Ball State baseball hosts Kent State in battle for MAC regular-season title

MUNCIE, Ind. — The Mid-American Conference baseball schedule played out perfectly.

No. 2 Ball State (33-18, 19-8) hosts No. 1 Kent State (37-14, 21-6) from Thursday to Saturday in the final series before the postseason. The Cardinals recovered from getting swept by No. 3 Central Michigan on April 14-15 to go 9-3 in conference play thereafter, winning three straight series and keeping alive their chance at the regular-season title.

BSU needs to sweep the Golden Flashes in order to repeat as MAC champions, a challenge the team is eager to face.

"We know they're a good team, but it's kind of cool it's set up like this, the first and second-place teams are playing each other at the very end," junior Decker Scheffler said. "It's all on our hands. It's not gonna be an easy task, but it's right in front of us. We've just got to get three games and then we're going to host (the tournament)."

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This is the fourth consecutive season in which BSU is in contention for the regular-season title, so the situation is not unfamiliar.

Maloney sees scenarios like this as ideal opportunities to improve, especially mentally, heading into the tournament.

"This is like a tournament in of itself ... For us, it's an elimination game every game," Maloney said. "Then it starts all over next week. So it's like a prelude. Really, it's practice for the tournament … The intensity of the tournament is an elimination game, so this is a good opportunity for our guys to compete and kind of see where we stack up."

Ball State, however, can't finish lower than the No. 3 seed. So if BSU falls to KSU, Maloney won't hesitate to "pace" his pitchers and give them extra rest before the postseason, knowing that an NCAA Tournament birth is the "ultimate prize."

Yet it's likely that he'll still get his top pitchers some work to try and maintain the staff's momentum of late. While BSU's offense has been its strength all season, ranking second in runs scored (208) in MAC play, only recently has the pitching staff strung together consistent success.

After allowing nine runs per game during its six-game losing streak in mid-April, the Cardinals have given up an average of just 6.1 runs in the 15 contests since. In their last two MAC series, they surrendered four runs per game at Ohio, and aside from a 14-run eighth inning in May 12's loss to Miami (Ohio) that was marred by terrible weather, BSU pitchers allowed just four runs through the other 26 innings of that series.

"I think the pitching staff's going in the right direction, absolutely," fifth-year pitcher Ty Weatherly said. "There's always going to be some peaks and valleys throughout a long season, and just pounding the zone and controlling the running game has been big for us, and I think we've done a much better job later than earlier in the season. I think we're pitching really well right now and just trying to put together complete games."

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Aside from senior Trennor O'Donnell (2.93 ERA, second in the MAC), BSU's pitching has been inconsistent.

Injuries, most notably to juniors Sam Klein and Ryan Brown, are the primary reason why. Brown, the 2022 MAC Freshman Pitcher of the Year, entered the spring as the No. 49 college prospect by D1 Baseball, and Klein was an All-MAC First Team selection last year.

Yet Brown hasn't pitched since April 15 and Klein missed the first month of the season. Maloney is "hoping to have (Brown) back for the tournament" and expects sophomore Jacob Hartlaub, who has pitched 1.1 IP over three appearances in the past month, to be healthy and available against Kent State.

Klein, though, is still trying to find repeated production. He currently sports a 5.34 ERA, nearly two points higher than last season's.

"I think he's trending well. He missed that first month or so, and then he looked like the old Sam and then he's had some up and downs," Maloney said. "But first us to win, he's gonna have to pitch strong. I think he's trending that way. I expect that he's going to do really well down the stretch. I really do."

Junior Ty Johnson (2.86 ERA in 34.2 MAC innings pitched) was the second starter but dealt with some injuries that limited his length. He shifted into a "high leverage" relief role, according to Maloney, to fill in for Brown's absence and has excelled.

Johnson's also getting stretched out more of late, throwing five innings of relief in two of his last three appearances. Weatherly took over as second starter since the change, making four straight conference starts, but hasn't been as effective.

Weatherly surrendered 14 earned runs in 12.1 innings through his first three MAC starts before breaking through against the RedHawks on May 13, tossing a scoreless seven innings with a career-high 11 strikeouts to just three hits and two walks.

Not only was his performance eerily similar to O'Donnell's the day before (7.0 IP, 11 K's, two hits, three walks), but Weatherly hopes he found a strategy he can carry into the KSU series and MAC tournament.

"It was key. I had a pretty rough outing at Ohio, and talking with coach (Zach) Putnam, the biggest key is just you've got to get ahead, get an 0-1 on hitters, and I think I was able to do a much better job of that this past weekend," Weatherly said. "And when you have that kind of confidence rolling inning-to-inning and just taking it a pitch at a time, it really helps."

BSU's improved pitching of late can't solely be attributed Putnam, the team's new volunteer assistant coach who works primarily with pitchers, but Maloney believes the former MLB pitcher has made an impact.

Putnam was a star under Maloney during his coaching tenure at Michigan, and the two met for breakfast earlier this season to catch up. Maloney said Putnam, who last played in the majors in 2017 and was released by the Chicago White Sox in 2020, expressed an interest in coaching.

So after former pitching coach Larry Scully and BSU mutually parted ways at the end of April, according to athletic director Jeff Mitchell, Maloney thought he'd bring in Putnam to "get his feet wet" in the coaching profession.

Maloney said Putnam's resume, highlighted by seven years in the MLB and two All-American selections, gave him "instant credibility," and Weatherly said the adjustment to a different pitching mentor has gone smoothly.

"He's done an outstanding job in the short time … When you come in at that stage of the season, you can't reinvent everything because the team's already flowing. But he's adjusted really well," Maloney said. "The guys have really gravitated to him. He spends a lot of time teaching, which is what we needed, which is a really good thing … It's always good to have somebody with his experience level."

With a newly-filled coaching staff and pitchers getting healthy, the Cardinals have one last test before another tournament trial.

Win or lose, Maloney is impressed that his group was able to continue contending for the regular-season title despite a bumpier regular season than in 2022.

"I give the kids a lot of credit. We lost three of our top five pitchers for long periods of time ... Our guys stayed the course and are in the thick of it without some really big-time ammunition. And that says a lot about our guys," Maloney said. "It says about their grit, about their character, about the fight in the dog and they believe they can win. They've proven that."

Gus Martin is a sports reporter at The Star Press. Follow him on Twitter @GusMartin_SP, and contact him at gmartin@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Ball State baseball hosts Kent State for shot at MAC title