Some interesting developments this weekend. I would think Austin Peterson has now firmly established himself as a weekend starter with his outstanding pitching today. Peterson gave everybody on the team a chance to relax and just play some ball today, and having that happen I suspect will help his teammates in future games.
Austin Peterson now has quite a nice quality season stat line that he is developing. 3.04 ERA, 18 hits and 6 walks allowed in 23.2 innings pitched, and 27 strikeouts. It’s starting to look like UConn now has two weekend starters (Peterson and Casparius) that the team can depend on who can potentially pitch deep into games, and that sort of thing really helps to keep the stress off the bullpen. That makes me feel a lot better right there.
Some good bullpen developments as well. Normally in a 13-0 game like this, we will see young guys out of the bullpen who are just looking to get some experience. Now that is true today with both Justin Willis and Reggie Crawford, but it would seem that both these guys are heading in the direction of potentially being a big helping hand to the backend of the bullpen. I expect Justin Willis could end up picking up some of the types of innings that Kenny Haus has been getting. As for Reggie Crawford, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him turn into some sort of 9th inning guy in those games that Caleb Wurster is not available to pitch. Coach Penders said in the postgame interview that Crawford would have pitched in the Monday Texas Tech game if it were not for the contact lens problem that he had.
Together with the likes of Randy Polonia and Andrew Marrero, both guys who have the trust of the coaching staff, the potential addition of Crawford and Willis does help the bullpen develop some more quality depth. I expect that as the season continues guys like Sam Favieri, Brendan O’Donnell, and perhaps others could develop into trusted pitchers as well.