After right-hander Elliot Zoellner gave up two runs to start the 10th inning of Maryland baseball’s season opener against Campbell, coach Rob Vaughn had seen enough. He went out to the mound and signaled for left-hander Tuck Tucker.
Three batters and two runs later, Vaughn made his way to the mound again. This time, it was right-hander Mike Vasturia who entered from the bullpen to close out the Terps’ 10-6 loss.
After enduring bullpen issues during an underwhelming 2018 campaign, Vaughn is rotating his inexperienced staff heavily. In just three games during the Brittain Resorts Invitational last weekend, Maryland utilized 16 different hurlers and made 16 mid-game changes.
“Our strength with our staff is not in necessarily in just straight-up stuff,” Vaughn said, “but it’s in the army of guys we have down there.”
[Read more: Coastal Carolina cruises past Maryland baseball, 7-2]
Heavy pitching rotations early in the season are commonplace while teams learn more about their staffs. But the Terps churned through their pitchers at a higher rate through their first three games than they had in the past two decades.
Last season, Maryland went through 11 different pitchers and made 13 changes in that same span. And prior to this year, the most calls to the bullpen the coaching staff has made through the first three games was 14, coming in 2013 and 2016.
The team has 19 pitchers on staff this season compared to last year’s 16 — four of whom consistently featured as starters. Of the team’s nine relievers, just five threw 20 or more innings in 2018, as part of a unit hampered through ineffectiveness and injury.
With six freshmen and three transfers in the mix this year, the Terps received an influx of arms to attempt to prevent last year’s setbacks.
“Last year, we had a lot of shortages on pitching, so it would seem like whenever we have one guy out, we kind of had to ride him ’till the next inning,” outfielder Randy Bednar said. “This year, I see it as a good thing because we’ve got a lot more depth pitching, a lot more guys who are capable, able to throw the ball.”
[Read more: Maryland baseball tops VCU, 5-3, for first win of 2019]
Right now, though, that depth is still forming.
Against Campbell on Friday, starter Hunter Parsons didn’t allow a run through the first three innings. But in the fourth, designated hitter Spencer Packard hit a solo home run and Parsons walked three straight batters. He allowed another solo shot in the fifth, and his pitch count was already at 93, so he exited the game with the Terps still up by three.
Maryland went through five different pitchers after his departure. Campbell scored nine more runs in the process, including four in the 10th inning, and fell 10-6.
“It was frustrating,” Parsons said. “If I could just compete a little harder, be a little more mentally tough … before it gets out of hand with the pitch count, I’m able to go another inning or two deeper into the game.”
Against No. 21 Coastal Carolina on Saturday, Vaughn had to bring in relief even earlier. Right-hander Zach Thompson was taken out in the fourth inning after allowing nine hits and five runs through 21 batters faced.
Vaughn once again elected to keep his young pitchers in for short amounts of time on heavy rotation. He subbed in five pitchers, with the final three each featuring for less than an inning.
With starter Tyler Blohm continuing to recover from a shoulder injury, Vaughn pulled him after 2 1/3 innings on Sunday, then used six relief pitchers. The bullpen held VCU scoreless through the final five innings for a 5-3 Maryland victory.
“We got to get a lot of those young guys in the game and let them kind of have some success, have some failure and wade through some of that,” Vaughn said. “It was good to get the first one behind a lot of them and to see them kind of bounce back the second time and be better.”
