Maryland baseball (27-15, 8-4 Big Ten) travels to Bloomington this weekend for a critical conference series against Indiana (31-11, 9-3 Big Ten).
The Terps and Hoosiers are currently neck-and-neck at the top of the Big Ten standings, with Indiana one game ahead of Maryland in the loss column. A series win for Maryland would mark its 20th straight dating back to last season and would vault it into at least a tie for first place with Indiana.
The Hoosiers are currently riding an eight-game win streak and are 22-1 at home, while the Terps have won each of their last four. Both teams have elite offenses, with Indiana ranked first in the conference in hits (441) and Maryland trailing by just four (437).
Coach Rob Vaughn’s club blows the Hoosiers — as well as every other Big Ten foe — out of the water in the power department, however. Maryland has 90 long balls on the season while the next-closest team is Nebraska with 64; Indiana ranks fifth in the conference with 44.
The Terps’ offense is largely driven by three key cogs: Nick Lorusso, Matt Shaw and Luke Shliger. The three upperclassmen have combined for 40 home runs and 149 runs batted in, while all sporting an OPS above 1.000.
Lorusso specifically is having a remarkable season, batting .367 with a 1.170 OPS. The senior third baseman has hit 15 home runs and driven in 66 RBIs, and set the program record with a 31-game hitting streak earlier in the season.
Shaw doesn’t trail Lorusso by much in terms of production, sporting a .341/.466/.701 slash line with 15 homers and 45 RBIs. Shliger has 10 HRs and 38 RBIs, batting .331 with a 1.120 OPS.
Maryland also holds a well-rounded attack from the rest of the order outside of its star trio.
Sophomore first baseman Eddie Hacopian won Big Ten Player of the Week this past week, smashing four homers and 11 RBIs across five games. Junior second baseman Kevin Keister has been red hot recently as well, blasting four home runs over a two-day span in the most recent midweek stretch against UMBC and Georgetown. Sophomore center fielder Elijah Lambros sits third behind Lorusso and Shaw with 11 homers; the South Carolina transfer pairs his power bat with elite athletic traits and defensive wizardry manning the middle of the outfield.
Maryland’s staff is near the very bottom of the Big Ten in terms of ERA, as its 6.14 collective ERA is only ahead of 7-28 Northwestern. But junior right-hander Jason Savacool and senior right-hander Nick Dean have been effective in Big Ten play thus far and will look to go deep into their outings.
Dean missed his last start against Purdue with forearm tightness. Vaughn said on Sunday that his MRI came back clean and it will not be a long-term absence, but it remains to be seen if he will toe the rubber this weekend.
The Hoosiers’ offense is led by freshman outfielder Devin Taylor. Taylor paces the club with 11 home runs and a .746 slugging percentage, while sitting second on the team in RBIs with 41. Sophomore first baseman Brock Tibbitts leads Indiana with 50 runs batted in and a .385 batting average.
On the pitching side, Indiana ranks third in the Big Ten in earned run average (4.64) and second in strikeouts (399). Two pitchers the Terps are likely to see this weekend are Seti Manase and Luke Sinnard, both of whom have started 10-plus games this season.
Manase sports a 1.78 ERA in 30.1 IP, but he’s been used as a short starter with his longest outing of the season being 4.1 innings. The junior right-hander’s most recent outing came against Ohio last weekend when he threw 2.1 innings and allowed two runs on three hits. Sinnard enters with a 4.00 ERA in 10 starts. The 6-foot-8 sophomore right-hander is a huge strikeout threat with 74 punch-outs in 54 innings pitched.
Indiana knocked Maryland out of the Big Ten Tournament last season with a 6-4 victory and the teams have not faced off since then. With a regular season title and tournament seeding implications possibly on the line, this series will be huge for the hopes of both ball clubs as they enter the home stretch of the conference slate.
