Indiana Baseball Preview: Hoosiers Look to Build on Success From 2019

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — As Indiana's Gabe Bierman painted the outside corner of the strike zone for final out of the regular season, the Hoosiers poured out of the dugout at Bart Kaufman Stadium and a dog-pile quickly grew on the pitcher’s mound.

After a slow start to the season a year ago in which Indiana started 7-8, the team won six of its last seven conference games to edge out national runner-up Michigan for the program’s seventh Big Ten championship.

Winning championships remains the goal for Indiana coach Jeff Mercer, who inherited a talented Indiana team in 2019 that had made it to the NCAA Tournament the previous two years. In 2020, he's expecting more of the same, albeit with several new faces in prominent roles.

Matt Gorski, Matt Lloyd, Pauley Milto, and Tanner Gordon all provided Mercer with a strong foundation during his first year in Bloomington. Add on the surprise emergence of Andrew Saalfrank, who became the Big Ten Pitcher of the Year, and Indiana had a lot of star power on its roster.

Now that those five players are gone, Mercer is hoping that Indiana’s young talent can step up and fill the gaping holes that were left in the roster.

“You want a guy like Matt Lloyd and Paul Milto and some of those guys to carry forward and their legacy to impact and filter into the program,” Mercer said. “You want that to become the foundation, the bedrock of the program and then have guys — Eli (Dunham) does the same thing — you want them to invest into younger guys like Hunter Jessee and Ethan Vecrumba and have it carry forward.”

Those changes start with the pitching staff. This year’s weekend rotation will look much different than the one that swept Rutgers in a must-win series to clinch the Big Ten regular-season title a year ago.

Junior Tommy Sommer and Bierman, now a sophomore, each started only five games last season — the most among returning Hoosiers — and are now expected to anchor Indiana’s rotation.

“Tommy Sommer pitched big innings for us last year, and he’s done a really good job this year,'' Mercer said. "Gabe Bierman also has done a really nice job, and Braydon Tucker. Those guys have taken a good step forward.”

Additionally, sophomores Alex Franklin and McCade Brown are both young pitchers who showed glimpses of their talent last season. Franklin and Brown likely will be used as spot starters for mid-week matchups or as high-leverage relievers this season, and are expected to provide consistent production for the pitching staff.

To shut the door at the end of games, the Hoosiers have a trio of options that will be explored early in the season. Seniors Braden Scott and Grant Sloan and sophomore Matt Litwicki were all productive in their limited usage last season, and now have the opportunity to prove themselves in expanded late-game roles.

Behind the pitchers, Indiana has a strong collection of young talent that is poised for breakout seasons.

After being used sparingly during their freshman year, outfielder Elijah Dunham and third-baseman Cole Barr broke onto the scene last season as perfect supplementary players to Gorski and Lloyd.

Barr was one of Indiana’s most lethal offensive weapons, as he finished tied for the team lead in home runs with 17 and drove in 51 RBIs. While Barr was the hammer to the Hoosiers’ offense, Dunham was the scalpel. He was one of the team’s most efficient hitters with a .310 batting average and an on-base percentage of .434.

After such strong sophomore campaigns, Dunham and Barr were both named to the Big Ten Preseason All-Conference Team by D1 Baseball.

“Every year you always feel like, where are we going to get this production from or that production from?” Mercer said. “That’s why you go to work every day and coach all of your players all the time like they’re going to be a starter. Someone will develop, someone will grow and blossom before your eyes, and that’s what you rely on.”

Indiana’s roster has a strong mix of new faces and returning talent that will be tested early in the season.

Mercer knows that the Hoosiers will have to beat top-tier talent if they are going to repeat as Big Ten champions and wants to expose his young team to that level of play from the start.

The Hoosiers have a tough schedule, opening the season on the road at LSU, which will provide Mercer with plenty of opportunities to evaluate his team and decide which lineups work best once conference play begins at the end of March.

“Every team I’ve ever been on, as a player and as a coach, the starting nine was almost never the nine that finished,” Mercer said. “Whether you’re starting today, great, you’ve earned the right to start. I’m going to come in tomorrow and evaluate the entire lineup and rotation we’re going to make the decision to give us a chance to win today.”

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