In Iowa’s last 10 games, its offense had averaged 9.7 runs per game. With an offense that potent Iowa doesn’t need a starting pitcher to go out and throw seven scoreless innings. All the Hawks really need is for the starter to eat some innings and keep the team in a position to win. On most nights against most opponents, Iowa’s offense will come through eventually.

Against Indiana on Thursday afternoon, Brody Brecht didn’t have his best stuff or his best command. He got off to a rocky start. But he also battled back and was able to pitch into the fifth inning. He limited Indiana to three runs and kept Iowa in the game. And in the seventh inning, Iowa’s offense rewarded that effort with four runs to take the lead. Iowa ultimately won the game 9-4 after tacking on four more runs in the ninth inning.

4.2 IP, 5 K, 3 BB, 2 HBP, 3 H, 3 ER

Pitch Count: 94
Balls: 41
Strikes: 53
Contact Strikes: 32
Strikes Looking: 8
Swings and Misses: 13
First Pitch Strikes: 11/22 (50%)
Batters that Took a First Strike: 8/20—one batter was hit with the first pitch, one batter walked on four pitches
First Time Through Order: 2-5, 2 K, 2 BB, 2 HBP, double, single
Second Time Through Order: 1-9, 3 K, 0 BB, single
Third Time Through Order: 1-3, 0 K, 1 BB, single
vs Lefties: 2-6, K, 3 BB, HBP, 2 singles
vs. Righties: 2-8, 4 K, HBP, double, single
Results with First Pitch Strike: 3-9, 2 K, BB, HBP, double, single, single
Results with First Pitch Ball: 1-8, 3 K, 2 BB, HBP, single

Brecht’s first inning started like this: walk, hit batter, strikeout, double, walk, strikeout. Two earned runs scored in the inning. On the surface, that looks like a bad inning from Brecht. While the results were certainly poor, bad luck also played a notable role in those results.

The bad luck started with the second batter of the game, Indiana’s Bobby Whalen. Baseball is a game of inches, and that’s perhaps most apparent on foul balls. On most foul balls, the batter barely makes contact with the pitch. If the ball was just a fraction further up or down, the batter would miss and the pitcher would have a strikeout.

Brecht got ahead of Whalen 0-2, then fell victim to foul balls. Whalen managed to foul off six pitches after getting to two strikes to keep himself alive. On Brecht’s 12th pitch of the at-bat, he missed his target and hit Whalen on the hands. Whalen certainly deserves credit for keeping himself alive, but hitting six foul balls with two strikes requires a certain amount of good fortune. On a day when Brecht’s command was on and off, he threw 8 strikes to the same batter but wasn't able to record an out.

Brecht’s next bit of bad luck came on Brock Tibbetts’ double to right. As he had with Whalen, Brecht got ahead on Tibbetts 1-2. Tibbetts then fouled the fourth pitch off, before Brecht just missed a strikeout with his next two pitches. On a 3-2 count, Tibbetts connected on a shot to right.

Iowa’s right fielder—Brayden Frazier—initially broke in on Tibbetts’ hit. When he realized the ball was hit harder than he thought, he went back and tried to recover. The ball flew just over his glove and bounced off the wall. If Frazier hadn’t come in initially, he likely would have been able to make a relatively easy catch in right. One run still would’ve scored on the play, but the second runner would’ve been stuck at third. Brecht finished with a walk and a strikeout, so the second run likely would have been stranded on third base.

In baseball, sometimes the breaks don’t go your way. That was true of Brecht’s first inning. If Whalen had struck out instead of fouling off six pitches, Brecht might have escaped with a scoreless first. If Frazier made a better initial read on the ball on the double, Brecht would have had a flyout and likely only would have allowed only one run in the first. Instead, he surrendered two run and the Hawks were down 2-0 after the first inning.

Brecht started the second inning with another hit batter and a single, and it looked like the second inning might go as poorly as the first had. Then Brecht managed to find his groove. He retired nine of the next 10 hitters, allowing just a single in that stretch.

Brecht usually has his best success when he gets a first pitch strike, but in that 10-batter stretch he only threw a first pitch strike five times.

The key to Brecht’s success in that stretch was the work he did after the first pitch. Against the first eight batters he faced, Brecht got to a three-ball count against four of them. Against the next 10 batters, he only had one three-ball count, and he got a groundball out on a 3-1 pitch.

Brecht deserves plenty of credit for finding the zone more in his middle innings, but Indiana also helped him out a bit. Brecht threw 53 strikes in the game and Indiana swung at 45 of them. Teams are hitting well below .200 against Brecht this season, so it’s fair to wonder why Indiana swung so often when swings against Brecht produce bad results the vast majority of the time.

Brecht ran into trouble again in the fifth inning, but again bad luck had something to do with it. After a lead-off walk, Brecht got a groundball to third. Third baseman Raider Tello fielded it cleanly, but his throw to second was a little wide. Iowa got an out at second, but couldn’t turn two.

Brecht then gave up a single that was hit hard, but very close to second baseman Sam Hojnar. The ball bounced right before it got to Hojnar, then went past his glove and into the outfield for a hit. If the ball had stayed in the air just a little longer, or if it had been hit a little closer to Hojnar, it likely would have been an out. Instead Indiana had two runners on.

Brecht got a groundball from his final batter of the game. The ball was hit to first, and first baseman Brennen Dorighi did a good job fielding it and throwing to second. Shortstop Michael Seegers then fired to first where Brecht was covering, but the throw was just late and Iowa missed out on an inning-ending double play.

Instead, Iowa went to the bullpen, and reliever Jared Simpson got Iowa out of the jam.

Brecht deserves significant credit for bouncing back after a rough start to the game. Eight batters into the game, his start looked like a disaster for Iowa. Instead, he limited the damage that Indiana was able to do, worked through a few solid innings, and then got the ground balls he needed late. It wasn’t a banner start from Brecht, but he avoided potential disaster and ultimately did enough to keep Iowa close enough to be able to stage a comeback later in the game.

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