Friday 3:00 PM
LSU - Paul Skenes
WMU - Brady Miller

Saturday 1:30 PM
LSU - Riley Cooper
WMU - Dane Armbrustmacher

Sunday 12:30 PM
LSU - Chase Shores
WMU - Ethan Houghtailing

H/t to Morbid for the weather.

We have not faced Western Michigan in baseball before this series, from what I could tell in last year's media guide.

Western Michigan is expected to provide their starting rotation to the LSU coaching staff tomorrow and we will return the favor. The public announcement of the pitching match ups may not happen until much later though. Speculation is that the Broncos will throw Senior LHP Dane Armbrustmacher on Friday night. Armbrustmacher is the top returning arm for Western Michigan. He started 14 games last season totaling 65.1 innings on the year. He struck out just over 24% of batters faced while walking close to 10%. He was susceptible to giving up hits though with a 1.74 WHIP and an opponent BABIP of .425. With no summer stats to weigh against and little to no fall or preseason info to go off, it’s hard to determine how much he may have developed over the offseason.

Another weekend starter contender is Junior Nick Crandell. The former JUCO teammate of Ben Nippolt started 10 games last year. He only walked about 6% of batters faced but he struggled to miss bats, striking out roughly 11% of batters faced. Crandell and Armbrustmacher both had ground ball rates in around 45%, which is theoretically good but not necessarily for opening weekend for a team that hasn’t seen the sun in 5 months.

My personal pick to click for WMU on the mound is Ethan Houghtailing. The sophomore righty wasn’t great as a freshman, walking more batters than he struck out and allowing more than 2 baserunners an inning. He went to a mid-level summer league and completely turned around his performance. He threw the same number of innings in the spring for WMU and summer in the Great Lakes League (30.1), but in the summer he walked 17 fewer batters and struck out 13 more. He cut his WHIP in half and his ERA by more than two thirds. I don’t know what his role will be this season, or even this weekend, but I think he will take a jump from last year.

The Broncos seem to return most of their good bats from last year. Redshirt sophomore OF Dylan Nevar is the only returnee with an OPS over 1000. He hit 11 HRs as a RS frosh to lead the team. Second on the HR list was 1B Cade Sullivan, he’s also back and is considered the top pro prospect on the team by D1 Baseball. Third baseman Gavin Doyle is the top returning hitter by average and all three hitters mentioned so far had at least 16 doubles.

Western Michigan had some staff turnover this offseason adding former Toledo head coach Cory Mee to the staff as Associate Head Coach. They also added former MLBer Daniel Schlereth as the pitching coach and volunteer assistant. Schlereth pitched at Arizona well before Jay got there. He made it to the majors for the Detroit Tigers. He’s most commonly known as being the son of former NFL offensive lineman Mark “Stink” Schlereth.

The MAC has not put out their pre-season awards or coaches poll yet for this year, so as of now there are no preseason all conference players and no projected finish. Ranked alphabetically, they finish last. Ranked according to how cool the town they’re in is, I’m guessing they’re close to the top of the conference. Kalamazoo has a bar called the Craft Beer Exchange that changes the prices of the menu every 15 minutes based on the demand of each beer on tap. Western Michigan as a region is packed to the gills with craft breweries and the shores of Lake Michigan offer some great vacation spots and beach towns.

The beer of the series is Bell’s Two Hearted. From Kalamazoo, it’s pretty much the standard bearer of mass-produced IPAs. And you can drink more than one without falling over or losing all sense of taste (figuratively and literally).

This post will be edited to add information and links. Please feel free to add to the discussion as well.

2/15/2023 - Western Michigan picked to finish 7th in the MAC. LINK- From the official site of the MAC which is naturally getsomemaction.com.

This post was edited on 2/17/23 at 10:32 am