BASEBALL: Teams finding new ways to navigate pitching in condensed season

There is a high school baseball season in 2021.

That, after a year away from the diamond due to the pandemic, is the good news. The bad news is that with the IHSA’s radically altered schedule to allow for a six-week football season in the spring, the baseball season became a lot more condensed.

Normally stretching from mid-March into early June, this spring baseball teams are trying to cram as many games as they can schedule into five weeks.

With pitch count rules implemented following the 2016 season limiting hurlers to 105 pitches in a four-day stretch, and teams sometimes putting four games on the schedule in a single week, creative ways to navigate a pitching rotation and a bullpen have been needed.

“If you have a starter that doesn’t go very long, that puts pressure on the rest of the guys,” Sterling coach Nick Pepper said.

For many teams, the extension of football season into the first few weeks of baseball practice meant getting some players into practice later than others. In a normal year, depending on how early of an exit from the postseason the boys basketball team had and how many March baseball games got rained or snowed out, the multi-sport players might have a few weeks or even more than a month to get ready. A football player who did not play a winter sport might have four months before the first baseball practice.

“They had not thrown in the offseason,” Newman coach Kenny Koerner said. “We usually like to build the arms up in the offseason so that we’re ready to go. For us, we’re really young and just getting the football guys back, so we’re trying to be careful.”

With other teams, players on COVID-related quarantine further shortened the bench. Rock Falls had to adjust its way of working through pitching when it faced Sterling on April 26, bringing Luke Akerman into the game in the fourth inning.

“We didn’t want to use Luke, but the game got where it was and we had to use him,” Rockets coach Donnie Chappell said.

Pitch counts are also at the forefront of coaches’ minds as they ease pitchers back in. In the April 26 game against Rock Falls, Pepper had Golden Warriors’ starter Colt Adams on a strict pitch count in hopes that he would be able to go again a few days later when Sterling opened Western Big 6 play with a doubleheader against Galesburg. Against the Rockets, Adams lasted 1 1/3 innings, throwing 43 pitches.

“We have to have a plan before a game even starts with where guys are going to be with pitch counts,” Pepper said. “Hopefully they can make the most of the pitch counts. It takes a lot more planning ahead to make sure each of our pitchers are ready on a day we need them.”

For some teams, it’s a constantly evolving situation with how they will deploy the pitching.

“Honestly, it’s a lot of confusion, especially with us not being able to get our full bullpen working,” Dixon coach Jason Burgess said. “We’re just kind of in that boat where we have to touch and feel, ask the guys, ‘How are you feeling, any tenderness with the arm?’ and we have to get them out. Just be smart. It’s going to be a challenge, and it’s going to be a rigorous season from that standpoint.”

Koerner spent some of the offseason and preseason practice time seeking out more arms, telling players who hadn’t been pitchers in recent years, some who hadn’t taken the mound since Little League, that they might have to eat a few innings here or there.

“We’ve been throwing bullpens with almost everybody on the team, just so that they’re ready in case we need them,” he said. “We tell them pitching is different than just throwing. You don’t have to just throw as hard as you can. We’re working on mechanics and trying to throw strikes, let your [fielders] make plays for you when you’re in that situation.”

The situation with pitchers has also had an impact on coaching decisions elsewhere. In a game against North Boone last week, Dixon led 5-0 heading to the bottom of the fifth, with five runs in that inning to invoke the run rule, saving Dukes pitchers from having to work two additional innings that day. With a chance to end the game then and there, Burgess waved in a runner around third when Eli Dever hit a bases-loaded single with two outs in the fifth.

“Normally I wouldn’t try to score, but trying to save pitching with three games during the week, I think you’re going to see more of that,” Burgess said.

No matter what the schedule looks like, for baseball coaches four games in a week is a far cry from the zero games all spring they saw in 2020.

“We’re going to cram it all into five weeks, but I can’t complain about playing games, that’s for sure,” Chappell said. “We’ll play every day if they want us to.