Indiana drops series opener at home to Belmont Friday

Bothwell shoves in middle innings, but Hoosier offense strands 10, lose 9-3 despite having more total baserunners

By Carl James @jovian34 March 16th, 2024

On the heels of a disastrous week for Indiana pitching, it would be easy to look at the final score of 9-3 last night and say that Hoosier pitching failed again, and that the Bruins dominated the Hoosiers. Despite scoring three times the runs, Belmont actually had fewer base runners than the Hoosiers on the day. The Bruins just did a much better job getting the big hit with men on base, and Indiana stranded 10 runners.

Indiana Hoosiers 3, Belmont Bruins 9:

Inning by inning details in the Live Game Blog | Box Score

Head coach Jeff Mercer and pitching coach Dustin Glant devised a new plan to handle the weekend series opening game. The plan was to start the game with the Hoosiers best pitcher by WHIP, righty Jack Moffitt and then hand the game off to lefty Ty Bothwell. Moffitt is a righty who throws a fastball with sink, and Bothwell is a crossfire lefty who can locate fastballs up and into to right-handed batters. Mercer said after the game, “Moffitt was to set up Ty. Just the exact opposite profile.” Mercer detailed that, “you wanted to set Ty up so that [Moffitt] could probably go three or four and then Ty could run the game out.”

That plan did not work out.

“Today [Moffitt] was 90-91 about 88 in the second inning and was 0 for 5 in his first five off-speed pitches so we had to change course pretty quickly.” Belmont got two on in the first inning by ground balls. One was misplayed by Josh Pyne for an error, the other was an infield single. Moffitt managed to get two outs, but he “didn’t land an off-speed pitch in the first inning and their guys can really hunt fastballs.” Mason Landers did just that smacking a fastball over the centerfield fence to put the Bruins up 3-0 before Indiana even came to the plate.

Moffitt came back for the second inning and gave up a solo shot to Max Blessinger, the 9-hole hitter who came into the day hitting .123 with no home runs. Mercer said, “we had to get him out and get Ty in a little earlier than we’d like to.” Bothwell came into the game in the top of the third with the Hoosiers down 4-1.

With so much focus on the pitching of late, a final score of 9-3 would seem to support a pitching meltdown, but Bothwell managed to keep the Bruins off of the scoreboard again until the top of the eighth inning after Indiana cut the lead to 4-3. “[Bothwell] was really good. He was spectacular there for five innings or so. He was awesome.”

Indiana’s offense was successful in getting guys on base. Indiana got on base 13 times today, one more than Belmont. The Hoosiers only scored via three sacrifice flies. Indiana hitters failed to get a hit with a runner on third or a hit to the outfield with a runner in scoring position. The frustration of the Hoosier hitters was made apparent when Devin Taylor slammed his bat into the turf after popping up with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth.

Coach Mercer reflected, “It didn’t look like we had a cohesive offensive unit together… Listen, I know last week was tough, but you have to get back up. You have to move on. You can’t stay stagnant. Offensively if we had just allowed the game to come to us it would have. We had multiple opportunities where we swung at ball four, ended at bats early, chased out of the zone early, week contact, overswung. Just looked like a group that was trying to do too much and didn’t let the game come to them.” Mercer wants his hitters to get back to fundamentals that are the “calling card” of the Hoosier offense.

In his sixth inning of work Bothwell allowed the first free pass to a Bruin all game via a walk, and then allowed a home run to Belmont’s top power guy Brodey Heaton. “We kind of did the same thing we did last week to him. I should have pulled him out there in the last inning. Kind of the same situation we had with Troy where he had thrown really well and then ran there at the end. When you got two more games and a midweek coming up and you’re down, you’re not doing very well offensively today you’re in a tough spot.”

Bothwell was charged with 5 earned runs, all came in his sixth and seventh inning of work. He pitched five scoreless before that, retiring the first 12 batters he faced and striking out 8 Bruins. Julian Tonghini relieved Bothwell with the bases loaded in the ninth, allowing two inherited runners to score on an RBI single before getting the last out of the inning.

Indiana is now 9-9 on the season. In a bizarre breakdown, Indiana is 4-1 in true road games, 2-3 on neutral fields and a shocking 3-5 at home. Staff ace Connor Foley will be on the bump for game two of the Belmont series today (Saturday) at 2pm.