And after IU’s 5-4 loss Wednesday night at Bart Kaufman Field, as IU huddled around him in left field, he let his team know he was upset.
As he walked away from the huddle, he yelled at his team to figure ?it out.
“It’s been excruciating, and it’s been happening the last two weeks,” IU Coach Chris Lemonis said. “Every time we get the lead we seem to give it up.”
Freshman Logan Sowers had hit a two-run single to to give IU a one-run lead in the bottom of the sixth inning. In the beginning of the season, this meant handing the ball to a reliable and dominant bullpen.
But tonight it meant handing the ball to freshman Austin Foote, who allowed the first two runners of the inning to reach base. Then the task was left to senior closer ?Ryan Halstead.
After Halstead came into the seventh inning with runners on first and second and nobody out, he left a fastball up and inside that grazed the brim of Cincinnati’s No. 2 hitter, Ryan Noda, to load the bases with still no outs.
He then struck out Ian Happ — who was hitting .400 entering Wednesday — on a fastball low and away out of the strike zone.
“You just have to throw strikes and get ahead of hitters,” Halstead said. “If Coach has confidence for you to go in the game, then you have to be confident in your stuff, with your pitches. Just throw strikes and try to get people out.”
Cincinnati’s next batter, cleanup hitter Jarod Yoakam, eventually worked the count to two balls and two strikes. Halstead threw an off speed pitch that looked to sail over the outside part of the plate.
The umpire called a ball. Three pitches later, Yoakam singled home the go ahead and eventual ?winning run.
“At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter because he called it a ball,” Halstead said. “I was just trying to get a strikeout, but at the end of the day it just didn’t go our way.”
Lemonis said the only two players he trusts to pitch out of his bullpen right now are Halstead and senior ?Luke Harrison.
He says everyone else coming out of the bullpen is pitching scared.
“We’ve got some guys scared,” Lemonis said. “It’s been happening and we don’t have enough guys stepping up and taking care of it. They know what’s happening, and they have to compete a little bit more.”
This needs to change, Lemonis said. Starting Friday, IU will play eight games in the next 10 days. With only three established starting pitchers, the bullpen will need to play a large role in IU’s potential success during this stretch.
A stretch IU is going to need to play well in to improve its ranking in the RPI.
“We’ve got guys that’ll do it, I just can’t throw Halstead or Harrison every inning out of the pen,” Lemonis said. “Right now no one else is pitching out of the pen for us but those ?two guys.”
Lemonis said the answer to IU’s late-inning troubles is increased leadership in the bullpen.
Halstead agrees, saying the responsibility for fixing the bullpen falls to himself and Harrison, the only two seniors in IU’s bullpen.
“We just have to figure it out internally with senior leadership,” Halstead said. “I think it’s going to prove to you how strong we are when we come out of it. We just have to figure it out and we’ll ?be alright.”
