Power outage, sloppy play cost Mizzou baseball in series loss to UIC

Poor pitching, sloppy fielding and stagnating offense doomed Mizzou this weekend, as the Tigers fell to 3-7 on the season by losing two of three games to UIC March 5 and 6.

Mizzou committed five errors in Saturday’s series opening 11-7 loss. Those errors compounded starter Matt Stites’ rough outing, as the junior college transfer allowed six runs (four earned) on six hits, four walks and four strikeouts over just four innings of work.

Reliever Jeff Emens allowed four runs—just one earned—on five hits, two walks and two strikeouts in 3.2 innings. While errors can certainly be blamed for the nine runs allowed, that Mizzou’s first two pitchers walked as many as they struck out hardly exonerates them.

While Mizzou scored seven runs in game one, the offense continued to struggle to get extra-base hits. Of Mizzou’s 14 hits, just one went for extra bases (a double by Andrew Thigpen).

Mizzou jumped out to a 6-0 lead in game two and never looked back, winning for the only time in the series 11-4. While Mizzou had just two extra-base hits—doubles by Jonah Schmidt and Jesse Santo—the Tigers drew 15 walks and collected 12 hits, scoring runs by overloading the basepaths and picking up a few timely hits.

Rob Zastryzny started and allowed just two runs over his 5.1 innings, although his 3/4 walk-to-strikeout ratio was iffy at best.

Sunday’s rubber match saw Mizzou be dominated by UIC starter Matt Heaslip, who started in place of the Flames’ Matt Salemi. Salemi pulled a groin in his pregame bullpen session, which forced Heaslip into the game under interesting circumstances, as Heaslip forgot his uniform on the team bus and had to wear Salemi’s.

Heaslip entered the game with an ERA over 10.00 and a 6/2 walk-to-strikeout ratio in eight innings pitched this year, but the right-hander threw 8.2 innings of one-run ball against Mizzou. The Tigers managed just seven hits and one walk en route to their lowest run output of the season.

“Today was a day they played really well. They made some really nice plays defensively, their starting pitcher was really good after the third inning, and you’re gonna have games like this,” said coach Tim Jamieson. “The one I get angry about is game one yesterday when we played like crap. That’s the game you gotta point at because if we win that game, the confidence level for Illinois-Chicago is different on Sunday.”