With only 17 wins through 44 games, the Baseball Bucks are 10 games under .500 with only 12 left to play.
Ohio State may not be a baseball school, but a year after winning the Big Ten tournament, the team seems to be rolling toward a disappointing end to the 2017 season.
Of course, losing the team's four leading hitters from 2016 and two pitchers who contributed over 90 innings apiece can do that to you, but a fall of this magnitude seems rare.
As a whole, the team has had bright spots that are few and far between. Freshman Domonic Canzone currently leads the team with a .351 batting average, but has only started 27 games for the squad. A season ago, three players (Nick Sergakis, Ronnie Dawson and Jacob Bosiokovic) cleared the 10 home run mark. This season, Jalen Washington, Noah McGowan and Zach Ratcliff are tied for the team lead with five.
The performance differences don't stop there, though: last season, the pitching staff was led by Tanner Tully, who contributed over 100 innings and had a sub-2.50 ERA. This season, reliever Seth Kinker has a similar ERA, but has only gotten 40 innings of work. Ryan Feltner leads the team in innings pitched with 53.1, but his ERA currently sits at 6.92.
As a matter of fact, the team has three pitchers who've contributed at least three innings with an ERA above 6. That's not exactly a recipe for success.
Perhaps the difficulty comes from scouting Ohio, which isn't exactly known as a baseball talent hotbed. In fact, no Ohio schools are ranked in the top 25 in the NCAA as of right now.
However, although no teams are in the top 25, the Bucks have been bested in recent years by other Ohio schools like Ohio University, Kent State and Cincinnati on the baseball diamond. And for the Ohio State athletics program, the competition isn't just the state of Ohio, it's the Big Ten and it's the entire NCAA, from coast to coast.
Nearby geographically, Kentucky and Louisville are both in the top five, while Michigan That School Up North at 17 is the only school in the B1G that's ranked.
Some have put forth the sentiment that success is what's expected from Ohio State athletics programs, and that head coach Greg Beals hasn't been living up to that standard. Beals is 220-172-1 (.561 winning percentage) at Ohio State and won a Big Ten championship in 2016. I think that if Thad Matta can get some leeway to bring back the basketball program, Beals has got to be afforded the same respect.
I, for one, will subscribe to the theory that ESPN the NCAA gods couldn't handle Ohio State being elite at more than one major sport at a time, for fear that the Big Ten might require more coverage than the SEC.
With underclassmen like Canzone, Brady Cherry (sophomore) and Kinker (junior) looking to return next season with another year of experience, the team seems to be in good hands for success in the near future. The randomness of baseball seems to have gotten to them this season, though, and they'll have to endure whatever consequences come their way.
In the final 12 games of the season, they'll face off against conference opponents 9 times. The top eight teams (of 13) in the Big Ten get to go to the tournament, so the Bucks could still make a late-season push. A win at the Big Ten tourney (friendly reminder that the team won the tournament as a 4-seed in 2016) would earn the team a bid to the NCAA tourney, which would certainly buy Beals some more time with the program.
Here's to hoping those baseball Bucks can get hot and stay hot for the rest of the season, and keep Ohio State baseball on the map. It's well-known that winning is a great tool for recruiting, and back-to-back tournament appearances could go a long way in a weak Big Ten.
