The book of unwritten baseball rules might not be found on any best-seller list, but there is an excerpt that is widely quoted among the sport’s practitioners: lead-off walks and errors lead to runs.
“When guys ask me what chapter, what verse, I tell them: Doubleday 1:1,” mused University of Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso, referencing Abner Doubleday, originally credited as baseball’s inventor.
This season, 10 of 15 UH opposing batters have scored when they reached on a walk or error to open an inning. One player was thrown out attempting to steal second, another was stranded at third. Trapasso emphasized the importance of his pitchers and fielders denying lead-off hitters in tonight’s opener of a four-game series against San Jose State. First pitch is scheduled for 6:35 at Les Murakami Stadium.
“We’re going to have to be better defensively because they’re going to give us the West Coast small-ball game; a lot of bunting,” Trapasso said of the Spartans. “The key is to keep the lead-off hitter off base each inning because that will play into the strength of their bunting game. … You’ve just got to take care of the baseball, and you’ve got to get an out.”
The ’Bows, overall, have been effective in that area. In 176 innings, the first opposing hitter of each frame is batting .196.
Right-handed senior Brendan Hornung, who is one of the ’Bows’ toughest against lead-off batters, will start tonight. Hornung has used a 91-mph fastball to get ahead in the count, and mastered a split-fingered fastball as his out pitch. Sixty-eight percent of his first pitches have been strikes this season. He has not walked any of the 37 lead-off batters he faced this season.
“For him, it’s really about getting ahead (in the count),” Trapasso said. “He’s been doing that at an incredible rate.”
Hornung was the first-game starter for the first two series; Dominic DeMiero opened the next three weeks. Trapasso said DeMiero will pitch on Saturday, the series’ third game, to give him extra rest. Trapasso said DeMiero is healthy, but struggled in the past game against Indiana.
“He just didn’t have a good outing,” Trapasso said. “Everything was up in the zone. And mechanically there were a couple things he was doing that he hadn’t been doing before that didn’t allow him to get the ball down in the zone. We’ll work on that this week, and hopefully he’ll be back this week.”
Trapasso said the plan is for Hornung and DeMiero to pitch back-to-back when Big West play opens in two weeks, although the sequence has not been determined.
