With runners on first and second and no outs on the board, Iowa baseball was doing everything in its power to come back from a 6-2 eighth-inning deficit to Western Illinois on Tuesday.
However, the rally was immediately diminished.
A pair of strikeouts from Ben Wilmes and Kooper Schulte led to a weak pop fly by Ben Swails, taking the life out of Duane Banks Field in Iowa City and washing away any hopes of winning.
This is the reality of baseball, especially at the collegiate level. At any given night, on any given field, any team can win.
Western Illinois wasn’t playing like a team that had 11 wins on the season. The Leathernecks were playing like a team that wanted to win a little more. And with the Hawkeyes nearing 30 wins, they look the opposite.
“The record doesn’t mean anything in baseball,” said Iowa head coach Rick Heller. “The worst team in the major leagues is still going to win 60 or 50 games. Our season isn’t 162 [games], but in 50 games you are going to have a day when things don’t go your way.”
For starters, the Iowa offense had a rare night where it couldn’t capitalize with runners on the base paths. The Hawkeyes finished the game 2-of-13 with runners in scoring position and left 12 players on base.
“The biggest problem offensively tonight was, when we started to get something going, somebody had a horrible at-bat to put a dagger in that inning,” Heller said. “You can make an out, but you can’t just have a catastrophic out like we had in really key situations.”
Multiple times, Iowa placed runners on the base paths with one or two outs in the inning, hoping to finally break through and put the Leathernecks on the ropes.
But time after time, the Hawkeyes piled up untimely strikeouts or ground balls that ultimately prevented any sort of comeback.
“They were throwing strikes,” Heller said. “They weren’t walking us. We were going to have to hit, and we just didn’t hit enough. We out-hit them, but tonight was a night where we needed to score some runs, and sometimes you have to outscore people in the midweek.”
Another reason for the Hawkeye defeat was the lack of execution on the mound, specifically with throwing balls and strikes.
The Iowa pitching group gave up eight walks and hit two batters, giving the Leathernecks action on the bases consistently through the night.
With that, many free bases allowed, all it took was a handful of timely hits that did damage and put the Hawkeyes in trouble.
“I thought we did a really good job of minimizing some bad situations, but we just gave them too many free bases, and they were swinging it,” Heller said of Western Illinois’ batting performance. “We knew that coming in, that they would swing it.”
The biggest question mark for this team isn’t about the lack of clutch hitting or execution throwing balls and strikes; it’s how can they respond after getting hit in the mouth.
After experiencing all the highs of last weekend’s sweep over Michigan, falling a midweek game to Western Illinois can be humbling, but Heller is excited to see how his staff bounces back.
“I just told them that we will find out a lot about ourselves and see who shows up,” Heller said. “I didn’t feel like we didn’t show up. We came out, and we were ready to play. We just didn’t get a lot of stuff to fall for us.”