Michigan Baseball - Clutch Hitting and Pitching in Comeback Win Last Night
Anybody else catch the baseball game against Eastern last night on B10 Network?
Michigan looked down and out entering the 6th with a 4-1 deficit. The home team mangaged a run in the bottom of the 6th to cut the deficit to 4-2. After a baserunner getting hit by the ball submarined a promising bottom half of the 7th, the 8th brought a string of impressive play and a timely rally for the good guys.
In the top half of the 8th, Eastern put men on 2nd and 3rd with one out and looked poised to slam the door on Michigan's comeback hopes. Michigan brought in hard throwing reliever Jack Weisenburger - a Michigan legacy who's dad and granddad had both played baseball and football for the Wolverines. Weisenburger impressively shut down the Eastern threat, sandwiching a walk between two swinging strikeouts and giving Michigan a managable shot at a comeback.
In the bottom half of the inning Michigan capitalized on the opportunity. A single and two walks loaded the bases with nobody out. Senior catcher Brock Keener provided the heroics, stepping to the plate to deliver a clutch 3-run triple into the gap in right center. Michigan would add an insurance run to head into the 9th with a 6-4 advantage.
From there Weisenburger shut the door on Eastern, putting in a 1-2-3 inning with another strikeout. Ballgame.
I don't get to watch too many Michigan baseball games, but I'm glad I caught this one. Eastern is admittedly terrible so a loss would have been a serious hit to Michigan's postseason hopes I would imagine. Regardless of the opponent, this clutch comeback made me proud to be a Wolverine.
Go Blue!
https://mgoblue.com/news/2018/5/1/baseball-how-keener-the-catcher-who-h…
They got off to a dismal start going 4-11 before their 20 game win streak. A 20 game streak is impressive against any competition, but unfortunately M's schedule has been fairly week this year so the RPI numbers won't be there for an at large bid. IMO.
College Sports Madness (never heard of it, just googled "college baseball bracketology") has Michigan in the field. Has them in an intriguing Oxford regional where they could potentially play Ole Miss. College Baseball Daily has Michigan on the bubble as of Monday.
Baseball America does tourney field predictions throughout the year. The last one I read (a week or two ago) had 4 B1G teams in. OSU, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota if I remember correctly.
A couple of thoughts on that...M would have leapfrog one or two of those teams, 4 B1G teams in the tourney seems high and there is no way 5 get in.
With that said, this was always going to be a rebuilding year and for Bakich to get this team turned around and playing the way they are is an accomplishment in itself. The future is bright for the program.
Now that you mention it, I see that they put a new projected field out today. Has Michigan as the third team in Texas Tech's regional. They actually have Iowa in the first four out and Michigan as the last in.
The good news is that Baseball America has been about the most pessimistic of the college baseball publications vis-a-vis Michigan's NCAA chances. The bad news is that historically they have had one of the better percentages in nailing the field,.
Michigan can do themselves a huge favor by staying in first place in the Big Ten. Yes, they got pretty lucky with this year's schedule, but a conference champion is going to be pretty hard to leave out of the field if they take 4-5 teams from the conference.
They played San Diego, Arizona, Cal Poly, San Diego State, and then 4 against Stanford. I'm usually the last person to be critical of a difficult schedule, but...yeesh. They went 1-7, although anything above 2-6 would have been a cause for celebration.
That's 8 road games against top-75 teams, all in a row. Hopefully the trip was better for recruiting than it was for Michigan's RPI.
The real disaster coming back the next week and losing 2 of 3 to Lipscomb. Even an NCAA quality team isn't going to expect to win a series at Stanford, but you really do need to win a series against Lipscomb.
Brock Keener is playing with a broken thumb on his glove hand! Keener made an impressive throw from his knees in the top of the 6th to catch an attempted base thief in the act as well.
Tough as nails, this guy!
Any word on the guy who tweaked his knee at the game last night? Looked like it could have been a bad sprain but he walked off.
That would be Ako Thomas, unless I'm mistaken (leadoff hitter / second baseman). I haven't heard anything; it would be a pretty big deal if he had to miss any significant playing time. I hope you are right and it looked worse than it actually was.
I suspect they will hold him out of tonight's game and hope he is 100% for this weekend at Rutgers.