Indiana Baseball Enters Big Ten Tournament With Improved Pitching, Timely Hitting Adjustments

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Coach Jeff Mercer’s Indiana baseball team has learned a thing or two about resiliency throughout an up-and-down 2024 season.

The Hoosiers jumped into the Top-25 rankings after a 6-1 start, but they struggled during a 9-13 stretch in February and March. Indiana has certainly missed last year’s ace, Luke Sinnard, who underwent Tommy John surgery and will not pitch this season. A month-long injury to slugging first baseman Brock Tibbitts, among other injuries, created more challenges.

Indiana lost its first Big Ten series of the season at Illinois, then made adjustments and rattled off six series victories in its final seven chances. That put them in the mix for the Big Ten title heading into the final weekend, but the Hoosiers ultimately fell just short at 15-9 in conference play and 30-22-1 overall.

Indiana now approaches the Big Ten Tournament, which runs Tuesday through Sunday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Neb., following a series win over Michigan. It was the fourth series in which the Hoosiers lost game one before winning the final two to take the series, displaying their ability to overcome adversity and providing a boost of momentum heading into the postseason.

“The ability for each guy to adjust and be coached and to improve and not lose his sense of self and confidence is incredibly hard,” Mercer said. “You have to remember we all feel emotion, but especially when you’re 19, you really feel it then.

“You start the season ranked, you have these injuries, you get off schedule, you start to lose games and everyone thinks you stink, and everybody’s out on you. Then you have to pick yourself up and get back to work and be coachable, and that’s a really difficult thing. That’s really been the theme, the story of the year, how we responded when you got knocked down and got a little bit of mud on your face.”

Under pitching coach Dustin Glant, Indiana’s pitching staff has made notable strides from the start of the season to now. Indiana allowed at least seven runs in 15 of 17 games from Feb. 27 to March 24, a stretch when opponents scored 10 or more runs eight times.

But the Hoosiers’ pitchers have completely reversed that trend, allowing five or fewer runs in each of the last eight games. Two of those games came in a series win at Purdue, which has the Big Ten’s highest-scoring offense. Going back even further, Indiana has not allowed more than seven runs in a game since April 21.

Indiana’s series finale win over Michigan was a snapshot of these season-long pitching improvements. Brayden Risedorph started the game and allowed no earned runs in three innings of work. He allowed a combined 20 earned runs in his first six appearances this season, but he has since had eight appearances with one or zero earned runs allowed.

Aydan Decker-Petty struck out a career-high eight batters in 3.1 innings against Michigan while allowing just one hit, a solo home run. Indiana used him sparingly in the first month of the season, but he has a 2.83 ERA across his last seven Big Ten appearances. Add freshman Jacob Vogel, who has a 0.43 ERA in 21 innings, and Indiana ended its final regular season game with a season-high 17 strikeouts.

Indiana has leaned on Ty Bothwell and Connor Foley for the bulk of its innings and will likely continue to do so. But with improvements from Risedorph, Decker-Petty, Vogel, Drew Buhr, Julian Tonghini and other pitchers, along with extra rest following Friday’s series finale, Mercer feels the staff is in a good position heading into postseason play.

“You’ve got guys that weren’t what they are today at the beginning of the season,” Mercer said Friday. “So you just got to cultivate those guys, you gotta breathe into them and you gotta encourage them to just go give their best stuff. We talked about that a ton when we struggled, but yeah, [Friday] was pretty electric.”

“Just a great kudos and compliment to coach Glant and that staff for getting right and then being able to really attack guys with premium stuff … We’re lined up in a really good spot on the mound.”

Indiana’s adjustments haven’t been limited to the pitching staff. Take freshman Jasen Oliver for example. Mercer said Oliver has played more than he thought he would going into the season, and part of his success is due to a batting stance tweak they made.

Mercer said Oliver came to Indiana with a narrow batting stance and had a lot of movement in his pre-pitch load. To help fix this, Mercer instructed Oliver, primarily a right-handed batter, to widen his base a bit, limit his load and focus on hitting the ball to right field.

However, a wider stance and limited load restricted Oliver’s high-end exit velocities, as well as his decision making and ability to hit pull-side home runs. This would only be a temporary adjustment. Leading up to the Michigan series, Mercer told Oliver to keep working on narrowing his stance during batting practice, and eventually he’d be comfortable enough to translate that to a game.

“I just said you’re going to have to hit like an adult at some point, and that’s not right now,” Mercer recalls. “But when you’re ready, we’re going to have to take the training wheels off and we’re going to have to hit like big leaguers hit.”

Oliver stepped to the plate with two outs in the ninth inning of Thursday’s first game against Michigan. Indiana trailed by one run but had two runners on base, giving Oliver a chance to tie the game or put Indiana ahead. He smoked the ball to right field, but it was caught to end the game.

“He hits that ball about as good as you can to right in that really, really wide stance,” Mercer said. “And he came up to me afterwards and he said, ‘I probably need to make an adjustment,’ and I said, ‘Whenever you’re ready for that.’ So we worked on it between games in the cages, and took some really good swings. I threw a bunch to him, and he took it into the game.”

Oliver faced a 2-0 count in his first at-bat Thursday evening against Michigan, then singled while implementing the adjustment. Mercer said the ball came off his bat about 108-110 miles per hour.

“He said, ‘that’s the hardest ball I’ve ever hit,’ and I said, ‘that’s the first time that you’ve swung the way your body naturally wants you to swing,’ and from there on out he just took off,” Mercer said.

Oliver had four hits in the two wins over Michigan, including a three-run home run and a solo shot, which proved to be the difference makers in Friday’s 8-4 win.

“If he’s not willing to adjust or he doesn’t have a trusting relationship to do that, then we don’t get this outcome,” Mercer said. “So it’s a constant back and forth to help those guys. But yeah, what a huge day, especially because he’s a Michigan kid, so a really big day for him and he is such an awesome young man and really happy for him, too.”

Mercer and the Hoosiers hope these adjustments continue translating into success in the Big Ten Tournament. Indiana is currently on the outside looking into the NCAA Tournament, per recent projections by D1 Baseball and On3. Winning the Big Ten Tournament would obviously give the Hoosiers an automatic bid, but they’re not too far out of the picture to earn an at-large bid even without winning the tournament.

No. 3 seed Indiana begins the Big Ten Tournament Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET against No. 6 seed Purdue, looking to ride the momentum it picked up from its series win over Michigan.

“I think morale is a real thing,” Mercer said. “It does help going into it with a little confidence and you feel good.”