David Briggs: Toledo plays one of wildest games (literally) in baseball history
May 5—Call 'em the midnight black and blue.
On the craziest day of a crazy season, the Toledo baseball team last weekend played one of the wildest games (literally) in college or professional history.
The Rockets were hit by 10 pitches in their 16-9 win over Western Michigan on Sunday at Scott Park.
Yep, you read that right. With a weary parade of Broncos hurlers set to sprinkler mode — displaying more suspect aim than the bad guy in an action thriller — Toledo was pelted 10 times in the finale of a four-game series in which the schools combined for 96 runs and 19 homers.
Fastballs, curveballs, sliders, you name it, the Rockets wore them.
In the shoulders and knees and everywhere in between, and in every inning but the sixth and seventh.
Marcus Strother was hit three times — including once on a pitch so up and in that the opposing manager argued it actually went behind him — while Nicky Winterstein, Danny O'Reilly, and John Servello were all beaned twice. (Director's note: No batters were harmed in the making of this blooper reel.)
No one had ever seen anything like it.
Toledo's 10 hit batsmen set a single-game Mid-American Conference record, and, with the Rockets drilling four batters themselves, the 14 hit batters in the contest matched the all-time NCAA mark.
For perspective, the Tigers and Indians have been hit by 11 pitches between them in 58 games this season. (The most combined batters hit in a single major league game is nine, dating to an 1896 contest between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Senators.)
"Definitely a crazy game, for sure," Toledo slugger Chris Meyers said.
Added pitcher Layne Schnitz-Paxton: "I hit a lot of people, because I'm not afraid to pitch in on people, but it's never been that many! That was a little over the top."
Then again, what has this Toledo season been if — WARNING: FORCED TRANSITION COMING — not a little over the top?
The historical quirk was perfectly in line with a year of extremes, and I mean extremes.
Start with the view from 30,000 feet, where, incidentally, the air is believed to be only slightly thinner than at Scott Park. The Rockets have the most prolific offense in the MAC — their 50 homers are more than the two next-best lineups have combined (45) — and the highest team ERA (7.56), as if playing at a souped-up version of Coors Field. (Of course, they also mash on the road, so never mind!)
Then there is Toledo's remarkable turnaround.
The Rockets lost 11 of 12 games to open the season and were 4-19 the first week of April.
Yet down did not equal out.
Through it all, second-year coach Rob Reinstetle — a 44-year-old former assistant at Western Kentucky — believed he had the horsepower to compete in the MAC, seeing what perhaps others could not, just as he did when he took the job in Toledo.
Where some candidates might have focused on what the Rockets did not have — tradition (no NCAA tournament appearances), a big budget, an on-campus stadium — he took the half-full view of the Glass City. When I brought up Scott Park, he stopped me.
"You say Scott Park is a detriment. I don't look at anything as a detriment," Reinstetle said. "We have things here that other schools in the MAC don't have. Our offices are right here at the field. I have a locker room at the field. We have an indoor batting facility that might be the best in the conference. Maybe we don't have the big stadium or a turf field, but we've done a lot of work to it and we've tried to dress it up the best we can.
"We like to highlight the things we have and not the things we don't. Look at Ball State. They have a beautiful baseball stadium and a turf field, but guess what? Their coaches offices are in the basketball arena. Their players dress in the basketball arena and have to drive over. We have things here that are good, so I don't look at that as a detriment."
The same mindset applied to the rough opening weeks this season.
Toledo kept pushing, kept doing the best with what it had, and, suddenly, it came together. Since losing eight of their first 10 conference games, the Rockets (15-23, 13-12) have won 11 of 15, including three of four at bell cow Kent State, marking their first series victory there 2004.
The blueprint is simple.
They have gotten strong pitching in spots, most notably from Schnitz-Paxton, a senior starter from Napoleon who is 5-0 with a 4.31 ERA. But, mostly, they have hit ... and hit ... and hit. Meyers, a junior infielder, leads the league in average (.383) and home runs (13), as a deep Rockets lineup does as a team in the same categories.
"It all started to click for us," Reinstetle said. "The winning starts to feed off each other, like, 'Hey, you know what, we can beat anybody.'"
In a wild season, you might say the Rockets have hung in there well.
Just as they did at the plate on the wildest day of them all.
