Freshman Cooper Malamazian homers twice including a scoreboard shot, but Hoosiers drop exhibition clash with Bearcats
By Carl James @jovian34 October 12th, 2024
One week ago on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Indiana Baseball hosted Cincinnati who managed to finish 5th in their first year as Power-4 team in the Big 12 in 2024. The Bearcats came to play with intensity, scoring 15 runs across 18 innings of play. Indiana on the other hand mostly struggled at the plate, and Hoosier pitchers allowed 20 free bases on the day.
“We’re a very development centric program,” head coach Jeff Mercer stated after the game in frustration. “Well, you still have to do the basic elements of the game correctly. You’ve got to be on fastball timing. You’ve got to throw your fastball where you want.” Mercer sees those things as foundational to “get to the fun stuff,” like adjusting to hit off-speed, hitting the other way, and pitch-design to add a nasty change-up to a young pitcher’s arsenal.
Indiana Hoosiers 8, Cincinnati Bearcats 15
Inning by inning details in the Live Game Blog | Coach Mercer postgame media | Box Score 1-9 | Box Score 10-18
The star of the day for Indiana was freshman third baseman Cooper Malamazian. Malamazian has played every inning at third this fall in place of senior Josh Pyne who is currently sidelined with injury. Malamazian has been impressive in the field in both contests, but finally came alive with the bat in the final 9-innings of the home game, hitting a pair of towering two-run homers. The first homer impacted the scoreboard in left field about 30 feet up.
Mercer was pleased with what Malamazian did. “He wasn’t great with off-speed pitches yet, not shocking, we haven’t done a ton of them yet. He’s a young guy still working on his swing. When he gets a fastball middle-in you should punish it, which he did. Twice.”
Catching duties were again split between Senior Jake Stadler and Sophomore TJ Schuyler. The duo combined to go 4 for 7 on the day, with both of Stadler’s hits going for extra bases. Stadler also threw out an attempted base stealer.
Free bases from Hoosier pitching
The real struggle for Indiana was on the mound where Hoosier pitchers allowed 17 walks and hit three batters with pitches over the 18 innings. Add to that the 20 hits and the Hoosier pitching staff had a combined WHIP of over 2.0 on the day. Cincinnati pitchers had twice as many 1-2-3 innings as Hoosier pitchers did on the day. The Hoosier pitchers that shined in those three innings were sophomore Seth Benes, freshman Brayton Thomas, and Indiana Wesleyan transfer Will Eldridge. Benes pitched in two innings retiring five straight Bearcats overall in 1.2 innings of work.
Hoosier pitchers worked around a lot of those baserunners to shut out the Bearcats through the first five innings. After missing the Louisville scrimmage with illness, Indiana State transfer Cole Gilley, worked around a hit and two walks to pitch a pair of shutout innings.
“I thought he was really good. He did what he does in our scrimmages where you know if you let him go, you probably could let him go three four five innings and he would have been really good. It’s a fast ball to both sides really good. I love his change up’s really good and the breaking ball’s good.” Gilley touched 94mph on his fastball.
New Assistant Coach and solid defense
Indiana’s highly touted recruiting coordinator and assistant coach Derek Simmons took a similar position with Duke out of the ACC over the summer. Mercer took a different approach in replacing Simmons by hiring highly experienced DePauw head coach Blake Allen. “The good part for us with [Allen] has been being able to hand over the infielders to him and [Mercer] step out of the process entirely.”
With solid recruiting classes for the next two years in place and an NCAA mandated roster total reduction coming in the next year, Mercer chose to go with an experienced coach with head coaching experience as well as assistant coach experience at the highest level as Allen had worked under Tim Corbin at Vanderbilt for several years.
“Blake Allen has done an excellent job with the infielders.” Mercer elaborated, “we’ve spent a ton of time working on our defense, a ton of time working with the infielders. I would say that has been our main focus here. At one point we had four freshmen in the infield, and they continued to play at a really high level.”
Summary
Two exhibitions in, it is clear there is a lot of talent on the roster. They may not have all executed well in this contest, but they know what they need to work on in preparation for the spring. The transfer additions of pitchers Gilley and Gavin Seebold look to mean the Hoosiers have some arms that can pitch to contact and get outs in multiple innings. That combines well with the focus on defense to support pitch-to-contact starters. That might allow the Hoosiers to keep guys like Drew Buhr and Aydan Decker-Petty in the back end of key games.
The real question is will pitching coach Dustin Glant be able to get a large enough group of arms throwing strikes with decent stuff to cover 36 to 45 innings on a week. In the past few years that number has been below 10 guys. If Glant can get that up to the 12-15 range with the 27 arms that we show are in the mix, that puts Indiana in a position to compete for a B1G title and more.
The bulk of the Hoosier offense is a known quantity. Junior outfielder Devin Taylor has been relatively quiet in these exhibitions, but he’s poised to compete for the Golden Spikes Award and an early 1st round MLB Draft pick in the spring. Junior shortstop Tyler Cerny, and draft-eligible sophomore second baseman Jasen Oliver are also getting serious draft buzz already. These Hoosier bats will produce runs in bunches this coming spring.
Indiana is going to play a three-game intrasquad “World Series” in the coming weeks. We will post more when we have the details.