A look around the Internet to see what they're saying about Michigan baseball after its loss to Vanderbilt:
Bob Wojonowski, The Detroit News: Wolverines back to the brink — just how they like it
Their strategy is to shrink the moment, make it less imposing. The funny thing is, the more they shrink it, the larger it gets. And the tougher it gets.
Michigan fell to Vanderbilt 4-1 Tuesday night, and is down to one last chance, once again, to complete the run from improbable to extraordinary. To win their first College World Series national championship since 1962, the Wolverines will have to beat SEC powerhouse Vanderbilt in the finale Wednesday night.
The moment hasn’t been too big yet, but this is as big as it’ll get, and Michigan will have its ace right-hander Karl Kauffmann on the mound against another Vanderbilt star, Mason Hickman. Vanderbilt’s freshman sensation Kumar Rocker was too much for the Wolverines Tuesday night, striking out 11, as the Commodores avoided elimination and pushed the season as far as it can go.
It’s still a daunting task for Michigan to capture a title no one saw coming, partly because we never see it. The Wolverines hadn’t reached the College World Series since 1984, and no Big Ten team had done so since Indiana in 2013. College baseball is the historic domain of warm-weather teams with powerful recruiting pipelines, not of programs that practice in the snow.
Coach Erik Bakich and his spirited players will say they saw signs, and in the next breath, they’ll admit to pinching themselves. After beating the Commodores 7-4 in the opener, you knew the No. 2 team in the country would be ready, and now we’ll see if Michigan has one more answer.
“I think it only seems fitting that our team would go to three games,” Bakich said. “That's just kind of been our MO here in all these rounds, seems like we're very comfortable in that spot. After the game, I just sensed a calmness of our team, and they're excited to play.”
Kent Schwartz, Michigan Daily: Another one of those games: Mistakes come back to haunt Michigan
Every once in a while, Michigan has one of those games. A game with mistake after mistake, when runners score on wild pitches, advance off errors, and reach base through walks.
During the regular season, it happened against No. 8 Texas Tech, when the Wolverines allowed eight unearned runs. Then, there was the game against Indiana with four errors.
And these errors continued into the postseason when Michigan followed a game one victory with a sloppy five-error game two at No. 1 UCLA.
The exact same happened today, this time in game two of the College World Series final as two wild pitches drove in two runs for No. 2 Vanderbilt.
In Los Angeles, Wolverines' coach Erik Bakich blamed such errors on thinking about what’s ahead.
“We’re not here if we don't get knocked to the ground and have those moments of adversity along the way with the Corvallis Regional meltdown and then the Super Regional game two” Bakich said. “It’s just all of those experiences have calloused our mind and have made us a very resilient group.”
On Tuesday, the only thing ahead was a championship. And Michigan let it slip away.
First, sophomore shortstop Jack Blomgren missed a double play ball, letting it roll between his legs as runners found themselves on the corners. Commodores' Harrison Ray would score, and the inning would continue until redshirt junior left-hander Ben Keizer induced a ground ball back to Blomgren, who made the play this time around.
The very next inning, Keizer would allow two base runners before being pulled after just 1.1 innings. Jack Weisenburger replaced him, only to throw two wild pitches that scored runs. He also added two walks and couldn’t get an out.
“They scored an unearned run as a byproduct of an error, we spike a couple of wild pitches that score two runs,” Bakich said. “But outside of that, the solo home run was really the one run that they had really got into.”
So, here we are. One game for everything.
A team that had designs on being in the College World Series from the start. A team that needed a late-inning miracle against Illinois a month ago in the Big Ten tournament.
Vanderbilt has more future pros – just look at the draft earlier this month. It has more size, more speed, more hitting.
It has Kumar Rocker. Though surely Michigan baseball is relieved not to face him again after what he did to them Tuesday night at TD Ameritrade Park.
Still, now comes Mason Hickman, another ace in Vanderbilt’s rotation. All he’s done is give up three hits or less in his last five starts (28 innings pitched, 1.93 ERA).
So, yeah, the Commodores have more of everything, including a head coach who won this title five years ago.
And yet … these Wolverines have a story. They aren’t finished telling it.
That was easy to spot after the 4-1 loss. When U-M's coach, Erik Bakich, said he expected his team to play its best game tonight in the finale.
This was also easy to hear, in the voices of the players in the clubhouse, in their easy confidence, and even in their burping.
Wait, what?
Well, Bakich likes his team to be loose, to cut up, to relax in order to find its best self on the field. So it wasn’t a surprise when Jesse Franklin unleashed a burp that nearly shook the floor as Jimmy Kerr met with reporters.
It stopped the interview. The team began to laugh, including Kerr, who later told reporters to “call (Franklin) out on his mischievous indiscretion.”
Yet this isn’t just a team of pranksters. It’s a team that has survived elimination games in each round of the NCAA tournament. A team that is a game away from doing something at U-M that hasn’t been done in more than half a century.
You don’t get that close to something this meaningful without grit and talent, too. That was even obvious in the loss Tuesday night, when the Wolverines faced as gifted a college pitcher as you’ll ever see.
The college baseball season comes down to one final game, and Michigan continues to stare at history, one win from a national championship.
Michigan had taken control of the College World Series winning the opener against Vanderbilt Monday night. But facing phenomenal freshman pitcher Kumar Rocker, who had 19 strikeouts in a Super Regional victory, in Game 2 Tuesday, the Wolverines’ bats were stymied. Rocker struck out six in 6⅓ innings.
Vanderbilt extended the best-of-three championship series with a 4-1 victory Tuesday night at TD Ameritrade Park with plenty of help from Michigan wild pitches and errors. The Wolverines used six pitchers.
Michigan had a significant loss early in the game when, in the third inning, lead-off hitter Jordan Nwogu stumbled running to first and pulled the quad in his left leg. Nwogu, who had to be assisted off the field, had five hits and scored three runs in the World Series.
The Wolverines did not seem unsettled, nor did they lack confidence after the loss. After all, this has been sort of standard in the postseason, embracing the back-up-against-the-wall approach in the Regional and then the Super Regional.
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