The last time ‘The Rivalry’ was played on the baseball diamond, the setting was Omaha, Nebraska.
Then-redshirt-freshman lefty Seth Lonsway, freshman right-hander Will Pfennig and eventual-conference-tournament Most Outstanding Player left-hander Andrew Magno combined to limit the Wolverines to one hit, striking out eight.
That 2-1 Buckeyes win began Ohio State’s path toward its 10th Big Ten Tournament title, becoming the lowest seed to win the conference competition.
“We fought hard and there was a lot of baseball that was left on the field, but our guys competed. You knew by about the third inning that it was going to be one of those games where every base counts,” head coach Greg Beals said following the victory May 22, 2019.
However, Michigan hung around in Omaha longer than Ohio State, earning its way to the College Baseball World Series where it dropped the final two of three games against eventual-champion Vanderbilt.
With their only meeting of the season set to take place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this weekend and no Big Ten Tournament, the next chapter of ‘The Rivalry’ holds Omaha implications.
“Each team needs to come to a point where they realize that they’re good and they develop some confidence and some winning ways, and that starts with you got to believe in yourselves,” Beals said Saturday. “I think in ‘19 that Michigan series let our guys know that, ‘Hey, we’re good. We are good.’ And we start believing in it and I hope this does the same for our ballclub.”
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Ohio State is most certainly on the upswing. Winners of seven of their last nine, the Buckeyes have found the combination of pitching and hitting that has allowed them to outscore opponents 39-28 in that span.
Lonsway tossed one of the more masterful starting-pitching performances of the season in Game 1 against Indiana last Saturday. Lonsway struck out the first six Hoosiers hitters en route to totaling 17 in seven innings, one shy of the Ohio State program record set by righty Bill Gable in 1963.
The complete-game shutout earned Lonsway Big Ten Pitcher of the Week recognition in addition to National Pitcher of the Week honors from D1Baseball.com, Perfect Game USA Pitcher of the Week, and National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Division I National Player of the Week.
“I had to bring it, had to have my best stuff,” Lonsway said Saturday. “I wanted to put my team in the best position to win the game. It was definitely a factor as far as preparing for this weekend and getting ready to play a good ball team.”
Not only did Lonsway garner national attention, but junior shortstop Zach Dezenzo did as well. Dezenzo, who collected eight hits in 15 at-bats alongside a pair of solo shots, capped the four-game sweep of Indiana with a walk-off single, his fourth hit of the ballgame.
The weekend parlayed Dezenzo into Big Ten Player of the Week recognition. His surging offense has been a bright spot in a Buckeyes batting order that currently sits in the bottom-half of the Big Ten with a league-worst .227 batting average and eighth-fewest 91 runs.
“I think I started putting the pieces together even last weekend against Maryland and Iowa,” Dezenzo said Sunday. “Hit a lot of balls hard that weekend. So I realized that we were slowly on a rise.”
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Pitching has continued to be a strength of the Ohio State ballclub. The Buckeyes’ 3.70 earned-run average is second-best in the Big Ten, as is their .217 opponent batting average.
Junior right-handed pitcher TJ Brock has been sharp in later innings. Brock tossed two innings last weekend against the Hoosiers, raising his saves total to a Big Ten-best six.
Not to be forgotten, lefties graduate Patrick Murphy and Griffan Smith provided valuable innings in long relief. Murphy tossed two scoreless innings Friday while adding three punch outs while Smith followed junior right-hander Jack Neely in Game 2 Saturday for 3.1 innings of one-hit, three-strikeout ball.
“How big is that for our ballclub, to bridge from your starter to your back end of your bullpen? Griffan did that; I think he went three and a third scoreless, and really did that for us and was up to about 50 pitches,” Beals said of Smith Saturday. “We’re still climbing his pitch count. We’re getting him back and who knows where he ends up going, but it’s a heck of a commodity out in the bullpen to have a guy like that.”
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For the second-straight series, Ohio State will be presented with the team that sits in the top-two of the conference. Michigan owns a 13-6 record, and split both two-game mini series with Northwestern and Maryland last weekend.
The Wolverines pitching staff is upper-tier within the Big Ten. Their 3.93 team-ERA is third-best in the conference while their 82 runs allowed is third-fewest.
Redshirt-sophomore left-handed pitcher Steven Hajjar ranks as MLB Pipeline’s 45th-best prospect ahead of the 2021 MLB draft, and will enter with the conference’s fifth-most strikeouts with 38 in 30.1 innings and sixth-best ERA with 2.67.
On offense, Michigan has scored the Big Ten’s third-most runs with 124, yet collectively hits a seventh-best .257. The Wolverines can find the gaps, though, as their 39 doubles is second-most and .531 slugging percentage is fifth-best.
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The prominence of ‘The Rivalry’ generates a buzz in each sport in which it lives, and the baseball Buckeyes don’t do anything different as they approach it with their three core values, of which are linchpins in Beals’ managerial belief: elite preparation, competitive toughness and brotherhood.
“The standings are going to continue to shake up and shape around. We’re trending right now, we’re moving in the right direction and we’re going to be concerned about us,” Beals said Sunday. “We got to go on the road for the next six, though. We go up north, then we got to go to Maryland the following weekend. There’s going to be no let down for this week, no doubt about it.
“You know, it’s Michigan week. Our boys will definitely be ready.”
The series begins Friday at 4 p.m. and will be broadcast on BTN+. Sunday's series finale will air on ESPN2 at 4 p.m.
