mitch voit

I wrote a softball update a few weeks back, when Michigan was starting to show some promise offensively, with a few important weekends upcoming. Three weekend series have passed since then, with Michigan continuing to bank wins and stay near the top of the conference as we learn what this young team is made of. It's about time for another softball update and in turn, it's time to give Michigan's baseball team some love as well, after yet another series win in conference play, most recently over the rival Ohio State Buckeyes. Today we'll be accomplishing both, talking about developments in the softball season and the road ahead, before digging into where Michigan Baseball sits with a month to go in the regular season: 

Softball hitters: REAL 

When I wrote about softball last time, I was reporting on the genuinely encouraging developments on offense for the Wolverines that had suddenly materialized, following a moribund first month of the season. At the time I noted that we would gain more information on just what these young hitters were made of over the following couple weeks, with two solid pitching teams upcoming in Northwestern and Iowa. There were reasons to believe the offensive surge was real, but until they faced more deecent pitching staffs, it was difficult to buy in fully. 

So what happened? Michigan has continued to hit pretty well. They didn't bludgeon Northwestern, which no one was expecting against a team with a star ace like Ashley Miller, but after scoring just one in the first game in an abbreviated run rule game, they put up 4 and then 5 on the 'Cats. It was disappointingly not enough to win any of the games due to a pitching meltdown, but from an offensive standpoint, I came away encouraged. Northwestern has only allowed 4+ runs nine times this season in 38 games and two of those were against the Wolverines. That's something. 

Then came Iowa, who had allowed 6+ runs four times all season. Michigan put up 6+ in all three games, seeming to send their pitching into a tailspin that then carried over into a disastrous series against Indiana this past weekend. Michigan put up 11 and 5 in mid-week games against MSU over the past two weeks and then put up 4, 6, and 11 this past weekend against Nebraska. The pitching held up enough to sweep all of those games against Iowa, MSU, and Nebraska. To cap it all off, Michigan went on the road yesterday to Oakland and defeated the Golden Grizzlies for the second time this season, winning by a 9-4 final score.  

I don't believe that Michigan is one of the very best offenses in college softball, but we have enough evidence now that this is a good college offense. More importantly, it is an offense that is miles better than what they put out there in any of the last few seasons. The numbers over the past 29 games speak for themselves: in that span Michigan is hitting a quadruple slash of .324/.419/.558/.977 as a team. Their batting average, OBP, and SLG would all be top 25 in the country if sustained over a full season. Of course, they haven't been facing the most *elite* pitchers in the country during this stretch (mostly conference games against a weak B1G) and thus we wouldn't expect it to be fully sustained over a full season. but I've followed this team a while now. I've watched versions of Michigan over the years, particularly 2022 and 2023, that couldn't hit the ball against anybody. To now have a team that is bludgeoning the merely okay teams on the schedule is a significant development. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: digging deeper into softball + baseball talk]

Yesterday we did an update to the latest happening in Michigan Softball's 2023 season. Today we will be doing the same for Michigan Baseball.

Baseball: Navigating the choppy seas

Last time we talked, Michigan Baseball was coming off their first B1G series of the season, having swept PSU at home to get some momentum behind them after a bumpy close to the non-conference schedule. We noted that they had a couple big arms but pitching depth and the offense overall needed to improve moving forward for the team to do lots of damage in the B1G. Half of that sentence did come true, while half is still a struggle. 

The season results since last time: Michigan has played three standard B1G weekend series since the last installment, two of which on the road and one at home. The first was also very promising, a series victory down in Champaign, ILL, with a win over the Illini. Michigan claimed the Friday game with a big time performance at the plate from Jonathan Kim, who went 5/5(!) with 4 RBI and a run scored. The Wolverines scored early and often to build up to 12-2 lead behind a strong start from ace Connor O'Halloran. The bullpen did its best to try and let Illinois back into it, but ultimately sealed a 12-9 win. The Saturday game saw Michigan get a strong start from Chase Allen and more heroics at the plate from Kim, the go-ahead single in the 8th before a grand slam by Mitch Voit in the ninth put the game away. Having used all their quality arms to get the first two wins, Michigan started Walker Cleveland on Sunday which more or less amounts to waving the white flag, and the squad got crushed in the final game.

Still, it was a strong weekend and they followed it up with a 12-5 win over WMU in the midweek MACtion game. Nebraska came to town over Easter Weekend, the Friday game being a pitching duel for the ages between O'Halloran and Nebraska's Emmett Olson. Michigan tied the game in the 8th on a HR by Jonathan Kim to make it 1-1, but Michigan couldn't get it done in regulation despite nine innings of one-run ball from O'Halloran. Noah Rennard allowed two in the tenth and that would be enough for the Huskers to win it. The Wolverines responded by scoring six runs in the first two innings on Saturday to secure an 8-6 win, but the rubber match on Sunday went to the visitors as Jacob Denner was bludgeoned for six earned runs in 2.1 innings pitched and the Wolverine bats were held pretty quiet. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Butler came to town for the mid-week game after that, an easy 13-2 Michigan win, and then Tracy Smith's squad headed back out on the road to Piscataway and a matchup with Rutgers. The weekend would deal with major weather issues and big time pitching woes. O'Halloran allowed four runs before he'd recorded an out on Friday, the first time all year he'd been lit up, so Smith opted to yank O'Halloran after just one inning, so the lefty could be saved for a later game in the series. In the process, he punted the game and Michigan lost 13-0, but now they had some ammo later on. The unusual strategy worked, as O'Halloran came in to game two of the series after Chase Allen had been beaten up early on. After being entered into the game, O'Halloran slammed the door on Rutgers, allowing one run over six innings, giving Michigan's offense time to claw out of a 6-0 hole, something they did on their way to a 13-8 victory. Ted Burton hit a three run homer and Joe Longo hit a two run blast before late offense from Jack Van Remortel got the game to the finish line. 

The final game of the series was Michigan's second straight loss in a rubber match, played Sunday evening as game two was suspended and resumed on Sunday afternoon. The Wolverines had favorable arms available, but little offense early and a bad fourth inning for Noah Rennard did them in. Tracy Smith was tossed along the way for arguing a close play and that was all she wrote for Michigan's weekend. They returned home on Wednesday for a mid-week game against Toledo and lost an ugly one 10-7 to a sub-.500 MAC opponent. To make matters worse, they held a 6-1 lead early in the game, before pitching issues and poor defense unraveled the game. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: what it means, individual performances, and MSU]

The dawn of the Tracy Smith era in Ann Arbor is nearly upon us. After Erik Bakich exited the program in favor of Clemson, Warde Manuel turned to former Indiana and Arizona State head coach Tracy Smith to lead the Wolverines into the future. It was a bumpy transition at first, with plenty of players entering the portal, but Smith did alright keeping a lot of the roster together, minus graduation/MLB guys he was bound to loss. As a result, a reasonable chunk of production returns from last season's Big Ten Tournament Champion roster. There are plenty of questions, though, uncertainty on the mound, sizable holes in the lineup, and a fresh new coaching staff. Let's get acquainted with all of them: 

Who is Tracy Smith? Who are these new coaches?

Things are a bit different at the top and the Bakich --> Smith transition is the most important. I covered Smith back when he was hired in July, but the first thing to know is he's a much older and more veteran coach than Bakich was when he arrived in Ann Arbor. Smith was a solid coach at Miami (OH), winning the MAC a couple times, and then was hired to coach Indiana in 2005, where he replaced a former mentor Bob Morgan. At IU, Smith was an excellent coach, turning them into the no-doubt best-in-the-conference program by his last few seasons in Bloomington, finishing 2nd, 1st, 1st in the last three years. He won two B1G regular season titles and two B1G Tournament titles, taking Indiana to the CWS in 2013 and snagging the #4 national seed in the 2014. 

The reason Smith was available for Michigan to hire is what happened after he left Indiana, a disappointing tenure at Arizona State. Despite exceptional recruiting, their on-field results were underwhelming, falling short of expectations repeatedly and never finishing higher than 3rd in the PAC-12, also never making it out of the regional in the NCAAs. There were reports of locker room problems, something that the ASU AD alluded to in his decision to fire Smith. It was not what you want from a coach that is coming to Michigan, and my feeling at the time of the hiring is it's all about which Tracy Smith this is. Indiana Tracy Smith would be a terrific coach... the ASU Tracy Smith would be a disaster for Michigan. 

Still, this is a fresh start for Smith and as I wrote in July, maybe he just got out over his skis recruiting blue chip players at a national program like ASU and he's more suited to coaching in the B1G/Midwest, where his background is. It's too early to know anything about Smith at Michigan, but it is a very early decent sign that he was able to fetch several of Michigan's players out of the portal, convincing them to stay. Retrieving Jimmy Obertop and getting him to come back, for example, was massive. I'm willing to hope for the best as there is a wide range of legitimate outcomes with Smith. He needed to bomb out at ASU to be a candidate to come to a program like Michigan, but it's also not too often you get to hire a coach with multiple B1G regular season titles on his resume (something that Bakich never achieved). 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Assistants, hitters, pitchers, expectations]