chase allen

As promised, three weeks have passed since I last chronicled the happenings of the Michigan Softball and Baseball teams, so it's time to check back in. Softball was playing in the BTT when I started writing this, so I'm going to leave that one until early next week once we know the final result of Selection Sunday (likely not gonna be good!), but it feels like a good time to check back in on baseball. Nine more games have gone by and the regular season is nearing its conclusion. Once again we'll do a quick recap, check in on the B1G chase, recap the goings on with the team, and then preview the upcoming slate: 

Baseball: Jostling for B1G Positioning

The last time I wrote about Michigan Baseball we were getting ready for a massive home series against Michigan State that represented the last truly difficult B1G series on the schedule. At that time, the team was sifting through choppy results in conference play and were firmly in the "must win the B1G Tournament to make the NCAAs" territory, so our focus was on seeding (and qualifying) for the BTT in Omaha. That remains true in this edition. 

Season Results Since We Last Talked: That pivotal home series against MSU went pretty well! Michigan got out to a quick 5-2 lead in the Friday game and let strong pitching from Noah Rennard carry them, Mitch Voit working a clean and efficient ninth inning to nail it down. With the ace Connor O'Halloran going on Saturday, Michigan was situated in good position to get a series win at that point and that's what they got on Saturday. O'Halloran threw a complete game, striking out five and allowing three runs on 115 pitches. The Michigan offense gave him a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first on RBI knocks from Joey Velazquez and Jack Van Remortel and those were all the runs he'd need en route to a 7-3 victory. Michigan's pitching depth again proved problematic in another Sunday defeat, but taking 2/3 from MSU was satisfactory. 

That led Michigan into their bye week in the B1G, meaning it was time for a non-con tussle with Oklahoma State. That series meant nothing with the Wolverines far outside NCAA consideration as an at-large team, instead mostly serving to give this Michigan team some experience. They only ended up playing two games due to weather, with the Cowboys sweeping the Wolverines (not terribly surprising). O'Halloran pitched a decent game in the opener of the series, but two runs allowed in the 7th handed the Pokes a 5-3 victory. The second game was much messier, OKST using a 5 run fifth to take a commanding lead and eventually hanging on to win 8-5. Tough sledding for Tracy Smith's crew, but again not terribly meaningful in the long run. 

The mid-week game against Kent State wrapped up a seven game home-stand, Michigan able to use more of their A-List arms for that one due to the shortened series against OKST. Michigan won it 7-5 on the back of homers from both Mitch Voit and Tito Flores, as well as an RBI double from Jonathan Kim. After that the Wolverines were off to Minneapolis, a three-game set that ended up being quite low-scoring. Michigan's pitching showed up, nine runs allowed in the three games. Unfortunately, they only scored six runs in three games, including being shut out in the Friday game. The Maize & Blue held a 2-0 lead headed into the bottom of the 8th on Saturday when starter Noah Rennard began to unravel and Voit was unable to salvage it. Thankfully, the brilliance of Jacob Denner on Sunday (complete game, one run allowed!) and a first inning three-run HR from Velazquez powered Michigan to a win in Game #3 that denied the Gophers the sweep. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: B1G standings, notable performances, previews]

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]