MINNEAPOLIS — Michigan baseball head coach Erik Bakich is addicted to quality at-bats.
Whether it’s a ball-four base hit on a full count, or squaring up a fastball early in the count and driving it in a gap, he needs them like a fish needs water. Work a count deep. Hit a ball hard. Repeat.
When they’re racking up the “QABs” on the field, you’ll see Bakich perched on the top step of the dugout entrance, piloting his team through the intense grind of a Big Ten schedule.
But this is baseball, and every team has off-days. Not like when the team isn’t playing, but when nothing is working. When you just have to tip your cap to the opposing pitcher and take your hacks. When these inevitable days roll through, the pilot loses some of his twinkle.
Even if the Wolverines were to pull through on a walk-off error by the other team to secure a 1-0 victory, the sweets of a win won’t taste as sweet to him. Those kinds of wins are merely luck. Allowing the fate of the game to be taken from your control. His eyes droop a little while scanning the post-game box score.
Bakich is a self-proclaimed broken record about QABs when speaking with the media — which is important, because realizing you have a problem is the first step. In his postgame remarks, he often either commends his team for “reaching success as a byproduct of a bunch of guys stringing together quality at-bats” or chastises for having one of those off-days. On days where the team doesn’t meet his expectations in the QAB category, Bakich’s eyes scour the box score — immediately discarding the conventional statistics.
That postgame gruffness has become less and less common in each year that Bakich is leading the program. For the wide majority of this season, Michigan has led the conference in batting average — hitting consistently over .300 as a team, even though the average currently sits at .299.
It’s not often that good things come from addiction, but the results speak for themselves.
So why should they stop here?
The Wolverine’s offense has been a weird one to sum up all year. They have as much gap-power as anyone, but are just 11th in the conference in home runs. Multiple players on the squad have world-class speed, yet the team leader has just 11 stolen bases on the season.
Usually when describing a team that “just goes out there and gets the job done,” you’re referring to one that plays a lot of small-ball. Yet this year Michigan has time and again disproved that notion. It’s one of the top hitting teams to come from Ann Arbor in a long time — one filled with stars that have proven they can string together solid at-bats, largely giving Bakich his fix of QABs and fans their fix of victories.
One of the glaring trouble spots for the team, however, has been winning on Friday nights during the conference season. In matchups that often pit the Wolverines against the opposition’s ace pitcher, the team is just 4-5 since the start of Big Ten play, as opposed to 11-6 in the second and third games.
The good news for Michigan is that Indiana’s top pitcher is making just his second start of the season, paling in comparison to other aces around the Big Ten, like Maryland’s Mike Shawaryn, Illinois’s Kevin Duchene or Iowa’s Blake Hickman. Those are considered some of the toughest pitchers to hit in the conference because of how they command in the early pitches of an at-bat—which is the opposite of what Bakich wants to see in his pursuit of QABs.
The Hoosiers will send right-hander Luke Harrison to the mound Wednesday, and the Wolverines will have chance to jump on him in this unfamiliar role, and can most effectively do this by sticking to the approach of feeding their coach’s addiction.
After that opening matchup, the Wolverines match up as well as anyone. Though there’s been difficulty against aces this year, Michigan has proven that it’s going to hang with anybody’s two and three starters.
To punch their tickets to the NCAA Tournament, the Wolverines need to win four or five games this week. Taking the crown from this bracket would be a major statement for a program that has some danger of being overshadowed by the rapid movement through the rankings by teams like Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.
Being addicted to quality at-bats isn’t a common thing. But the uncommon coach with an uncommon addiction is leading a Michigan offensive charge that’s going to turn heads as the week progresses.
Just sit back and watch.