By Ben Schuff
benjamin-schuff@uiowa.edu
The first four baseball players to speak during Iowa’s media day on Thursday were all pitchers.
Coincidence or not, the Hawkeyes’ pitching staff will be their strong suit this year.
Head coach Jack Dahm enters his ninth year at Iowa with a deep group of pitchers — one that returns its top two starters from a year ago.
Left-handers Jarred Hippen and Matt Dermody accounted for 8 of the team’s 20 wins last year, and will headline the starting rotation this spring. The duo led the team with 14 starts apiece last year and said they’re expecting more out of themselves this season.
Hippen cut his earned run average from 3.71 as a sophomore to 3.14 as a junior. But his win-loss record flipped from 6-4 in 2010 to 4-6 last season.
While one might think a lack of run support caused the decline in wins for Hippen — the Hawkeyes scored 47 runs in the 94.2 innings he pitched, and 29 of them came in three games — he put the onus on no one but himself when he spoke on Thursday.
“Coach always tell us, ‘You give up two runs and you lose, you should’ve shut them out,’ ” Hippen said. “That’s the philosophy we’re taking this year. Two runs, three runs might not be good enough. We need to go out and dominate, and that’s our goal.”
Dermody struck out a Big Ten-best 75 batters in 2011. The junior spent his summer playing in the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts, where he struck out 21 batters and gave up 23 hits in 24 innings pitched.
Dermody said his main focus over the summer was working on his slider, a fourth pitch he hopes will result in better performances this season.
“With our pitching staff, we can hold a lot of teams down in runs,” Dermody said. “If we can swing the bat this year, we can do some damage in the Big Ten.”
Freshman Sasha Kuebel creates a trio of left-handed starters for Iowa. The St. Louis native was named the Missouri State Pitcher of the Year during his senior season at St. Louis University High. He’s expected to be the Hawkeyes’ third starter heading into the Big Ten/Big East Challenge that starts Iowa’s season on Feb. 17.
Dahm’s confidence in his new southpaw allowed him to move a pair of seniors to the bullpen. Right-hander Nick Brown, who’s made 23 starts in 31 career appearances, will now be featured in a closer-by-committee role with fellow senior Tim Fangman to begin the year.
“[The closer] is going to be whoever steps up and is a guy who we see can get that last out for us,” Dahm said. “We don’t want to go into the first week saying Tim Fangman is going to be our closer when we could’ve used him in the seventh inning to help us win a game.”
Dahm also mentioned senior Phil Keppler and freshmen Ryan Rumpf, Taylor Kaufman, and Andrew Hendrick as pitchers he would like to see step up as the season progresses.
The Iowa skipper acknowledged, though, that the key to success will be staying healthy. That was something the staff struggled with last year, as Brown and then-seniors Kevin Lee and Zach Kenyon all missed time due to injury.
“This same time a year ago, I was talking about our depth and experience on the pitching staff — and all of a sudden [due to injury] it went from one of the more experienced staffs to ‘We’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do in the middle of the week,’ ” Dahm said. “… Now it’s about going out, playing games, getting acclimated to being outside and the speed of the game again, and then getting the guys in the proper roles to give us the best chance to win.”
