Big Ten Baseball Tournament bracket announced
The bracket for the eight-team, double-elimination Big Ten Baseball Tournament, to be held May 21–25 in Omaha, has been announced. Michigan, the #5 seed is in the 1-4-5-8 bracket with Indiana, Minnesota, and Iowa. The Wolverines will play Minnesota on Wednesday at 9 pm CT, with Indiana and Iowa facing off at 5 pm. The winners of those two games will play on Thursday at 9 pm, with the losers playing an elimination game at 1 pm that day.
Michigan played all three of the teams in their bracket during the regular season, winning 1 of 3 against both Minnesota and Indiana, while taking 2 of 3 in their series against Iowa. Those series were all in late March and early April, when the team wasn't playing as well as they have of late. Michigan's starting pitching in particular gives them a chance to make some noise in the tournament.
Michigan has no chance at an at-large NCAA bid; they'd need to win the BTT to get in.
After losing to Kansas 8-2 today, the Wolverines are 27-27-1 on the season, with another game against Kansas tomorrow. On Senior Day, senior Logan McAnallen will be getting the start.
Also, for those interested, Chris Webb posted future Big Ten regular-season schedules for 2015 through 2017. Unfortunately, Michigan won’t face either MSU or OSU next season, but both will be back on the schedule in 2016 and 2017.
The Big Ten season will remain a nine-week, eight-series slate. As each team will not play four other programs, the Big Ten is moving away from its current format of a two-year scheduling cycle. Beginning in 2015, each team in the conference will see all other teams once every two years.
I think the last part should say "will see all other teams at least once every two years."
Unfortunately, Michigan won’t face either MSU or OSU next season
BIG TENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
Our pitching is great. We can go 6 deep with Hill, Szkutnik, McAnallen, Lehmann, Ballantine, and Adcock.
to see the team win at least a few more and finish above .500, our pitching could go a long way toward toward making it happen.
Better yet, lets put it all together and shock the..., naw, overused cliche'. How about just surprise the B1G and let them know Michigan is back ,and plans on being a force in the conference from now on!
Yes, the starting pitching and the top of the bullpen can compete with anybody in the conference; I'm optimistic that Michigan has a chance to make a run deep into the conference tournament, although they will have to hope they can catch Indiana looking ahead to the regionals. Indiana will be nearly impossible to beat if they are at the top of their game--they are on a different level compared to the rest of the conference.
I have to assume, based on the use of the pitching staff this weekend, that Hill gets the start on Wednesday (it looks like he will not pitch this weekend) and Szkutnik gets the start on Thursday (he started yesterday but only went 2 innings). Hill also had a great start against Minnesota earlier this year: he gave up only 5 singles in 6.2 innings of shutout ball.
That will leave Adcock and McAnallen ready for the next two games, and Lehmann, Ballantine and Bourque ready to take any long relief assignments.
I have really been impressed with Adcock lately, especially his start against Ohio State last week, as well as Lehmann. Michigan's freshman pitchers have combined for a record of 12-3.
Szkutnik threw only 37 pitches yesterday; it could really have been just a midweek pitching session that happened to be in a live game rather than in the bullpen. Hill had a similar midweek outing vs. CMU and then came back on three day's rest for his strong OSU start. So I could see the starters on Wednesday and Thursday going either way.
I'd quibble a bit with including Ballantine among Michigan's top pitchers as was said a few posts above. He started out the season well before hitting a rough patch and hasn't pitched since late April.
This expansion to 8 teams is not an improvement from the 6-team tournament. I understand that they want .500 teams in the tournament, and with the conference going to 13 teams next season they want a bigger tournament field. Nevertheless, it is hard enough to keep track of a tournament with three 3-hour games a day. Four games a day is absurd, as is the fact that the winning team will have played as many as 6 games in 5 days.
The schedule on Wednesday and Thursday (and Saturday if necessary) calls for 4 games--at 9:00 am, 1:00 pm, 5:00 pm and 9:00 pm. Who is going to be watching at 9 am local time? If they're ok with playing in front of 20 fans in a 20,000 seat stadium, I guess I won't say otherwise, but you would think you would want to attract baseball fans instead of enthusiastically repelling them.
They really should cut it back to 4 teams and use the same 2/2/2/1 format as the NCAA regional--that way, a team that wins the Big Ten tournament has already proven that it can compete in an NCAA regional system. If you insist on 8 teams, go to a single-elimination tournament. 1v8 & 2v7 on Thursday, 3v6 & 4v5 on Friday, semifinals on Saturday and final on Sunday. At least you have guaranteed that the winning team will be a team with 3 solid starting pitchers and a deep bullpen.
The SEC tournament is a bigger deal than the B1G tournament, of course, but 9 AM (and 9 PM) local starts are kind of crazy. God forbid any game goes into extra innings, it could really screw up the schedule!
I think the ACC tournament format is the best. 10 teams, 7/10 and 8/9 play in play-in games. Then the teams are split into two 4-team round robins --- those 12 games are played across 4 days (3 games each day). Championship game among pool-winners after that.
The drawback to that, of course, is that there are inevitably games that are absolutely meaningless in determining the conference champion. But I think that's still a better format versus 4 games on a single day.
I think the ACC tourney format completely blows. Brian is always going on about how the NCAA hockey tournament is just a game of plinko. The ACC baseball tournament even more so. Here are the seeds of the championship game participants from the years this format has existed:
1 vs. 6 - 1 wins
6 vs. 8 - 8 wins
1 vs. 2 - 1 wins
5 vs. 7 - 5 wins
1 vs. 6 - 6 wins
1 vs. 6 - 1 wins
2 vs. 8 - 2 wins
Pure randomness. The 8 seed has played in the championship game as often as the 2 seed, and no 3 seed ever has. A better tournament would only have four teams in it, but the ACC would never give up the extremely good chance to get a bid thief into the tournament or risk leaving out its Carolina teams.
Yes, Wisconsin always had a baseball team until they dropped it after the 1991 season.
They had some success at the sport, making the College World Series in 1950 with Harvey Kuenn at shortstop, but never won a conference title after that. They hadn't even come close since 1979 when they finished second in a tight 3-way race for the conference title with Michigan & Michigan State that went down to the last day of the season. From about 1981 to 1991, they were pretty consistently a bottom division team, and I'm sure that helped the Wisconsin administration pick baseball when it was time to cut back.
The actual reason that they dropped baseball is money and/or Title IX. It's hard to imagine Wisconsin as a cash-strapped athletic department, but I think they really were in the early '90s.
Good to see Brett Winger getting a start today on Senior Day:
Michigan hosts Kansas today at 1 p.m. on Senior Day at the Fish! pic.twitter.com/mhCX6aSGS6
— Michigan Baseball (@umichbaseball) May 18, 2014
WCBN has a live stream radio call for today's game:
just scored all three in the bottom of the 3rd inning.
Now going into the top of the 4th. GO BLUE!
Evan Hill has been inserted into today's game in relief in the 6th, so it's looking like it'll be Szkutnik on Wednesday and Hill on Thursday.
It's still 3-0 Michigan.
Michigan still holding on to a 3-0 lead. Pitching has been top-notch today for Michigan, GO BLUE !!!
Senior Brett Winger, who hasn't seen much action this year, finally got his first hit of the season in the 7th on Senior Day. Got a standing ovation after being pulled for a pinch runner.
Hill gets the strikeout to end it!! Michigan defeats Kansas 4-0 on Senior Day!!! #goblue
— Michigan Baseball (@umichbaseball) May 18, 2014
Michigan finishes regular season 28-27-1.
Back over .500 for the season, now on to Conquering the B1G Tournament!
What a Valiant effort today!! Lots of Heroes offensively, defensively, and especially pitching.
GO BLUE!!!
Michigan blanks Kansas on Senior Day!! pic.twitter.com/7suW2zOTtE
— Michigan Baseball (@umichbaseball) May 18, 2014