PREVIEW: Rutgers Baseball aiming high in first year under Owens

This offseason was an interesting one for the Rutgers baseball team as the Scarlet Knights saw a change at the helm of the program. The Scarlet Knights let go of head coach Joe Litterio and hired Bryant head coach Steve Owens, who has the 19th best winning percentage in all of division one baseball.

With only three weeks left until opening day, this past Friday afternoon was the first team practice of the 2020 season and coach Owens is pretty excited about his teams improvement since he took over.

“It’s been good,” Owens told TKR. “We had a solid fall, kind of figuring out the guys and returning some arms to health. We’re still not totally healthy right now, but we are getting closer. On the mound we are in pretty good shape. Positionally we still have a couple of guys banged up and still coming back from a few things. Hopefully they will iron themselves out in the next few weeks. They’ve practice well and this is a big bonus for us to get out as a team and really play.”

SIGN UP FOR PREMIUM NOW AND GET 30 DAYS FREE — CLICK HERE FOR MORE!!

The Scarlet Knights return all three starters from last season in Tevin Murray, Harry Rutkowski and Tommy Genuario, but only two of the three are locked in as starters so far.

“On the mound, Tevin (Murray) and Harry (Rutkowski) are going to start on the weekends for us,” said Owens. “We have to figure out the third starter still and how we are going to use the bullpen. Those are all things we are looking for in the next few weeks.

“We have Harry Rutkowski, who is going to be very good. He’s a left-handed junior and he will probably be the Friday guy for us and probably a relatively high draft choice. He has very good command, a great mentality and a good arsenal.”

While Rutkowski might be the team’s number one this season, it was Murray who dominated last season and is now reaping the rewards. The senior left-handed pitcher was just recently named to Perfect Game’s All-Big Ten preseason team.

“We also have have Murray, who I’ve only seen throw a couple of times because he was shut down in the fall,” Owens said. “I know he had some really good numbers last year, third best ERA in the Big Ten. He’s a senior, lefty, throws three good pitches, has some confidence and should be able to be one of the better pitchers in the conference this season. He gives us a good chance to win every weekend.”

Last season the Scarlet Knights had a rough go of it from a hitting standpoint, as only two players were able to finish above a .253 batting average.

This past November, after an exhibition game against Gloucester County, coach Owens told TKR that one of the things that the team needed to get better at was hitting. Now that offseason has come to an end, he feels more confident in his team’s offensive capabilities.

”We are getting better at hitting,” he said. “We got better throughout the year both mechanically and as well as approach wise. We’ve spent a lot of time with hitting approach and now we are back to the process of getting live at bats, three weeks before we start our first game. I’m pleased with the guys commitment to what we are teaching them and their grasp of what we are doing so far. Obviously this is the first day of live pitching and hitting, so there will be another three weeks of opportunities to get eyes on pitches and execute simulations, but we are excited about what we’ve seen so far. I think guys are buying in and we have a very solid group.”

As the saying goes, “offense wins games, but defense wins championships,” and coach Owens is as confident as ever in his team’s defense, claiming that they can defend at a high level this year.

”The defenses going to be good,” Owens mentioned. “We are going to be solid, athletic and strong in the middle. I think we are going to defend at a pretty high level. That was a point of emphasis after looking at last year’s defensive numbers, which were poor. This was probably based on injuries and if we start healthy, I think we can put a good position player at each position and have depth.”

Since Rutgers has joined the Big Ten conference back in 2015, the Scarlet Knights baseball team have yet to make the conference tournament (top teams) and never had more than 27 wins in a single season.

Coach Owens and his staff are hoping to change both of those this upcoming season.

“Our goal is to show drastic improvement from where we’ve been as a program in the past for the past four or five years,” he said. “We’d like to win 30 something games, but the primary goal is to get ourselves into the Big Ten tournament for the first time. Also, we want to have a good enough season to put ourselves somewhere in the top to middle of our conference we would have a chance to get an at-large NCAA bid. There are a lot of goals, but if you sum up the team goals, we want to be in the tournament and have a chance at a bid.”

And it seems like coach Owens and crew won’t have to do it all on their own, as he recently received some advice from one of Rutgers Athletics top coaches ever.

”I was coming to work one day and I stopped in to say hello to coach Schiano,” Owens said. “Obviously he’s been a very successful coach here and he knows the start very well, he works hard and knows the university very well as well as the operating structure. It was a meet and greet to get to know him a little bit, his vision and just converse. Just trying to open up a dialogue to use his expertise and his experience, to help me navigate through this new experience for me.”