Diamond Deep Dive Week Two: The hot start fans have been Wade-ing for?

The new look ‘Cats brought some firepower in Cary.

NU Baseball fans can rejoice after last weekend, as the ‘Cats came away with three of four from Cary. But with a ranked Duke team on the schedule tonight, the time for celebrations is over.

Northwestern’s one loss came in a nail-biting finish to a strong Indiana team. If you’re head coach Ben Greenspan, you have to like much of what you saw. But this is no doubt a new-look Northwestern. The days of old when NU hit half of the team’s season home run total against Illinois are likely gone.

The team had impressive showings left and right, with Crawford Wade having an excellent bounce-back outing after being shelled by Long Beach State on opening day. There’s also Bennett Markinson, who, early on this season, has looked more like a power threat than ever before. But at the end of the day, Northwestern baseball has struggled for years. Fans can often be pessimistic about these teams. This week I’ll set out to answer that very concern. What has led to this early season success? Is it sustainable?

Why this ‘Cats team is different than in years past

1. Bennett Markinson’s power adjustments

If you told me at this season’s start that Bennett Markinson would hit three home runs in one day, I would’ve been more confused than when I saw the time machine in your DeLorean. Markinson is historically not a power threat. Over three prior years with the ‘Cats, the catcher had just eight jacks. I believe, however, that there’s a unique aspect to his game that makes him a threat if he taps into it.

Markinson’s spray charts show the hitter that he is quite well: a righty who hits to all fields but tends to roll over balls to the left side of the infield. When the ball clears the infield, he is about as even as it gets to the outfield, making him a hitter that is nearly impossible to shift on. He hits the ball to left, right, and center field each at least 29% of the time.

His ability to tap into power reminds me a lot of Ichiro Suzuki’s transition from the Nippon Professional Baseball League in Japan to the MLB in the U.S. Ichiro hit 118 homers, more than his entire 19-year MLB career, across nine seasons and 951 games. He had power, but chose to reinvent himself as a contact-first speedster with a brilliant glove. While Markinson likely doesn’t possess the ability to win an MVP award in the big leagues, he’s in a unique position of deciding what part of his game to tap into.

This season, Markinson has hit 12 balls into the outfield. Six have been to the opposite field in right, two to center and four to left. Of those four balls into left field, three of them have left the park. Markinson has monster pull-side power in his frame, but he simply had the identity of hitting to all fields last season. If he decides to tap more into being a pull-side hitter, he has the potential to be a major power threat in the Big Ten this season.

While he was effective in his role last season, the rocky opening series in Long Beach forced a bit of adaptation out of Markinson, and he performed as well as anyone on the team in Cary. It’ll be up to Markinson to balance the two sides of his offensive game, but with a ‘Cats squad that was 11th in last year’s 13-team Big Ten in homers, he could be an X-factor in a completely different way.

2. Crawford Wade developments

Wade came to Evanston with the assumption that he could lead the pitching staff. After a 19-6 throttling in the first game of the season, including Wade giving up 7 runs in just 2.2 innings, the doom and gloom had already begun to set in for ‘Cats fans. The Wake Forest transfer did an excellent job of removing those negative expectations against Harvard with seven shutout frames.

The biggest differences here were comfort and accuracy. Wade was wild in his first outing, allowing three walks and a hit batsman. This time out against Harvard, he was dialed, striking out nine while holding the walks to one.

There is also something to be said about comfort. Wade had a blowup start to settle the early season jitters. For this matchup, the Wake Forest transfer was back in his home state, where he not only grew up, but also played college ball for four years.

Additionally, Harvard was playing their first game of the season and they don’t exactly have a lineup that strikes fear into the hearts of opposing pitchers. This was perfect for Wade, who had a golden opportunity to get back to the pitcher he could be. Going forward in the season, I expect to see much more of the Crawford Wade that fans saw against Harvard.

3. Bullpen Depth

The ending against Indiana definitely soured the notion of bullpen strength, but nonetheless, I think they performed admirably on the weekend.

Vanderbilt transfer Sam Hliboki has proven himself early this season, so much so that he got a start in game four after coming out of the ‘pen just two days prior.

Blake MacMillan has proven again that he’s a strong arm with some crazy break on his offspeed pitches. He netted the three-inning save in game two of the Fordham doubleheader.

Despite the late-inning woes of Carter Danz and Cole Mascott against Indiana, Alex Grant delivered a great three-inning long relief performance. He held a loaded Indiana lineup with several highly-touted draft prospects to just one run.

While this ‘Cats team may have some back-end troubles if a series goes to four games, they have three very reliable bullpen arms come conference play.

PA of the Week: Trent Liolios has more patience than a saint at the DMV

Look I’ve never seen a saint waiting at the DMV, but I’ve also never seen a 15-pitch bases-loaded walk until Sunday, so I’m going to take some creative liberty on this one. Trent Liolios has notably been a patient hitter at the plate. Last season, he nailed down 20 walks. The season prior, he got 11 free passes in just 98 PAs.

But this at-bat against Fordham was something else. His ability to get a piece of so many different pitches was incredibly impressive. Not to mention the mental fortitude that it took not to get trigger-happy with the bases juiced. Bases-loaded walks are one of the worst things you can issue as a pitcher, but in this case, I just feel bad for the Fordham pitching staff.

That’s all for this week’s Diamond Deep Dive. The ‘Cats will be back in North Carolina for a series with Duke this weekend. I’ll have more analysis next week on how the ‘Cats dealt with a sinister Blue Devils team.