1st through 7th in the order go hitless as the Hoosiers struggles at the plate continue
By Carl James @jovian34 March 14th, 2026
Indiana Hoosiers: 1, Oregon Ducks: 5
Inning by inning details in the Live Game Blog | Box Score
The evaluation on this Hoosier baseball team in the fall was much like the last few years: if the pitching staff can find a way to get outs, the offense will carry them. In the second week of Big Ten play, the script on Indiana has completely flipped. Even with a starting pitcher sidelined, the Hoosier pitching staff has kept a vast majority of games under 6-runs, but the offense has just not taken off in traditional weekend games. Now the Hoosiers have dropped both of their first two conference series, and in today’s game they got only two hits.
Tony Neubeck had his worst start of the season, allowing five runs in four innings of work, but the game was still manageable when he left, and he did get through four innings (more than against LSU a few weeks ago). Every pitcher is going to struggle at some time, and a few bad pitches were jumped on by the Duck hitters.
The Hoosier bullpen combined to toss 4 scoreless frames working around some command issues. Freshman Ivan Mastalski continues to impress in 2-inning stints between Saturdays and Tuesdays. He is essentially tossing close to starter innings on a weekly basis, a huge opportunity for the future.
In all five runs allowed on a Saturday, while not ideal, wasn’t bad. Two would have been fantastic, and yet still not low enough as the Hoosier bats only scored one run in nine innings.
The only run scoring came off the bat of sophomore center fielder Cole Decker who put a shot on the roof beyond right field in the third inning. Decker hit eighth in today’s lineup. The other hit was an opposite field single by T.J Schuyler, who hit ninth. Batters first through seventh in the order were held hitless. Now, there was a decent amount of loud contact, and the approaches were generally not as passive as on Friday, but a month into the season, the hitting woes are feeling less like a fluke and more like an ongoing pattern.
Even at the beginning of the season, Coach Mercer warned that the team lacked power and would need to string hits together. Last year Korbyn Dickerson and Devin Taylor could change a game with a single swing. Now opposing pitchers don’t seem to fear anyone in the lineup and are attacking Hoosier hitters in the zone, getting into pitcher advantageous counts, and producing a ton of weak contact to rack up outs.
In most games, the Hoosiers have been getting on base and then stranding a lot of runners. Today, the Hoosier offense wasn’t even getting on base. Given we weren’t there to talk to head coach Jeff Mercer since they are in Oregon, we don’t know what his perspective on the series is. In some ways the approaches looked better Saturday than Friday, but the results weren’t there.
Indiana has a chance to salvage a win on the series Sunday at 3:30pm on BTN.