New IU Coach Chris Lemonis was an assistant for Louisville last season, and he plans on incorporating a more aggressive style on the bases for IU.
“We’d like to run a little bit more,” Lemonis said. “Put the ball in play a little bit more. We have to be a little different type of offense and play small ball a little bit more.”
This is also due in part to the departure of Kyle Schwarber, Sam Travis and Dustin DeMuth, three first team All-Big Ten players who spent last season anchoring the middle of IU’s order.
Lemonis understands IU is not the same team as Louisville. He doesn’t expect IU to steal 150 bases, but he does want IU stealing between 80 and 100 this season.
The most important part of increasing the stolen base total from last season is giving his players freedom to run.
“They’ve got the green light and some push behind them,” Lemonis said. “You can’t be a great base-running team if they don’t have the freedom. We’ll get picked off and we’ll get thrown out, but we’ll steal a lot of bases too.”
Lemonis has tried to instill this freedom in his team by running still scrimmages. A still scrimmage means when a player steals he cannot be thrown out. If he is he just trots back to his original base and no out is recorded.
“It makes our pitchers upset but it makes us a better base-stealing team,” Lemonis said. “It makes us a better team in terms of defending the steal, too.”
Last season this freedom and aggression wasn’t present on the base paths. This isn’t necessarily a change in coaching philosophies from Tracy Smith to Lemonis, but rather a change in personnel.
When a team has players like Schwarber and Travis it doesn’t want to make ?needless outs.
“Last year I was just kind of sitting there with three All-Americans right behind me so I didn’t have to steal, they just hit me in,” senior Casey Rodrigue said.
Rodrigue spent last season batting leadoff, a position in the lineup that typically generates the most stolen bases. Last season, Rodrigue led IU in steals with 12 on 17 attempts. By comparison, Louisville’s leader in stolen bases was senior Sutton Whiting, who stole 37 bases in 43 attempts.
“It’s going to be a change in our game, but I think it’s going to help because we’ve got a lot of kids that can run really well,” senior Scott Donley said.
Donley is likely to spend this season batting in the middle of the order, as he did last season. An increase in stolen base attempts can eliminate runners, but it can also increase the number of at bats Donley has with runners in scoring position.
In the end this is the primary reason for the change in philosophy. IU doesn’t have the same number of power threats. If Schwarber and Travis were still batting second and third for IU, Rodrigue might not be stealing as much.
But with the departures of so many hitters, Lemonis said he feels this aggression puts IU in the best position to win.
“At the end of the day our goal is to score more runs than the opponents,” he said.
