UPDATE (3:30pm):  Brandon Sinnery is starting for Michigan, he went 0.1 innings this weekend giving up a hit and a walk.  Also, I missed the 2000 game against the Osprey, who we are 0-1 against, so this is a vengeance game.  Oaks still isn’t listed on the depth chart, despite being listed in the weekly press release.  Seems odd.  Anyone with information, please leave a comment.

Baseball Stream – via Atlantic Sun IPTV, but it’s $5.99 pay per view.  Seems pricey, but at least its out there.

White Out the Wolverines – UNF is planning a White Out for the game tonight.  Make sure you fans going to the game wear something Maize as their colors are White and Navy.  You’ll stand out like a sore thumb, announcing the Michigan presence.  First pitch is 7pm, pitchers are still TBA.  I’m going to guess Mike Wilson for Michigan just because we haven’t seen him yet.

All BigEast/Big10 Challenge Players –Collegebaseball360.com released their attempt at forming a 18 person all tournament team from the weekend. Not an easy thing to do when picking from 18 teams playing 24 games.

Notables for Michigan:

• Starting Pitcher – Eric Katzman (Michigan, LHP, Jr.)
• Relief Pitcher – Tyler Burgoon (Michigan, RHP, So.)
• RF -Nick Urban (Michigan, Sr.)
• DH – Jake McLouth (Michigan, Fr.)

Notably absent? Kenny Fellows. The guy bats .541 with a run, 2 RBIs, and 2 assists in the outfield and he gets nothing. Those 4 times being caught stealing hurt him as he lost the chance to score a few more runs.

Big10 Player of the Week – Nick Urban took Big10 POTW honors this week. Tyler Burgoon and Eric Katzman get the shaft. I can understand Eric Jokisch (NU) getting the nod for the complete game, but Drew Rucinski (OSU)? Let us compare:

Burgoon, Tyler (2-0)

Rucinski, Drew (1-0, 1 Sv)

I mean the guy gave up a walk for crying out loud. And sacrifices? Burgoon scoffs at the sort. He just gets outs.

Poll Watching – Michigan slides up in most polls with the 4-0 start.

*In others receiving votes section

No love yet from Rivals, who generally is very reluctant about teams not from the SEC/Big12/Pac10/Big West/ACC. RPI hasn’t been posted anywhere I’ve seen yet (ncaa.com or boyd’s world), which isn’t surprising due to the minimal number of games so far. Coaches poll (USA Today) haven’t posted yet, it will be updated if/when it come in today

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Game 1

This season is going to give me a heart attack. Michigan wins its second in a row to open the season on a walk off single, this time in the 10th inning. Tyler Burgoon gets the win again, he’s now on pace to win 55 games this season, shattering the previous record by over 30. He pitched 4 innings of shut out relief, keeping Michigan close.  He was definitely the player of the game.  Maloney didn’t even warm anyone else up the down the stretch of the game.  That’s the kind of confidence Rich has in Tyler.

McLouth was a hero again this time with the walk off single. He went 3-5 in the game with 2 RBIs. That puts him at .444 for the season with 7 total bases.  Toth also did a great job working the count.  He earned three walks in the game, including one to set up the winning run.

The one area that looked ugly though was baserunning.  We were caught three times today.  We’re slightly more aggressive this year, but it has yet to pay off.  It’ll be interesting to see if we keep up this level of intensity on the base paths or if Maloney will change up his plan of attack.

As said previously, I’ll have the full recap up for the weekend sometime on Monday. We have a quick turn around as Michigan faces Cincinnati in about an hour and a half.

Game 2

Michigan finally decided to get ahead and stay ahead in this game.  We gave Travis Smith a 3 run lead before he even took the mound, and that was all we needed.  Smith and Matt Miller combined to give up only one run while striking out 16.  Mike Dufek added a 3 run homer, his first of the year, as insurance late, but even that wasn’t needed.

Aaron Fitt at Baseball America described the Dufek bomb thusly:

[Mike Dufek] hit a Chris Dominguez-like bomb in the top of the seventh, a three-run shot that gave the Wolverines a 6-1 lead. This missile cleared the berm behind the right-field fence and bounced halfway up the chain-link fence that shields U.S. 19. And it got there in a hurry. I haven’t seen a ball hit that hard since Dominguez hit two massive homers for Louisville in the 2007 College World Series.

Of course Aaron screwed up the name of the player, citing Mike Spina (of Cincinnati) instead, but the description of the homerun was spot on with Dufek’s blast.  In other hitting standouts, Nick Urban also had quite a day, just a home run shy of the cycle.

We’re off for the rest of the night.  Tomorrow is St. John’s, who scored 12 on Iowa in the first inning in route to a 18-3 shellacking, yikes.

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The Varsity Blue crew kind of threw me off by posting the USF preview so early, so I’m going to continue that pattern with this preview. I’ll have the Cincy post tomorrow with a general post on the Challenge and what it means to Michigan baseball, as well as college baseball in general. This being a conference opponent, there is a little bit more detail in this than normal. It will hopefully get a little more specific once we get to the actual conference season, when games really start to count.   WordPress is also giving me formatting issues, so bear with for the time being.   –FA

Image from purdue.edu

Purdue*

*not a conference game
February 21, 2009 11:00am
Naimoli Complex
Clearwater, Fla.
Media:  Audio and  Stats

Home Team: TBA
Probable Pitchers: TBA vs Kolby Wood (RHP, 0-0)
M Record vs Opponent: 129-52
Last Series/Game: Michigan won 2 in the Big10 Tournament, last regular season match up was the 2007 series Michigan won 3 games to 1.

Overview

As stated above, this game, despite being against a conference opponent, is not a true conference game. Due to Louisville choosing to play Florida is a better venue than the Challenge, each Big10 team is playing one game against a conference opponent. The way the Big10 schedule works out, Big10 team misses out on one conference opponent per season, much like football does with the two opponents rotating off the schedule every two years. So, for a second year in a row, Michigan does not face Purdue during the regular season. To make up for the differing number of teams from each conference, the Big10 teams opted to face the conference opponent they would not be facing during conference season.

Purdue is coming off a very successful 2008 in which they finished 2nd in the Big10 regular season and was the last competitor to lose in the Big10 Championship. This year they are expected to rival, or even usurp Michigan as the winner of the Big10. Purdue may have lost stars Ryne White and Josh Lindblom, but they return nearly every other player on the team. They are by far the most experienced, and perhaps the best team on paper. That being said, as far as winning the Big10 is concerned, Baseball America puts it this way: “The Boilermakers last won a Big Ten title about the same time the Cubs won a World Series, in 1909.”

Michigan holds a fairly sizable lead in the historical series, as seen above. When we shorten the spectrum to the last 10 games, Michigan leads 8-2 spanning back to 2006. The two losses came closing out the 2006 series and opening the 2007 series (one at school’s home field).

Full preview after the jump…

Read More…

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