It takes more than explosive offense to put together a 27-game win streak like the No. 1 UCLA baseball team did over the last few months - it takes shutdown pitching.
Bruins coach John Savage said earlier this month that his players were as good defensively, or better, as they are at the plate. Across almost all statistical measures, the numbers agree with Savage’s sentiment.
Junior pitcher Logan Reddemann is second in the Big Ten Conference in both ERA (2.87) and strikeouts (84), being bested only by Top 100 MLB prospect and Southern California junior pitcher Mason Edwards. Where Reddemann beats the Trojan ace is in the walk department. The Bruin starter has walked just 11 batters in his 59 innings of work. That's good enough for a 1.7 walks per nine innings.
In the middle of this historic win streak, Reddemann tied the single-game strikeout record against Rutgers on April 10, matching Rob Henkel’s 18-strikeout record from 2000.
Senior pitcher Michael Barnett has allowed only 35 hits in his 43 innings of work, allowing just a .229 batting average. His ERA is nothing to scoff at either, following up his fellow starter Reddemann at 3.35, making UCLA one of two teams in the Big Ten Conference with a couple of starters in the top 10 in ERA.
Since his first start on Feb. 14, Barnett hasn’t issued more than three walks. His best performance came on March 28 against Iowa, where he pitched a 5-inning shutout, struck out five, and allowed just three hits and no walks. Lastly, junior pitcher Landon Stump has pitched exceptionally well in conference play. In his seven Big 10 Conference starts, Stump has the third-best ERA at 2.22, struck out 23 batters in 28 innings, and allowed just 8 walks.
The right-handed starter propelled his team to a 9-2 win at Rutgers on April 12, pitching 6 innings, allowing a single hit while striking out five. Among his fellow starters, Stump has allowed the fewest amount of hits, keeping batters down to a .215 average.
Perhaps the statistic that best illustrates Savages suggestion that the defense has played the biggest role in the success of this year's Bruins team is UCLA’s conference-leading Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP). WHIP calculates the pitchers' walks, plus hits, divided by the innings pitched, a metric that helps illustrate a pitcher's ability to keep runners off the bases.
Once again, only UCLA and USC have pitchers in the top 10 in WHIP in the Big 10: Reddemann (0.97), Stump (1.15), and Barnett (1.19), who fall well below the conference average at 1.50, have been tagged with zero losses this season. When looking at only conference play, the numbers get even more impressive. The Bruins' conference WHIP sits at 1.09, .23 higher than the second-best, and well below the conference average of 1.57.
Whichever way you slice it, the Bruins pitching has played a huge role in propelling this year's team to a 27-game win streak, which came to an end earlier this month versus UC Santa Barbara.
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: UCLA's win streak: the pitchers that dominated hitters for 27 games