The rivalry between IU and Purdue has been restored on the diamond after neither team played last year.
Both teams enter the weekend series with a handful of struggles at the plate. The Hoosiers and Boilermakers have recently had to rely on a couple of key team members in the lineup to carry the Hoosiers to victory every game. Fortunately for IU, Purdue’s offensive struggles may overshadow the ones of the Hoosiers this weekend.
“We need to get back on a winning streak here and, just the fact that it’s Purdue, it’s going to up the ante and intensity for us,” junior relief pitcher Jake Kelzer said. “I’m super excited for it. I don’t like losing to them, and it’s going to be a fun series.”
The Boilermakers (4-21, 0-6) will travel to Bloomington and depend on senior outfielders Kyle Johnson and Jack Picchiotti for a chance against the Hoosiers this weekend. Johnson and Picchiotti are responsible for all 14 Purdue home runs this year and account for 48 percent of the teams’ RBIs.
Facing Purdue will be a prime opportunity for IU to get its first series sweep of the season. Not only would a sweep separate the Hoosiers from the dreaded .500 mark that they have been flirting with all season, but it would also launch them in the right direction in terms of the Big Ten standings.
If the Hoosiers don’t want to be one of the teams left out of the field of eight teams to make the conference tournament, they’ll need to take advantage of the task at hand.
IU Coach Chris Lemonis talked earlier in the week about the consistency he wants to see from his club at the plate while zeroing in on executing with runners in scoring position. In the mid-week game at Cincinnati, IU still struggled to drive in runs from base hits and relied on three errors and eight walks in a 7-3 victory.
“We’re just trying to get it moving in the right direction,” Lemonis said. “When you get on a spurt in baseball, then you aren’t thinking about it as much anymore. Our problem is that it’s been so up and down. It’s always in your head, and we’re trying to get that out of there.”
Lemonis will line up the same three starting pitchers this weekend he’s turned to all season. The senior trio of Kyle Hart, Evan Bell and Caleb Baragar have a combined 2.29 ERA on the year and stack up favorably against the Purdue starting staff that has two starters with ERAs greater than 5.00.
Out of the three starters, Hart will be looking to get back on track the most after allowing seven earned runs in his previous two starts in 11 innings. Bell is still seeking his first win of the season.
The 6-foot-8 right hander hasn’t necessarily pitched poorly up to this point, but the lack of run support when he takes the mound has led IU to lose every game that he has started.
“Whenever we’re getting five, six, seven, eight hits a game we’re scoring a lot of runs,” sophomore outfielder Logan Sowers said. “Whenever we’re struggling to get hits early on we just need those guys to kind of just spark the lineup and get it going for us.”
