TERRE HAUTE —
Indiana State’s baseball team has reached dizzying heights, but if the Sycamores have any trouble keeping their feet on the ground, they can turn to three teammates who can remind them how dangerous it can be to get complacent.
ISU’s 32-10 record and .761 winning percentage puts the current Sycamore team in rare company. No ISU team since the 1987 squad finished 45-18-1 has finished the season with a winning percentage over .700. The Sycamores have a long way to go to breach the .700 mark for the season, but it’s certainly a target within range.
But one Sycamore team in the recent past was poised to come close before it suffered crushing failure.
The Lindsay Meggs-coached 2009 Sycamores had a fearsome lineup.
With a team batting average of .317 and sluggers Brady Shoemaker, Nick Ciolli and many others in tow, ISU laid waste to the Missouri Valley Conference in April and half of May that season.
ISU won 13 of 14 heading into the final week of the regular season. ISU’s 33-14 record and 15-4 MVC mark put the Sycamores in the catbird’s seat as they needed just one victory in a season-ending series at fellow contenders Missouri State to claim the conference championship.
No one would have believed at the time that ISU was destined to not win another game that season. After a midweek loss to Xavier, the Sycamores were swept by the Bears to squander their deliver the MVC championship to Missouri State, and then went 0-for-the MVC Tournament. ISU was outscored 64-35 in those seven nightmarish contests.
Three current Sycamores — left fielder Kyle Burnam, infielder Koby Kraemer and relief pitcher Brandon Dorsett — had a front-row seat for ISU’s 2009 fade. They were freshmen at the time.
Burnam was a regular in 2009 as he hit .288 and had 23 RBI in his first ISU campaign. Kraemer was a utility player who hit .197 and Dorsett played sparingly with eight innings pitched in seven appearances.
“Back in 2009, we had a veteran team that taught us stick-to-itiveness. We were young, but that learning experience of being in the hunt has helped us. We know what it feels like and we want to recycle it this year,” Burnam said.
All three remember the high highs and low lows the 2009 team experienced. With NCAA Tournament possibilities in the offing for the Sycamores if they maintain their current pace, the trio knows the value of maintaining an even keel.
“As leaders, Burnam, Dorsett and I constantly remind the guys that this is a long haul. It’s not about what we’re doing now. Our main goal is to get to Omaha, and to do that, you have to play your best baseball in the end,” Kraemer noted.
One of the most important steps to attain that goal, according to Kraemer, is to accept the physical rigors of a 56-game season.
ISU has several players — starters Jon Hedges and Landon Curry among them — who have nagging non-game threatening injuries at present. With 14 games left in the regular season, Kraemer knows the importance of warding off any temptation to let the aches and pains affect mental approach.
“That’s what happened to that team back in ’09. Everyone got tired and said, ‘We had a good run, but didn’t make it.’ This team is trying to understand we have a long-term goal. We have to be mentally tough to push through the sore arms and sore legs. We have the talent physically, it’s just about keeping our mental edge,” Kraemer said.
One big difference from 2009 to 2012 is the man in the dugout. Meggs left for the University of Washington in the wake of the 2009 campaign.
Meggs was noted — or notorious, depending on whom you talked to — for being a hard driver. Heller takes a more relaxed approach. The common denominator is that both demand accountability, but Heller’s approach gets high marks from the veterans who served under both.
“You can learn a lot from both of them. Meggs did a great job of making players play through competition. You were applying pressure or feeling pressure,” Burnam said.
“Coach Heller is more player-friendly, but he knows the game, and he gets on you if you make a mistake. We had a pressure system, but coach Heller understands mistakes are going to happen. I think he does a good job of treating players fairly,” Burnam added.
While all three players have a high level of respect for the team they broke into the college ranks with in 2009, there’s also another big difference from 2009 to 2012 that has nothing to do with mental approach or how ISU handles or mis-handles success.
ISU’s pitching staff in 2009 had a team ERA of 5.94 and Jacob Petricka was the only consistent starting pitcher. ISU’s ERA so far this season is 3.16 and all three starters — Dakota Bacus, Sean Manaea and Ryan Torgerson — have ERA’s under 3.00.
“When I compare our starting pitching now to 2009, that’s the big difference. I’ll put our [2012] staff out there against anybody’s. We get six-plus [innings] from them every time. That makes it easier on everybody, including the hitters,” Dorsett said. “But we all build off of each other. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve learned since then.”
College
Related Photos
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Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis For the team: Koby Kraemer can't avoid a pitch at a recent Indiana State baseball game.
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Kyle Burnam
Discussion
Providing perspective: ISU’s vets have 2009 as window into 2012
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Mission accomplished.
The Sycamores were aggressive from the opening inning at the plate and starting pitcher Devin Moore gave them eight valuable and effective innings on the mound as ISU defeated Alcorn State 14-2 at Bob Warn Field.
“It was a really good experience for everybody. It felt great to finally come out here and put some things together. It’s also really nice when your offense puts a lot of runs on the board,” Moore said.
Moore’s eight innings of work were as valuable as gold to an ISU team that is short on quality arms due to injury and ineffectiveness. He didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning and one of the two runs he conceded was unearned. -
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ISU baseball gets back into rhythm with victory
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Mother Nature took that rhythm away from Indiana State’s team last week. After a 7-1 loss to Indiana on April 24, ISU was supposed to play a three-game series at Tennessee-Martin, but it was wiped out by rain.
So the rhythm was disturbed, but perhaps that wasn’t a bad thing.
ISU was in a five-game losing streak before its unintended vacation and the Sycamores made a move in the right direction Wednesday with a 7-0 win over DePauw at Bob Warn Field.
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