With the Michigan baseball team trailing 3-2 in the seventh inning, junior designated hitter Joe Longo blasted a moonshot to left-center field. And as two runs popped up on the scoreboard, the Wolverines took the lead, 4-3.
While the homerun was Longo’s biggest hit of the day, it wasn’t his first — or last.
Often called upon to face left-handed pitchers, Michigan knew it needed Longo to perform at the plate. And when his name was called upon to start, he answered the call.
“Hitting is contagious,” Longo said. “So just seeing guys have success, in your head, you know you can do it.”
At the plate, Longo fed off the energy from his teammates. All game long, he squared up the ball, providing meaningful and successful at-bats for the Wolverines. And this wasn’t limited to just his home run.
In the third inning down one run, Longo worked a walk on a full count, loading the bases with two outs. Afterwards, Long Beach State pitcher Myles Patton hit senior right fielder Dylan Stanton by the pitch, bringing home a run. Longo isn’t credited with bringing in the run in the stat sheet, but his plate vision kept the inning alive, allowing his teammates to scratch a run across.
While Longo’s home run put two runs up in the box score, it helped spark further hitting for the Wolverines — some of which was his own. With Patton’s day ending the conclusion of the inning, the Dirtbags were without their star pitcher, opening the Wolverines up to a host of options they could hunt.
“Patton’s a good pitcher,” Michigan coach Tracy Smith said. “And I really liked how we just kind of hung around, we didn’t do a lot off of him.”
But that was until Longo’s blast in the seventh inning. And from there, the Wolverines’ bats woke up.
In the eighth inning, Michigan fiended off Longo’s home run, taking the lead on two separate two-RBI singles. Despite the Wolverines already taking the lead, Longo set them up to do further damage to Long Beach State by racking up his third hit of the day on an RBI single.
By the time the game was over, Longo’s impact provided much needed offense for a team that struggled to get it going early. Going 3-for-4 and a walk, he jumped all over the Dirtbags’ pitchers, accurately identifying their pitches en route to a massive performance. Providing timely hits when Michigan needed it the most, Longo kept them in the game, helping power them to a 14-7 victory.
While Longo hasn’t been an everyday starter for the Wolverines , he’s been a necessary and active piece to an offense that ranked 222nd in the nation in batting average going into the game. Batting .311, albeit in limited appearances, he stands well above Michigan’s .262 team batting average. So when called upon, his steady plate presence has been a welcome sight for a team struggling to hit for contact.
And today, that presence was felt. While he might’ve blasted a home run to keep the Wolverines in the game, that was just the icing on the cake for a strong performance.