Reusse: Gophers baseball team plans a ‘bulldog’ approach to Big Ten slump-busting

The Gophers played some of the cleanest baseball imaginable from a college team during the 2018 season. This was particularly noticeable up the middle, with Eli Wilson as the No. 1 catcher, Terrin Vavra at shortstop, Luke Pettersen at second and the swift Alex Boxwell in center.

There were also strike-throwing starter Patrick Fredrickson as a freshman phenom and Max Meyer, a No. 3 overall MLB draft choice-to-be, as the surefire closer on a stout pitching staff.

Those Gophers went 18-4 to win the Big Ten regular season, then 4-0 to win the conference tournament in Omaha. This brought a regional to Siebert Field, and on a spectacular evening at the small gem of the ballpark, the Gophers and UCLA played a fabulous ballgame.

The Gophers rallied for a tie in the eighth, won it 3-2 in the 10th, and then claimed the region title in a 13-8 slugfest the next night.

Let’s see — 18-4 to win the conference, 7-0 in the postseason, that would seem to put a ballclub in position for a favorable matchup in one of the NCAA’s eight super regionals. Sorry.

The Gophers were sent to Corvallis, Ore., to play a best-of-three against Oregon State. As in Adley Rutschman, Steven Kwan, Trevor Larnach and Nick Madrigal Oregon State. The Beavers won two at home, then came back from an opening loss to win the College World Series.

Meyer became an excellent starter, Fredrickson went into a mysterious decline when healthy and the Gophers were mediocre in 2019. They were 18 games into the 2020 season when COVID-19 shut down American sports in mid-March.

The world changed in the crazy months that followed, and so did Gophers baseball. They were 33-76 in Big Ten games in the previous four seasons. The conference tournament was canceled in 2021, and the Gophers have missed it the past three seasons.

There was an upward trend — 11-13 in the conference — in 2024, which was John Anderson’s 43rd and final season at the helm. You would have to fight anyone associated with Gophers baseball in the past four-plus decades who chooses to poor-mouth Anderson.

“You’d have to fight me,” Ty McDevitt said. “Without John Anderson and his influence on me, I’d probably be in a ditch somewhere.”

Anderson’s final game coached out of 2,414 (1,390-1,021 and three ties) was a 4-2 victory vs. Northwestern last March 17 in Evanston, Ill. One week later, athletic director Mark Coyle named McDevitt as Anderson’s replacement.

This did not require a deep study by the AD. The recommendation of McDevitt for the job came from Anderson.

The venerable coach had experienced in the closing years of his career the full effect of the growing disadvantages that Minnesota faced in the Grand Old College Game. We’re not talking about the always-present weather disadvantage for the North vs. the South.

We’re talking about money — the SEC, a league full of “Dodgers” in college economics — that now will have the right to reward more and more full-ride scholarships. We’re also talking about a 17-team Big Ten, with the additions of UCLA, Southern Cal, Washington and Oregon.

Anderson recognized that the only chance for the Gophers to get their helmets back above water was relentless energy — the ability to take a whack in recruiting and on the field, get back up and go hard the next day.

McDevitt missed the 2023 season as pitching coach because of a brutal battle with Lyme disease. He came back from that. Now he faces this as a head coach:

“We don’t have NIL deals to offer recruits. We’re going to stay as a 11.7 [scholarships] program.

“What we have to be is bulldogs, as coaches and players. Alec Crawford was here; he’s my pitching coach. Connor Gandossy … got him from Creighton, to be recruiting coordinator and hitting coach. And I hired Sean Moore, he was at Penn State and Iowa.

“And they fit. They are bulldogs.”

Purdue came into Friday’s Big Ten opener with a 12-1 record. The Gophers were 5-5. The home-team hope was the Boilermakers had benefited from what appeared to be an easy schedule, while the Gophers had hung in against three top-10 opponents (Oklahoma, Virginia, Oregon State) and in a three-game series vs. Houston and Arizona State.

“We haven’t hit much,” McDevitt said Thursday. “We faced some very good pitching — that [Kyson] Witherspoon from Oklahoma is one of best college pitchers I’ve seen — but unless we put more innings together against the good clubs, our margin to win is going to be very thin."

On Friday, Purdue ran at every opportunity, piling up stolen bases, and then got a two-run home run from Logan Sutter to take a 5-0 lead in the top of the third in what became a 6-3 victory. Immediately, it was going to take lots of bulldog for the Gophers to start ending the four-year slump in the Big Ten.