Louisville baseball succeeding despite lack of 'sexy' home run power

OMAHA, Nebraska – Home runs have always been the “sexy” part of baseball. They make the highlight tapes and put a jolt of energy into an entire stadium.  

Louisville head coach Dan McDonnell, though, is OK not being the “sexy” team in this year’s NCAA College World Series.  

The Cardinals, who will open the College World Series on Sunday at 2 p.m. against Vanderbilt, don’t have an offense based around one big swing. Of the eight teams playing in Omaha, Louisville is seventh in home runs with 51 this season.

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For that reason, McDonnell is hopeful the offensive explosion Louisville put up against East Carolina in the NCAA Super Regional will carry over. The Cardinals scored 26 runs last weekend without a single home run.  

“We’ve never been one to live and die off the home run anyway because, I talked about the dimensions of our ballpark a little earlier, we just want to be balanced,” McDonnell said. “We want to run the bases the right way. We want to put the ball in play. We want to put pressure on defenses. I think we’re more into doubles and situations like that than we are the home run.”  

Louisville’s offense could potentially benefit from playing at TD Ameritrade Park. The dimensions of the ballpark are very similar to those at Jim Patterson Stadium. The furthest wall in the park is 408 feet to straight-away center field. At Louisville's home field, center field is 402 feet, and from there the biggest difference is 5 feet at each corner.   

Lucas Dunn, Louisville's lead hitter, sees the team's familiarity with large ballparks as an advantage. 

"I think it does. Our home field is pretty big, it plays very deep, hard to get a ball out of there too so we are used to putting balls in gaps," Dunn said. 

Historically, home runs haven't always equated to success at TD Ameritrade Park.

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Since the stadium opened in 2011, Oregon State, last year's winner, is the only champion to hit more than three home runs during the tournament. The Beavers hit eight. 

Half of the past eight champions hit two or less. UCLA, which won in 2013, went 5-0 through the tournament and did not hit a single ball out of the park. 

Though Louisville’s focus isn’t the long ball, it’s not to say they don’t have power. Freshman Alex Binelas has 14 homers this season and Logan Wyatt has nine, but after that the lineup is more about balance.  

Instead of a lineup full of power threats, Louisville has 11 players hitting above .280, with five hitting above the .300 mark.

That comes from what hitting coach Eric Snider preaches to the team. 

"He talks about if you work on hitting doubles in the gaps, then the home runs will come," Dunn said. "So that's more of our approach, hitting line drives into the gaps." 

The Cardinals mix that consistency with speed. Their 106 stolen bases are the most in the tournament.  

“Louisville is Louisville,” Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said. “When you look at Dan’s team, always plenty of speed. You get to that point of the season when we play them, it’s in May and I always follow him from afar, but I never look at them statistically, and every time I look at the stats, I go, ‘Holy cow they’re running just as much as they did last year.’”  

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Louisville has had its scoring slumps this season, particularly in the ACC Tournament and early in the NCAA Regional. Right now, though, U of L is hoping its success last weekend was the start of something big. 

"When we score, I think when it rains it pours," Dunn said. "Our dugout gets a lot of energy so we feed off of that and we are a very contagious hitting team." 

On paper, playing in a large ballpark should play in the Cardinals favor. Regardless, McDonnell isn’t worried about being “sexy.”  

“Whenever I speak at baseball clinics or conventions or things like that, it’s just about scoring runs,” he said. “However you score runs, I don’t know if anybody really cares. Stick your chest out and say we did it this way or that way. It’s just you’ve got to get that guy to cross home plate.”  

Follow Courier Journal reporter Cameron Teague Robinson on Twitter: @cj_teague; Email: CTeagueRob@gannett.com; Phone: 502-582-4992.