Baseball heads home for final time

The IU baseball team (36-9, 13-5  in the Big Ten as of Wednesday afternoon) will play in front of a home crowd for the final time this season when it welcomes Northwestern to Bloomington for a three-game set starting at 6:05 p.m. Friday at Bart Kaufman Field.

“It used to be you look at the 30 wins as significant,” IU Coach Tracy Smith said after IU secured its 30th win against Eastern Kentucky April 24. “But anymore it’s probably the 40-win is kind of that benchmark for the NCAA Tournament.”

Smith has repeatedly said securing an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament prior to the Big Ten Tournament is one of the team’s most important goals.

A 40-win season makes reaching that goal practically a lock. IU will have a good opportunity to move closer to that total against a middling Northwestern team at home, where the Hoosiers are 14-2 and on a seven-game winning streak.

The Wildcats (21-20, 8-13) are on the outside looking in for a berth to the six-team conference tournament, currently in eighth place.

To pull off an upset win against the Hoosiers, Northwestern will have to ride its  pitching. The Wildcats rank third in the conference with a 3.11 earned run average.
The Northwestern pitching staff is led by senior right-hander Luke Farrell, who won his second Big Ten Pitcher of the Week award in three weeks Tuesday and is the probable pick to start Friday.

Farrell, the conference’s leader in ERA (1.60) and strikeouts (72), dominated Ohio State last Saturday, allowing just two hits while striking out eight in eight scoreless innings to improve his record to 3-2.

He will be tasked with holding down a potent IU offense, which ranks first in the Big Ten in hitting, runs, doubles, home runs, slugging, on-base percentage, walks and several other categories.

Farrell will likely be opposed by IU junior left-hander Joey DeNato (7-1, 2.75 ERA). DeNato notched his seventh win of the year at Nebraska on Saturday, allowing three earned runs on five hits with six strikeouts and three walks in 6.1 innings pitched.

It won’t get any easier for Northwestern’s offense — which ranks ninth in the conference in runs with 205 and has struck out the second-most times of any Big Ten team — against Saturday and Sunday’s probable starters for IU.

Sophomore Kyle Hart (7-1, 2.34 ERA) and Aaron Slegers (7-1, 1.89 ERA) will likely get the nod on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.