After this first series of the Rich Hill era of University of Hawaii baseball, one thing seems clear:
Paying customers will get their money’s worth, at least if we go by the clock, and the Rainbows’ grit in winning the final two to split the four games against Washington State.
If you look closely enough at any baseball series, you can find statistical oddities … especially if they are the first games of the season. For example, these four games produced 22 hit batsmen; 12 ’Bows and 10 Cougs.
That’s a lot of bruises.
Now, can you imagine if those plate appearances had not been abbreviated? The games — none of which went extra innings — could have been even longer than the 4 hours and 15 minutes that they averaged.
It’s almost enough to suggest that all baseball games from high school on up be limited to seven innings. But even thinking that is enough to have your Baseball Guy card revoked for life, or at least suspended.
One of the game’s greatest charms is also a curse: Unlike most other team sports, time is infinite and irrelevant. You might run out of outs, but you’ll never run out of time. Theoretically, a game could go on forever.
They don’t stop selling beer at a certain time, but at the end of a predetermined inning. If fans are going to have dinner AND a midnight snack at the park, baseball concessions will help UH make up for not having spectators to sell food and drink for the better part of the past two years at any sports events.
Actually, there are clocks in college baseball now. In 2019 the NCAA declared a limit of 20 seconds between pitches; but this only applies when the bases are empty and when it’s enforced.
In fairness, neither Hill nor WSU coach Brian Green promised tidy little affairs where the pitchers throw the ball over the middle of the plate, the batters swing, someone catches the ball and everybody’s home before midnight. That’s slow pitch softball (well, except for the getting home by a reasonable hour part).
Real baseball is often messy, especially early in the season. Playing to win means getting the other team to make more mistakes than you do. And, as counterintuitive as it might seem, forcing them into those mistakes requires a certain kind of patience.
The fans are going to have to have it, too, to watch a lot of batters not swinging the bat as often as they want.
Bases on balls are a big part of what is commonly known as small ball … and, for better or worse, it’s how UH is going to have to play if it’s going to win, at least for now. It also means sometimes you score more runs by the ball going under the catcher’s glove than over the outfield fence.
That’s what happened Monday, when the Rainbows won the series’ final game 7-4. They took the lead they would keep in the bottom of the fifth inning by scoring two runs on a strikeout that, in the end, wasn’t an out.
Jacob Igawa swung and missed for strike three, but because the ball got away from the WSU catcher, Matt Aribal and Scotty Scott (who has the best name of a UH athlete since Allen Allen and Amosa Amosa), both scored, and Igawa ended up on second.
If you give Scott an inch, he’ll take 90 feet … or maybe 180.
He did it again, in the seventh, when he should have been out after taking too wide a turn around third base. But by feinting a return, Scott forced a hurried and wild throw that allowed him to score.
For the series, Scott, the UH leadoff batter, got on base (by hit, walk or hit batsmen) 15 of 18 plate appearances (not counting a sacrifice bunt), for an on-base percentage of .833.
None of this would have mattered, though, if not for Dalton Renne’s spotless middle relief effort. He entered with UH behind 2-1 in the top of the fifth, with the bases loaded and none out. He got out of that jam, and went on to retire seven more Cougs in a row.
Another important ingredient is defense, and UH made one error the entire series; WSU committed five in Monday’s game alone.
The challenge escalates for Hawaii as it travels to San Diego State for the Tony Gwynn Classic this week, which is named for the Hall of Famer who died in 2014. Hill and Gwynn were Aztecs teammates in 1981, when the UH-SDSU rivalry was intense.
Then the ’Bows host 2021 College World Series runner-up Vanderbilt next week.
It’s almost a given the upcoming several opponents won’t help UH win as much as Washington State did.
If the ’Bows can still find a way, time will tell.
