Weekend Recap with Rick Heller: Stetson Tournament

The Hawkeyes trip to DeLand did not get off to a great start, falling to Notre Dame 2-1 in 11 innings on Friday, but Rick Heller got his team to regroup and refocus. They shutout host Stetson 7-0 on Saturday and then closed out the weekend with a 6-0, shutout win over UMBC on Sunday. The two-game winning streak gets Iowa back to .500 at 3-3 overall.

“It was night and day better from the week before,” said head coach Rick Heller. “Big improvement in pretty much all areas. The pitching, I don’t know if we’ve seen a weekend like that since I’ve been here.”

Up next, the Hawkeyes will head to Cleburne, Texas for a four-game neutral site series against the Washington State Cougars starting on Thursday. HawkeyeReport caught up with head coach Rick Heller to go over the top takeaways from the weekend in DeLand.

Main Takeaway: The pitching staff, top to bottom, had a really impressive weekend

Exceptional. That’s one of many words that could be used to describe the performance by the pitching staff over the weekend at Stetson. Over 29.0 innings, the staff posted a 0.62 ERA, totaling shutouts in the final two games of the weekend.

In the loss on Friday to Notre Dame, pitching was not the issue. Cade Obermueller, Anthony Watts and Ben DeTaeye combined to allow two runs on seven hits over 11.0 innings, including 18 strikeouts to six walks. The win over Stetson did not come with quite as sharp of a pitching performance as Rick Heller would have liked, but there was never a blowup inning, and pitchers made pitches when they needed to.

Despite giving up ten free bases, Hawkeye pitchers gave up just three hits to the Stetson lineup and got groundball double plays at opportune times. Double plays in the fifth and eighth innings ended threats that could have allowed the Hatters to climb back into the game.

“(Saturday) wasn’t a clean game on the mound, but they made pitches when they had to, and that was great to see,” said Heller. “That’s one of the things we’re trying our best to do this year. When things start to go south, we find a way to stop it and avoid the crooked numbers that cost you games.”

On Sunday, Reece Beuter was dominate, tossing 7.0 scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and totaling five strikeouts to just one walk. Through two weeks, Beuter has thrown nearly 70.0% of his pitches for strikes. The consistency with the starting pitching is what has stood out to Coach Heller over the first two weekends of the season.

“The consistency with the starting pitching, Cade has set the tone of Friday two weeks in a row. Savary, the same thing, competing and getting into the fifth, sixth inning and then Reece Beuter after the season he had last year, what he’s done in his two weeks is pretty impressive too.”

With the starting pitching combining for 5.2 innings per start so far, there have been less innings for the bullpen arms to cover. It’s a great sign for what the coaching staff can get out of the starters going forward, but there are some bullpen arms that haven’t been called on, that will be needed in big rolls once Big Ten play gets rolling.

“I do feel good about the guys that we’ve seen and used so far, but I think there’s guys in the mix who haven’t thrown that are going to have major roles before the end of the season.”

Three more thoughts on the Hawkeyes weekend at the Stetson Tournament…

1. Ben Wilmes has shown he can be a very capable leadoff hitter

Coming into the season, Rick Heller was excited to see what Ben Wilmes could do in his final year with the Hawkeyes. The coaching staff was happy with the improvements he made over the offseason, but his spot in the batting order was not defined until hours before the first pitch of the season. They put Wilmes in the leadoff spot and he has shown, through six games, that he is capable of being the leadoff hitter in the Hawkeyes lineup.

“He went into the offseason with a great mindset. This is my last year; I’m going to do everything I can to be the best player I can be,” said Heller. “He’s hitting for more power, he’s driving the ball, he’s cutting his strikeouts down and he’s always going to be one of the best with his pitch selection and taking his walks. Ben’s just a great guy to have up there because he’s usually very consistent.”

Wilmes is slashing .423/.483/.577, with a team-high 11 hits, four doubles and four runs scored. He totaled six hits in the USF series to open the season and followed it up with five hits in DeLand. The other positive sign has been his ability to limit his strikeout rate. As a sophomore, Ben had a 26.1% strikeout rate but improved to 19.2% last season. So far, through six games, Wilmes has cut that down even further to 16.7% in 30 plate appearances.

“Ben just tightened his swing up. There was a little length to it at times when he wasn’t going well, and he did a really good job of tightening it up. His ability to hit breaking balls improved and his ability to drive the ball to both fields has improved with that.”

2. The sixth inning against Stetson was the most important so far during this young season

Sitting at 1-3 overall after their loss to Notre Dame on Friday, the Hawkeyes game against host Stetson on Saturday suddenly became a sneaky important game. Although there is still a ton of baseball to be played, falling to 1-4 as a northern school would have been a far from ideal start.

Leading 1-0 in the fifth inning, the Iowa offense scored two runs against the Stetson bullpen and followed up with a three-run sixth inning to expand the lead to 6-0. Given the implications that would come with a 1-4 start, that sixth inning was the most crucial of the year so far. Several players stepped up with run-scoring hits, including a two-run single from Daniel Rogers that broke the game open in the sixth.

“It was only 3-0 and we have two losses where we had leads in the fifth inning or later, so offensively, we needed to keep adding on,” said Heller. “We were able to get two in the fifth and three in the six off the bullpen and that was huge.”

The Hawkeyes closed out a 7-0 win and then were able to finish off the weekend with a shutout win over UMBC. Not only were the wins important in getting back to a .500 record, but the offense also made some strides at the plate, getting hits with runners in scoring position, which was a major struggle through the first four games.

“We addressed why, asked questions as to why and just reiterated that, in those situations, you have to be yourself. You can’t make it a bigger situation. Hitting doesn’t work that way.”

From the fifth inning against Stetson on, the Hawkeyes reached base in 16 of 33 (.485) at-bats with runners on base, excluding a pair of sacrifice flies that drove in runs. It’s a small sample size, but Coach Heller believes that the fact that the team was able to see some success with runners on base could be enough to get the ball rolling going forward.

“Somebody needed to come through. Once it happens, then guys stop pressing and the big step we took offensively, I thought, was that we were in control, way better than we were in week one with our routine and sticking to our plan.”

3. Is the concer for Andy Nelson and Blake Guerin’s offensive struggles growing?

According to Rick Heller, not yet. He’s not ready to say that their struggles are concerning, but it’s likely helping that other players are stepping in their absence to collect hits and score runs. It would be a bigger concern if the offense was struggling to get on base, but they’ve gotten along fine through six games.

Andy Nelson, the Hawkeyes top returning hitter from last season, is 0 for 15 (.000) at the plate to start the season, including eight strikeouts. Coach Heller was critical of Andy, and his teammate Reese Moore, for their failure to drive in runs in key situations in the USF series, but Heller is confident he will turn it around. Nelson missed the final two games at the Stetson Tournament after banging up his wrist in the Notre Dame game but is expected to be back on Thursday against Washington State.

“Some bad luck led to some bad at-bats, and him probably pressing and trying too hard…Maybe the break was godsend. He got dinged up a little bit and had to watch and when he comes back, he can hopefully clean his slate and be ready to roll.”

“With Andy, I’m not really concerned, we know we need Andy,” said Heller. “The best version of this team has Andy Nelson as one of our best players.”

As for Blake Guerin, the junior first baseman has appeared in five games, with two starts, but is 0 for 8 (.000) at the plate, including four strikeouts. The coaching staff loves what he brings to the table as a defender, but the offensive side of things has kept him from earning a bigger role. Still, Heller feels like Blake is closer, rather than further away.

“Blake is an excellent defensive first baseman and I feel like he has done some nice work with his swing to give him a chance to be successful. A lot like Andy, I think he just needs to see a double or a home run to get him going.”