Missouri baseball needs Andy Toelken.
Not the version that allowed five earned runs at FIU, or the version that allowed four against Northeastern. The Tigers need the Andy Toelken who ate 70.1 innings in 2017 with a 2.82 ERA.
Sunday's matinee against UMBC provided him an opportunity to wash away his first two starts in his first outing at Taylor Stadium this year.
He did, and then some. Toelken showed command and control in the Tigers’ 5-0 victory over the Retrievers, striking out five in 6.1 scoreless innings. His best start yet pushed Missouri (10-3) to a three-game sweep of UMBC.
“The past two starts I was probably trying to do too much,” Toelken said. “I was getting in my head a lot. So today I just went out and tried to focus on getting one out at a time, one inning at a time.”
With Bryce Montes de Oca filling the ace role and Michael Plassmeyer right behind him, Toelken’s role as the anchor in the weekend rotation brings heavy responsibility. Until Sunday, he hadn’t filled that role the way coaches and players knew he could. Toelken’s first win of the year brought relief to head coach Steve Bieser, who knows the importance of a strong third pitcher.
“I mean, we need three solid starters every single weekend,” Bieser said. “To see him bounce back and throw deep into the game... I've seen Andy better, but it's a step in the right direction. He'll continue to improve and be better. It's what we needed him to do today and hopefully he can build off of that and continue to keep going.”
With the 5-0 victory, Missouri’s win streak now stands at five and it has yet to lose a game at home. With conference play a few weeks down the road, the team appears to be hitting its stride. The Tigers’ record sits at 10-3, which is right in the thick of the SEC.
Only No.1 Florida (12-1) and No. 7 Kentucky (11-1) have better records so far than Missouri in the Eastern Division, but the Tigers must keep it rolling to maintain pace. With every SEC team still playing inferior competition at this point, nearly everyone is piling up wins — Mississippi State (5-5) is the only team without a winning record.
It’s understandable, then, that Missouri’s coaches and players alike are the opposite of complacent despite sweeping two straight opponents and starting out 5-0 at home. Now is no time to pump the brakes.
“It just shows how hard it is to sweep a series,” Bieser said. “Doesn’t matter who it is — in Division One baseball, it’s hard to sweep a series. Just being able to come out on a Sunday, play a complete game and take the lead and never look back is important for us. That builds confidence that you can accomplish sweeps in our league. To continue to play good baseball is what we’re trying to do. We have four more games before we go into conference play, and there’s things that we know that we want to continue to do better.”
“Sweeps are hard, so we have to feel pretty good about this,” said Brian Sharp, who homered Sunday and again is putting himself in SEC Player of the Week contention after going 4-11 with seven RBI and a home run during the series. “But like coach said, we need to keep moving on. Just keep going.”
Missouri will look to keep it going when it continues its home stand against Eastern Illinois on Tuesday at 6:30.
