You’d be hard-pressed to find a more brutal one-two punch than what Indiana baseball experienced last week. Between blowing a 12-3 lead in the rubber match versus USC on March 29 and suffering an ugly, five-error loss to No. 18 Louisville on April 1, the Hoosiers got punched in the mouth.
They went from seemingly having a pivotal conference series wrapped up to being outscored 15-0 in the final four innings of the next two games combined and sinking to a pedestrian 15-14 record, just 6-6 in Big Ten play. Between its losses to Xavier (twice), UNLV and Northern Kentucky as well as the back-to-back blown leads to USC and Louisville, it felt like Indiana could have – no, should have – been 21-8 instead of one game above .500.
Instead, the first half of the Hoosiers’ season was headlined by mediocrity and incomplete games. When the offense was firing on all cylinders (game one versus Xavier, UNLV, Northern Kentucky, USC) the pitching staff failed to hold serve. When the pitching staff delivered (Louisville), the bats went quiet and the defense failed to take care of the ball. Indiana showed bits and pieces of greatness, but never put together a consistent stretch of fundamentally sound baseball in all three phases of the game at the same time.
If that last sentence sounds familiar, that’s because Indiana experienced the same thing in 2024.
I wrote a scathing column bemoaning the Hoosiers’ pitching struggles, inexplicable midweek losses and flat-out awful team defense that saw them fall flat in the face of high early-season expectations. The headline: “Indiana baseball is teetering on the precipice of a lost season.” You can read that column here.
Through April 1 last year, Indiana was 15-14, which was the exact same record it held through April 1 this season following its loss to Louisville. After flipping the calendar to April last year, the Hoosiers rattled off four straight series wins and made a run to the NCAA Tournament, punctuating the trip with an upset win over Sun Belt Tournament champion Southern Miss.
The Hoosiers lost two starting pitchers (Luke Sinnard and Ben Grable) before the 2024 season began. First baseman AJ Shepard, who was expected to be a key offensive contributor, suffered a season-ending injury in game three of 60. Catcher Brock Tibbitts missed all of April with a leg injury and, upon his return in early May, was limited to first base duties while “playing on one leg,” per head coach Jeff Mercer.
This year, Indiana was not plagued with injuries, meaning that many were quick to criticize the coaching staff and the team’s inability to consistently perform at a high level. Many detractors called, for the second straight year, for the firing of pitching coach Dustin Glant. It seemed that the pitching staff was extremely volatile and incapable of showing any semblance of stability. Some questioned Mercer’s job security, even in the face of back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths and a proven track record of player development.
Others, still, went after student journalists, myself included. They accused us of not asking the “tough questions” for fear of having our access revoked, saying they wished that the same media members who cover Indiana football and men’s basketball would cover baseball and try harder to hold the coaches accountable when things go south.
After Indiana lost to Louisville, I wanted to write a column similar to what I wrote last season, but a voice in the back of my head told me I shouldn’t. There are twice as many games in the college baseball season as there are in the college basketball season and five times as many games compared to college football. Each individual game is still critical, but there is decidedly more time to turn things around for college baseball teams.
I’ll be the first to tell you that the aforementioned ugly losses were, in fact, cause for concern. There were no injuries, just alarmingly frequent lapses of execution.
I’ll also be the first to tell you that Indiana’s series sweep of Michigan State is cause for optimism. Gavin Seebold out-dueled Spartans southpaw Joseph Dzierwa in Sunday’s series opener, twirling five efficient innings of two-run ball. Ryan Kraft and Jacob Vogel closed out the final four frames.
Dzierwa, whose 1.89 ERA is among the top 15 in the nation, allowed a season-worst five runs on eight hits as he took his first loss of the season. Indiana played small ball, getting hits against the shift-heavy Michigan State infield and stealing bases to give the Spartans an extra layer of discomfort.
It was fitting that Indiana took the lead for good in the fourth inning on an opposite-field dribbler from Devin Taylor. Had Michigan State not placed three infielders on the right field side of second base against the left-handed Taylor, it would have been a routine groundout to the shortstop. However, because of the defensive shift, Taylor’s high hopper meandered into left field and the Hoosiers never looked back, winning the series opener 6-4.
It was a shockingly normal game by college baseball standards. The sides combined for 21 hits, 17 of which were singles. All five RBIs – Michigan State allowed one unearned run – came from the top four hitters in Indiana’s lineup. Dzierwa didn’t pitch poorly, Indiana’s offensive plan was just better than he was. The majority of Indiana’s hits were line drives or ground balls to the opposite field.
“We just take what we’re given,” Taylor said postgame Sunday. “Dzierwa was throwing pitches that we could go the other way with. It was death by a thousand papercuts.”
The Hoosiers left no doubt in Monday’s doubleheader, mercy-ruling Michigan State in both games to secure the sweep. They outscored the Spartans 32-4 in two games to cap their most complete series of the season.
“It was one of the best days, if not the best day, I’ve seen at Indiana,” Mercer said postgame. “We threw strikes the whole day, played good defense and took care of the ball.”
Indiana committed no errors in the doubleheader, playing perfect defense behind a pitching staff that was surgically precise. It shut down the Spartans with help from five different arms, none of whom threw more than 50 pitches. The bats were white-hot after Sunday’s low-scoring affair, scoring in 11 of 12 offensive half-innings on Monday.
“It’s a very defined system that we operate,” Mercer said. “It works when we follow it, and it doesn’t when we don’t, just like anything else. We followed it incredibly well.”
Indiana’s at-bats late in both of Monday’s blowouts were identical to its at-bats in Sunday’s tightly-contested affair. Every hitter competed on every pitch, exercised good plate discipline and made Michigan State pitchers work for every out.
After going quiet in the back half of its painful losses to USC and Louisville, Indiana stressed the importance of following its offensive gameplan. Whether it's death by a thousand papercuts or a freshman belting a grand slam for his first career hit (Caleb Koskie, take a bow), the plan seems to work when followed.
“Sometimes when the offense gets a big jump early, it’s really easy to veer away from a plan at the plate,” outfielder Korbyn Dickerson said postgame. He and Taylor combined for 14 hits, 11 RBIs and 11 runs scored in three games versus Michigan State. The duo, along with second baseman Tyler Cerny, third baseman Will Moore and first baseman Jake Hanley, all hit .500 or better.
“Today, there were zero pitches taken off, zero at-bats taken off,” Dickerson said. “We were locked in.”
With a rock-solid defense behind them, Indiana’s A-list arms got it done all weekend. Ben Grable and Cole Gilley combined for no walks in game one of the doubleheader while Pete Haas, Grant Holderfield and Aydan Decker-Petty took advantage of Indiana’s offensive onslaught and attacked Spartans hitters with confidence and poise. Indiana pitched as well as it has all season without even needing bullpen staple Drew Buhr, who is still absent with an injury.
This is what Indiana should be. The offense is as loaded as you’ll find not just in the Big Ten, but in the nation. The Hoosiers lead the conference in runs scored (297) and on-base plus slugging (0.965). Five qualified hitters, two of whom are true freshmen, have an OPS over 1.000. One of those freshmen is Hanley, who is the runaway favorite for Big Ten Freshman of the Year and is putting together one of the best offensive seasons in the conference.
Indiana’s pitching staff has been great over the last four games, allowing just 3.5 runs per game. After struggling in 2024, Kraft and Holderfield look like poised veterans on the mound. Seebold and Grable, two transfers who were expected to be key additions to the weekend staff, have each allowed two runs or fewer in five of their last six outings as high-usage rotation arms. Gilley leads all qualified pitchers with a 3.22 ERA in 36.1 innings pitched.
I may be doing the exact thing I sought to avoid by not writing a negative column after Indiana’s loss to Louisville. That is, falling victim to results from a limited sample size. This was just one of 10 conference series. Michigan State is in the bottom half of a conference that, as far as baseball is concerned, is barely a power conference – the Sun Belt is widely looked upon more favorably than the Big Ten.
That said, I’d be flat-out stupid to ignore history. Indiana was in the exact same spot at the beginning of April last year as it is this year. I know it, and so does Mercer.
“The upperclassmen have been here before,” Mercer said. “But we also started five freshmen, and they don’t know any different. Coach says we’re going to be fine, so we’ll be fine. We’re going to persevere and push through this.”
Indiana is now 18-14 overall and 9-6 in the Big Ten, halfway through its conference slate. The end of the road is still off in the distance and Mercer knows his team has to keep going.
“We’re going to do the same thing tomorrow and the same thing this weekend,” Mercer said. “You can get loose and assume you’re going to carry runs over. You have to do the same level of work and you just have to keep pushing.”
Indiana faces Ball State at 6 p.m. Tuesday before visiting Illinois for a three-game series beginning at 7 p.m. Friday. It’s a cliche, but history often repeats itself and, though there’s still a long way to go, it looks like Indiana may be turning the corner at the right time for the second consecutive year.
