Baseball coach Robbie Wine stresses importance of pitching

Any baseball fan has heard the adage "you can never have enough pitching" many times.

Fans of coach Robbie Wine's baseball team might be hearing it all season long.

At Penn State's baseball Media Day on Monday, Wine stressed the importance of both having a starting rotation that can take pressure off of the bullpen as well as having a bullpen that can form a sturdy bridge to the closer.

Wine said the primary starting rotation Penn State plans to deploy this season will consist of three right-handed juniors: Cody Lewis, John Walter and Steven Hill.

"You look across the country at some of the starters, and we go in with a pretty good starting rotation," Wine said.
According to the numbers, there's no denying that.

Led by Hill and Walter, Penn State had the best pitching in the Big Ten by a significant margin last season. The Nittany Lions' 3.46 team ERA dwarfed the 3.80 number of second-place Minnesota. The Lions also allowed the lowest opponents' batting average, as opposing hitters put up a .257 batting average against them.

Last year, Hill led the Big Ten in ERA and earned second-team All-Big Ten honors in the 2011 campaign. The native Texan went 6-5 with a 2.57 ERA, walking only 12 hitters in 101.2 innings.

Walter was no slouch, either. He went 6-4 with a 3.19 ERA last season.

The two of them started more than half of Penn State's games last season.

Now that Lewis is ready to play, the rotation could be formidable. Lewis was ineligible to play last season after transferring to Penn State from Saddleback Junior College. As a sophomore at Saddleback, Lewis was 5-3 in eleven starts, striking out 50 hitters in 69.1 innings of work.

Wine is a fan of Lewis' arsenal.

"He's a competitor," Wine said. "He knows how to pitch. He's going to be a low-pitch kind of guy, get us deep in the games. If his fastball is not there, he's got a slider, curveball and changeup. He throws them all for strikes."

When asked how much pressure those three can take off of the bullpen by starting every weekend, Wine's answer was simple.

"A lot," the eighth-year coach said. "That middle relief is key in college baseball and people overlook it."

Like Lewis and the rotation, the bullpen has a new piece. Sophomore southpaw Joe Kurrasch, whom Wine said could have started, will be the Nittany Lions' closer after transferring from California.

To get to Kurrasch, who has "swing and miss stuff," Wine said the "unsung heroes" are going to have to step up.
In between the rotation and Kurrasch are a handful of good arms, such as senior righty Ryan Ignas (3.04 ERA in 2011) and sophomore lefty Geoff Bolyston (1.99 ERA), that Wine says will be critical to success.

"They're not starters, they're not closers, they're the middle guys that need to cover in the seventh and hold a one-run lead," Wine said.

"I think we have a pretty good stack of guys right there."

Source: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/02/15/baseball_pitchers.aspx

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