Husker baseball: post mortem LMU

Huskers won the series but didn’t sweep this weekend in LA against the now 7-4 Loyola Marymount Lions. The takeaways from the series are typical baseball axioms: if you don’t get hits, you’re not going to win the game. And pitching will always be key.

On the defensive side of the game, there were only 2 double plays in the series handled by the Huskers. This is in large part due to the fact LMU wasn’t getting on base when Kubat and Burkamper were pitching. The Big Red only had 2 stolen bases recorded against them as well, and only a couple of wild pitches. If they continue to keep it clean, good things will happen.

After 10 games I am still really impressed with Husker Derek Burkamper. His over the top delivery recorded 5 Ks in his 7 innings of work after facing 23 batters. He issued only 1 walk and 1 wild pitch in 85 total pitches. Lefty senior Kyle Kubat also gets some props for his performance as well. In 83 pitches against 26 batters there were only 3 hits, 1 walk and 2Ks.

Chance Sinclair was good but was not up to what I think he can do in my opinion. He did retire the Lions in order in 2 of his 5 innings but got into trouble in the 5th, compounded by a wild pitch, a walk, an error and a stolen base. He did finish it up strong with a K to get out of the inning but only after the damage was done.

Husker Closers: McSteen, Myers, Chestnut and Howell were solid. None of them faced more than 4 batters per inning in which they pitched. Out of the 4 I really liked watching Colton Howell deliver. I would hope catcher Lubach had an extra bit of padding in his glove because Howell’s stuff was coming in HOT and FILTHY!

Offensively the lineup is still a little cold. They will need to get hot to take on the teams in the Houston Classic coming up this weekend (Texas A&M, Hawaii and LSU). “Headley is a beast.” That was something I pulled from twitter but it’s kind of true. He was the double king this weekend in a series where there were only 25 hits in 3 games with 15 of those coming in game 2. Headley was 1/4, 3/4 and 2/4 with 3 doubles and 3 singles on the weekend. Last year he ended at .323 and 8 doubles. He already has 5 doubles this year and a triple this year!

Providing another SPARK has been sophomore Ryan Boldt. Last year he hit .311 on the year and had 6 triples. This weekend he recorded 2 doubles and 2 singles in his 13 plate appearances. Tanner Lubach also went yard with the second homerun on the season for Nebraska. He will need to get his bat back up to his performance level of last year (.282). He’s chipping away for sure with 4 singles on the weekend out of 12 plate appearances. 

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What is needed is for the rest of the batting order to produce. The pitching they will face will only get better and they need to find a way to get on base and get production on the 5-9 spots in order to be effective.

I want to also give a shout out to the Californians for Nebraska fan base that attended the series in Los Angeles. They even garnered a shout out on the LMU live stream. They were representing and were called “classy fans” by the announcers. Way to GO BIG RED CALI!

Husker Corner is heading to Houston to follow the Huskers as they play against 14th ranked Texas A&M, Hawaii and 7th ranked LSU. It’s going to be a very good measuring stick for the Huskers. We’ll be tweeting from the games and will have scouting reports later in the week. In the meantime, GO BIG RED!!!