After coasting its way to a 1-2 record during the season opening series against Stetson University in DeLand, Fl. Feb. 23-25, SIUC baseball coach Dan Callahan said he is looking for more consistency from the Saluki pitching staff and outfield at Southeast Missouri State today.

The main area of concern is SIUC’s starting pitching, which the team hoped to improve over last season.

At Stetson, starting junior pitchers Brad Blumenstock and Mike McConnell both were battered by the Stetson hitters, and knocked out of the games after only a brief outing.

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Blumenstock, who’s earned run average is 15.00, worked three innings and gave up five earned runs on nine hits, and only struck out one and give up a home run.

McConnell lasted only 1.2 innings, and gave up four earned runs on four hits to put his ERA at 21.60. He also struck out only one and walked two, while giving up a home run.

Callahan said there was no reason to be alarmed at this early point in the season, but he was not happy with the performance of the starting pitching in Florida.

There comes a time when you can talk about potential and ability until your blue in the face, and after a while guys have to produce; but at the same time I don’t think there is any reason to panic, Callahan said. Neither Mike nor Brad finished very strong last year, and I hope their outing in Florida is an isolated incident, as opposed to a sign of things to come.

Callahan said he was pleased with the relief pitching of sophomores Chris Schullian and David Piazza at Stetson, who threw 7.1 scoreless innings between them, but said the starters were going to have to become more effective at SEMO then they were at Stetson.

It was a case of falling behind hitters and pitching up in the strike zone, he said. Brad gave up two 0-2 hits, and that’s inexcusable at this level. Those are things that good pitchers don’t do.

With Brad it once was a case of throwing strikes, but as you progress and have the ability to start throwing strikes, then you have to concern yourself more with location and having greater command of a second and third pitch.

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Even with pitching becoming an early season concern, Callahan said he was pleased with the offense and infield defense in Florida, and said those areas are improved over last season.

We saw some things we liked in Florida, he said. I thought offensively we did a pretty good job, I thought our infield defense was good, and with the exception of the first game I thought our catching was respectable.

Against SEMO March 29 last season, the Salukis were defeated soundly 17-2, and were down 5-0 after the first inning.

Even with Stetson being a stronger team on paper than SEMO, according to Callahan, and with the promising offense and improved defense this season, the Salukis will not take anything for granted today in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

We didn’t get a beating by anybody like we did last year against SEMO, Callahan said. They came out and pounded us, and hopefully we can even the score a little bit. It wasn’t a situation where they ran up the score or anything, they just came out and beat the hell out of us.

I think we played half-way respectable at Stetson, and hopefully we can carry that into tomorrow’s game.

Callahan said he was not looking for a perfect performance from his team, but some improvements will have to be made for the Salukis to become successful this season.

You can’t expect perfection in the game of baseball, but the closer you can get to perfection, the better off your going to be as a team.