year with more or less 3 aces. We had Slegers, Denato and Hart that year all of which were Friday aces at some point. Illinois has 3 guys named Andy Fisher, Ty Weber and Cyrillo Watson. First 2 are sub 3 ERA's while the last one is sub 3.50. Any of those guys are legit aces. With that said we probably have our best staff since that 2013 year with Milto, Gordon and Saalfrank. The key is for Milto and Gordon to pitch like they have all year and not get banged around for 4 runs early as they did last week. These are probably all going to be like 3-2 games and the key is going to be the starters pitching well. 

Illini also have a good lineup but no Bren Spillane who went on to be drafted last year and hit over .400 most of year. The one area we have a huge advantage is HR's as Illinois has only 29 on the year and only their top hitter Zac Taylor with more than 5.  Illinois is mostly the ultimate small ball team but they do have almost as many doubles and triples as us. 

Neither bullpen is fantastic and basically mirror images. Illinois like us has a lock down closer, one good middle guy (much like we have Lloyd to close and Manous) and a bunch of mediocrity.  

The key is going to be if IU's power or Illinois small ball wins the day. Should be a fun series with 2 very evenly matched teams and if IU wants any chance of winning Big Ten and hosting a Regional gonna need to come away with another series win on the road. A series win will be worth roughly 80 RPI points and will move us from 29 up to around 20 and put us in position to be in contention to host. Anything less and we will remain in the mid to high 20's which will keep us locked into tourney but almost certainly as a 2 seed going somewhere else. 

Time to see what this team is made of.   

Thanks for the write up. I haven't been able to follow too closely this year. Wish more games were on TV. Surprised one of these is not. 

Stats don't tell the full story but I was a little surprised at the lower than usual batting averages especially with all the power numbers we have. Seems like MLB hitting approach has trickled down to college or maybe the BIG has better pitching this year? For example, Gorski had .356 last year and is a little over .300 this year (second best BA on the team I believe). 

Our strength looks to be the SP. Great numbers for the guys you named. Would be great to have another bullpen arm really establish themselves down the stretch outside of Lloyd and Manous. Looking forward to following this series online. Enjoy the games. 

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18 minutes ago, TXHoosierDaddy said:

Thanks for the write up. I haven't been able to follow too closely this year. Wish more games were on TV. Surprised one of these is not. 

Stats don't tell the full story but I was a little surprised at the lower than usual batting averages especially with all the power numbers we have. Seems like MLB hitting approach has trickled down to college or maybe the BIG has better pitching this year? For example, Gorski had .356 last year and is a little over .300 this year (second best BA on the team I believe). 

Our strength looks to be the SP. Great numbers for the guys you named. Would be great to have another bullpen arm really establish themselves down the stretch outside of Lloyd and Manous. Looking forward to following this series online. Enjoy the games. 

Most B1G games are on BTN Plus

The conference does a TERRIBLE job of covering baseball as a whole though. There's no reason at least one of these games isnt on the regular BTN. At 730pm tonight BTN is showing a womens college lacrosse game... 

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27 minutes ago, btownqb said:

Most B1G games are on BTN Plus

The conference does a TERRIBLE job of covering baseball as a whole though. There's no reason at least one of these games isnt on the regular BTN. At 730pm tonight BTN is showing a womens college lacrosse game... 

Ridiculous. BIG network really does do a horrible job of this. I mean I am all for showing various sports but womens or mens lacrosse isn't going to generate much fanfare at all on at a primetime spot. 

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I will be at the games tonight and tomorrow. It is official that they will be selling beer there this weekend. 

They also have field turf, which I am a fan of. The rain tomorrow morning won't hamper the field at all. 

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1 hour ago, TXHoosierDaddy said:

Ridiculous. BIG network really does do a horrible job of this. I mean I am all for showing various sports but womens or mens lacrosse isn't going to generate much fanfare at all on at a primetime spot. 

I agree. However, IU has a few games coming up on BTN Television and ESPNU. 

Its not ideal but given how far the program has come and it upsets people that we don't get free TV every game shows how far program has come. When I was growing up I asked my babysitter if we could at least listen to game on radio and he told me IU would never be on radio for baseball.

However, now we have almost every game either on radio on the dial on 105.1 in Bloomington and the rest online radio all free. We get 5-10 games on regular TV each year and the rest on BTN2go. I get people are upset at the fee but $100 a year ($10 a month) to watch all the soccer, baseball, volleyball and Women's basketball which I do is not a terrible deal. Every once in a while you get an MSU who has a horrible feed and I think the Big Ten should fine them for that but almost all the time it is a relatively high quality broadcast and our home games certainly are. I get paying is not everyone's cup of tea but I don't have a problem with it.

Would it be ideal to have every game televised on TV or online for Free? Absolutely, but given where things were 10 yrs ago when you had only live stats and no TV ever we have come a long way. Maybe in 10 years we will be at the point where every game is on TV.

 

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One more thing: The Illini have been winning a ton of close games lately so hopefully that luck will turn on them. The exception was last Friday when they absolutely jumped on Nebraska's ace early for 6 runs the first 3 innings and won easily.

Milto cannot afford to let that happen or it will be a long night. Otherwise it will probably be a 50-50 1 run game late and it is imperative we don't make any errors or mental mistakes or we have no chance.       

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1 hour ago, Aaron said:

I agree. However, IU has a few games coming up on BTN Television and ESPNU. 

Its not ideal but given how far the program has come and it upsets people that we don't get free TV every game shows how far program has come. When I was growing up I asked my babysitter if we could at least listen to game on radio and he told me IU would never be on radio for baseball.

However, now we have almost every game either on radio on the dial on 105.1 in Bloomington and the rest online radio all free. We get 5-10 games on regular TV each year and the rest on BTN2go. I get people are upset at the fee but $100 a year ($10 a month) to watch all the soccer, baseball, volleyball and Women's basketball which I do is not a terrible deal. Every once in a while you get an MSU who has a horrible feed and I think the Big Ten should fine them for that but almost all the time it is a relatively high quality broadcast and our home games certainly are. I get paying is not everyone's cup of tea but I don't have a problem with it.

Would it be ideal to have every game televised on TV or online for Free? Absolutely, but given where things were 10 yrs ago when you had only live stats and no TV ever we have come a long way. Maybe in 10 years we will be at the point where every game is on TV.

 

I understand why they arent all televised.. I have a problem with what is in the place of our games. Also... you can knock it down to $72 a year for BTN plus if you buy a whole year at a time. 

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24 minutes ago, btownqb said:

I understand why they arent all televised.. I have a problem with what is in the place of our games. Also... you can knock it down to $72 a year for BTN plus if you buy a whole year at a time. 

Thats what I do.

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Got home way to late last night to post anything. With that said as Brass said we just don't have offense on Fridays. Unlike last 2 starts can't blame Milto for this one as he kept us in game with 4 scoreless innings than did an amazing job to dance out of the 5th in a huge jam with just 1 run. 

Illinois has 3 really good starters but IU seems to have a Friday issue more than that don't hit good starters as they have beaten up on some really good Saturday and Sunday guys. Should make today interesting. It all started in the 1st when Gorski was robbed of a HR at the RF wall on a jumping catch. Like usual we lived and died by the HR with many swings for the fences while Illinois went for solid contact and slapped many clean soft hits which is typical. It also didn't help that wind was blowing straight in last night.

The problem is in both for the Big Ten and NCAA tourney to keep having a dead offense on opening game will put us way behind 8 ball. We can probably recover in both but as we learned last year even a couple nice wins will probably eventually get you beat in Regional's no matter how hard you play right until the end. For this year that may be OK and we may need to accept that this is a 3rd-4th place Big Ten team and a Regional participant somewhere else as a 2 or 3 seed. With that said the future to me looks a lot brighter under Mercer than it did under Lemonis, and I hope this is the beginning of continuing to be the Big Ten's most consistent team but with a few conference championships and Super Regional's as well. Hopefully this is just the beginning of taking the next step and I really like Mercer so far.  

As for their stadium it reminds me of Armstrong Stadium at IU in that it was build around the same time in the 80's so far beyond its time that it has lasted as a pretty nice facility for over 30 years. It is probably in need of minor renovations as Armstrong is doing now but will last as a solid facility for a lot longer than most with how elite it was built at the time of construction.

Lastly nice to see a fair number of IU fans make trip (maybe 100 in front of 1st base dugout where team was).

I will be busy today and unable to post again (and probably only catching brief glimpse on phone) during so I'll see what I can do for a recap.

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IU Falls 3-1 to Illinois. Unfortunately, for IU this probably takes them out of Big Ten Title contention and Regional host. With that said baring a collapse they are still almost certain to go to NCAA Tourney and just have to hope they get sent close by to Nashville or Louisville Regional. I think we just need to except this is a similar team to last few years that is a Regional team and upper to mid pack Big Ten team. With that said I thinks thats OK for this year and the future with Mercer looks a lot brighter. Hopefully very soon we take the next step to being a conference title contender and Regional host in next couple years. This feels a lot like what Tracy Smith was building in 09-12 before taking the next step.  

For today, once again with the wind blowing straight in IU had several balls die at the warning track and only got on board on an Eijah Dunham solo HR. While Ironically Illinois got their 3 runs on 2 homers they were much more methodical with their swings. Like Milto yesterday, Tanner Gordon pitched good enough to win but got no help from his offense as IU takes first series loss since playing Tennessee in February and only second of year. 

I'll have updates throughout game tomorrow finally. 

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I know Illini have some good pitching but offense just seems to be a real problem for this team. If the bats don't start heating up over the next few weeks, it will be a quick tourney exit. Pitching by all accounts has been good enough to really be a threat in a regional. 

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Just about to start.

A little tip: We need to win today but we have taken ourselves out of hosting so we really need to hope Illinois hosts and does well down stretch after losing to us today hopefully. 

This is because while we cannot go to Champaign for Regional's as a fellow Big Ten team it creates another close by Regional for other non Big Ten Midwestern teams (I.E. Indiana St) to go to making Louisville or Nashville a more likely destination for IU to at least stay close by.

We need to accept we are probably not going to win Big Ten or host a Regional and just need to finish strong and hope for good play down the stretch that sends us to Louisville or Nashville. 

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No Ben Troike for Illinois due to injury so they are missing a big bat. Also not much wind so hopefully some of the balls we clobber against a weaker (albeit not by much) pitcher get out.

Underway!

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