Every game matters. But sometimes, one game is less important than the next. Such was the case for the Michigan baseball team Wednesday as it took place on Central Michigan.
Since even before the season began, Wolverines coach Tracy Smith has made his goal for his squad abundantly clear: Win the Big Ten regular season title. But after a 7-14 start to the season alongside a wealth of pitching struggles, Michigan’s goal appeared to be a classic case of early-season confidence.
But Smith held true to his goals. And with just two Big Ten weekend series remaining, the Wolverines remain in the chase to be atop the conference. They focus all of their efforts on their conference foes, though, despite the out-of-conference Chippewas standing in their way. Just as it has done in midweek games all season, Michigan didn’t run its top pitchers out onto the bump.
“Well, it was a midweek thing again,” Smith said. “We’re trying to rest guys for the weekend.”
Smith made his intentions clear with his choice of starter for the Wednesday evening game, as graduating right-hander Alexander Ogg toed the rubber for the Wolverines. Ogg is deep within Michigan’s bullpen, brandishing just four complete innings of work alongside an 18.00 ERA entering Wednesday’s contest.
While the personnel that Smith runs out to the mound in midweek games differ from the weekend rotation, he holds his lesser-used pitching staff to the same standards as his main artillery: If you throw strikes, there won’t be any complaints about Smith’s end.
“It’s all about strikes and competing in the zone,” Smith said. “And if we do that, we give ourselves a chance to win.”
Against a team like Central Michigan which is having a dismal year, sitting at 6-18 in the Mid-American Conference and 15-33 overall, just putting the ball in the zone tends to suffice. The Chippewas aren’t like a Big Ten team that will punish a pitcher for simply peppering the strike zone. Instead, letting less-powerful Central Michigan batters put the ball in play is a good way to get outs, in turn saving the more powerful arms for more powerful opponents.
The strategy worked, as the Wolverines surrounded an explosive third inning to a relatively stress-free victory without burning too many of their top arms. But now the midweek game is out of their way, Michigan can fully turn its attention to the more-important weekend series against Purdue.
“(It is) good to get this one out of the way,” Smith said. “Now we can focus on and start talking about Friday, which I think is going to be a really, really big game for us.”
Indeed, every conference matchup from this point onward carries heavy implications. Sitting sixth in the Big Ten, the Wolverines are just two games back from first place. And if Michigan wants to attain their ultimate season goal of that regular season title, there is little room for error in the coming weekend series.
For Smith and his squad, a win is a win, and he is happy to have one more under his belt. But with games that carry postseason implications on the horizon, Smith was willing to take some risks in order to save his top arms for those most important bouts.
Sometimes, risky decisions can backfire — the Wolverines could’ve left Ray Fisher Stadium with a significant blemish on their resume — but Smith’s risks paid off as Michigan heads full steam toward the weekend.
