WSU baseball desperate to end losing skid at home: ‘We’ve got to keep fighting’
There’s no time to sulk for the Wichita State baseball team after being swept by Cincinnati over the weekend.
A five-game week is on its way, which leaves coach Todd Butler without a day to practice. After losing Sunday, WSU is forced to take a day off Monday because of NCAA regulations. Here’s the schedule the rest of the week:
Play Missouri State at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the last home midweek game of the season at Eck Stadium, travel to Manhattan to play Kansas State on Wednesday night, travel to Storrs, Connecticut for the weekend American Athletic Conference series on Thursday, then play the final three days of the week.
Part of Butler wishes he could practice to maybe snap the Shockers out of their slump, which now spans three weeks with losses in 11 of the past 13 games. But with that option unavailable for a crucial week, WSU (20-23) is going to stave off a losing season, Butler is attempting other ways to restore the Shockers to winning ways.
“I’m just going to try to use this week to make sure they’re feeling good about themselves individually and as a team,” Butler said. “After getting swept, it’s easy to go into this pouting syndrome. We’re not going to allow that. We’ve got to keep fighting. We’ve not been playing good baseball lately, so we’ve got to come out and look at it like this is a new week to prove ourselves.”
Any faint glimmer of hope in securing an NCAA regional bid has long been dashed, so Butler is focused on developing talent on a team with only four seniors.
He hopes an example of this will come Tuesday against Missouri State when he gives the ball to freshman Miller Pleiman for the second start of his career. The 6-foot-4 right-hander has thrown 14 innings this season and has allowed 11 earned runs with eight strikeouts and 11 walks.
Instead of starting a veteran against a Missouri State (13-30) team that has been ravaged by injuries, Butler hopes Pleiman might be able to establish confidence in the start.
So far this season freshmen have thrown 124-plus innings for the Shockers, which makes up about a third of the total innings by the staff.
“He’s a guy who throws strikes and he’s grown into his own as the season has gone along,” Butler said. “I think some of the guys we thought in the fall were really going to carry us on the mound, it sometimes doesn’t go that way. But now we’re starting to see those guys bounce back and pitch the way we were anticipating and then the other positive is freshmen like Miller have had quite a few innings on the mound. They now have to start putting it all together and I think they’re going to start helping our team.”
That kind of inexperience has plagued the Shockers this season.
They lost the majority of their production from last season’s 35-win club, both on the mound and at the plate, and WSU hasn’t found enough players ready to produce at the necessary levels.
The two every-day players in the lineup last season, Luke Ritter and Jordan Boyer, are both having stellar seasons. Ritter is hitting .344 with a team-high 23 extra-base hits, including eight home runs, to go along with 30 RBIs, 25 walks and 37 runs scored, while Boyer is hitting a team-high .355 with 20 extra-base hits, a team-high 35 RBIs and 30 runs scored.
Those two combined are hitting .349 this season, while the rest of the Shockers are hitting a combined .258. Meanwhile, on the mound, WSU’s pitching staff has a collective 5.80 ERA, the highest it’s been since the 21-37 season in 2016.
“We just went through a tough weekend, but this week is a new week,” Butler said. “It’s all about us improving individually and collectively. The only thing I can do now is help them work on our mental frame of mind. I have to get these guys on the positive side and make them believe good things are on the way.”
Missouri State at WSU baseball
Records: MSU 13-30, WSU 20-23
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Eck Stadium
TV: Cox HD 2022 (streaming on YurView.com)
Radio: KNSS, 1330-AM