The Pitching Experiment Gone Wrong for Missouri Baseball
He planned the experiment before the game, and wanted to give them all an opportunity to see what they could do. It did not go as expected.
Kerrick Jackson knew he was going to have a bullpen game against Southeast Missouri State on Tuesday. He wanted sophomore left-hander Daniel Wissler to make his starting debut, throw two innings, and then have a different pitcher on the mound every subsequent inning.
Wissler was the key, though. The coach saw his potential through what he did last year as just a freshman — 20 appearances and 21 strikeouts in 22 innings pitched, with his longest outings being a pair of 4.0 innings combining for one run on one hit.
"He's one that we think has the capability to be a starter and so we're going to continue to roll him out and give him those opportunities to grow and develop in that role," Jackson said.
Despite the solo home run that Wissler gave up in the second inning, he had a pretty good start for himself. He struck out the side to start the game and was able to recover after the home run and pitch through the rest of the second inning.
"That's the sign of a guy that's had some experience," Jackson said. "You get a younger guy who gives up a home run then all sudden he starts spraying stuff all over the place."
After Wissler's planned two innings, he wanted to see what each of his pitchers could do and to test them a little bit before they got farther into the season. That was his intention and idea behind the bullpen game. Jackson had planned the order of each pitcher he wanted out of the bullpen afterwards.
"[I was] just trying to give them opportunities, challenging them just to go out and 'Hey, just get three outs,'" Jackson said. "But we saw what happened."
What happened was the pitching putting Missouri behind early in the game and then breaking up the chance at a close game with a grand slam in the fifth inning. To defend the pitchers a bit, it was terribly windy with gusts up to 43 mph and definitely not easy weather to pitch. But that doesn't explain just how awry the game went pitching-wise after the home run in the second inning. The Tigers pitching combined for six hit-by-pitches, six walks and two wild pitches in the game
"It was scheduled from every time you saw a guy run out there," Jackson said. "We got off a little bit when we when we ended up bringing in Nic Smith and Ben Pedersen, they were kind of emergency guys in there. But, those guys have been good for us, so we brought them in that situation."
As his plan didn't go accordingly, he ended up needing those emergency pitchers that weren't in his original planned order. By the end of the night, Missouri had gone to the bullpen seven times through the eight innings they played.
Two of their eight pitchers didn’t make it through their planned full inning of work, junior right-handers Victor Quinn and Miles Garrett.
Garrett recorded no outs and walked four straight batters. All came around to score. In Quinn's 2/3 inning appearance, he hit three batters, gave up a hit and walked a player. Luckily for Quinn, only one of them came around to score.
"We've got to try and figure that out," Jackson said. "I'm trying to help [Quinn] be competitive for us because if we can get him to do that, you got a guy that's 95-97 [mph] with a good breaking ball. That wins anywhere in the country."
These appearances shouldn't reflect too harshly on the pitchers, they could have been just been having really bad days. Jackson defended Garrett, stating that this was his first start back from an injury that had him benched since 2021, and shared his hope for Quinn in the future. Quinn had a really strong last outing, where he pitched a scoreless frame against San Diego State.
"Adrenaline got the best of [Garrett]," Jackson said. "He wanted to come out, he saw what some of the other guys did. He wanted to come out and I think he put a lot of pressure on himself to not put himself in that situation."
While sophomore left-hander Nic Smith didn't have as bad of a start as Quinn and Garrett, he also wasn't able to keep SEMO from scoring a run. Smith hit his first batter he faced to allow one of Garrett's runs to score, and then gave up a grand slam. In his other relief appearances this season, Smith didn't do nearly as bad with his worst outing giving up one run on three hits and two walks.
"[We brought] Nic into a tough situation with winds blowing out, leaves ball elevated, and then [Bryce Cannon] hit that out but but those guys did their job," Jackson said.
Similar to Smith's performance was junior right-hander Kaden Jacobi's. Jacobi's three-hit outing was actually better than his last relief appearance against San Diego State, where he went 2/3 innings and gave up five hits and four runs. This time, Jacobi was able to go a full inning and didn't give up a run, despite loading the bases.
In a day of troubling pitching, right-handed freshmen Charlie Miller and Josh McDevitt and graduate right-hander Ben Pedersen were able to put up solid performances for the Tigers. All put in a full innings work and did not allow a single hit.
Miller put up 1 1/3 innings in relief in the third and fourth, striking out three. Looking back, the Tigers may have wanted to not disrupt his rhythm and keep him in the game but it's too late for that now. The freshman had the best performance from the bullpen of the night.
"I don't want any of those guys to think this early in the season that the book is closed on them," Jackson said.
