The Fighting Illini baseball program has been doing position-by-position previews in the last few days on the fightingillini.com website. The previews of the actual starting position players haven’t been too surprising but I was wondering what would happen when it came to the pitchers. Illinois may be in the envious position of having too much good pitching. While some non-conference series are four games, most are three and once we get the all-important Big Ten season, it’s a three-man rotation all the way.
Well, the Illini baseball program did the diplomatic thing and headlined four pitchers in their preview found here. In order (though from the looks of it, the order doesn’t make a difference) they feature Drasen Johnson, John Kravetz, Rob McDonnell and Kevin Duchene.
While it is a good position to be in, there probably is no such thing as having TOO much pitching. Pitchers can get into a funk or (god forbid) can get injured. Coach Dan Hartleb is probably counting his blessings that he has this many talented arms to rely on.
Aside from the top four, he also has Cody Sedlock, Andrew Mamlic as well as Nick Blackburn to call on. All can fill in at a moment’s notice.
Long story short, we’ll see how things shake out down the road while the Illini play out the non-conference schedule.