Emerging ace leads Michigan into Big Ten Tournament

Michigan’s baseball team entered 2024 needing to fill holes in its starting rotation after losing its top two pitchers from last season.

Second-year head coach Tracy Smith was forced to juggle his rotation the first half of the year because of inconsistent results, but a surprise ace has emerged for the Wolverines (30-26, 14-10), who finished fourth in the Big Ten and open conference tournament play against No. 5 seed Iowa at 3 p.m. Wednesday in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sophomore Kurt Barr tossed just 23 2/3 innings as a freshman in 2023 and began this year in the bullpen, but back-to-back superb long-relief appearances in mid-march thrust him into the starting rotation.

The former Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggitt graduate has seized the opportunity and will be on the mound to start against the Hawkeyes in the double-elimination Big Ten Tournament.

He leads the team in ERA (3.52) and innings pitched (76 2/3) and is an all-Big Ten third-team selection.

“You earn it,” Smith said of Barr’s larger role. “It isn’t anything bestowed on anybody. I tell that to the guys all the time: you have to go out there and stack good performance on top of good performance, and when you do that, it earns you more opportunity.

“I think Kurt has done a really good job this season of stacking good performances on top of each other. He has put himself in position to lead the staff.”

During last season’s exit meetings, Barr told Smith he wanted to be a weekend starter in 2024 and pitch in high-leverage situations. He posted a respectable 4.18 ERA as a freshman in limited action but also walked 19 in 23 2/3 innings – a glaring stat that needed to be shored up.

The 6-foot-2, 175-pounder spent a month last summer working with private pitching coach Dom Johnson in San Diego refining his mechanics. He ditched the overhead windup and focused on simplifying his delivery so he could find a more consistent and reliable arm slot.

During the fall – essentially the preseason for NCAA baseball – Barr said he wasn’t getting the results he envisioned, but his new-and-improved motion started paying off this spring. His walk rate has dropped significantly and he also leads the team with a 1.26 WHIP.

“It was just simplifying things,” Barr said of his adjustments. “It wasn’t adding much. It was reworking the way my arm moved a little bit. That took a little bit of time to adjust, I’m thankful for it now because it has made my delivery a lot more consistent and repeatable.

“I’ve been able to land my curveball a lot better in any count. That keeps the hitters a little more off-balance. This new motion has helped me get my curveball down and my fastball down more consistently.”

Barr’s first eight appearances this season came out of the bullpen, but he pitched at least five innings in consecutive appearances before making his first start March 23. On March 12, he tossed six scoreless innings and yielded just three hits in a 7-6 Michigan 12-inning victory.

Five days later, he entered in a 1-1 game against San Diego and pitched five innings of one-run ball in a 3-2 Wolverines win.

“I think I just needed to see it click again,” said Barr, who was a two-time first-team all-state honoree in high school. “Not that I really lost much confidence, but early in the season, I was getting reliever type innings, one or two, and then I had a game where I was able to stretch it out. Since then, I feel like I’ve taken a major stride. Seeing that (success) again and telling myself, ‘This is who I am.’ I’ve been able to roll with that.”

Barr will make the most important start of his career Wednesday in a crucial opening game for Michigan. The path to a tournament title becomes more difficult with a first-round loss, especially for a Wolverines team that finished eighth in the conference in ERA and doesn’t have the pitching depth like others in the league.

Michigan won the season series against the Hawkeyes (31-21, 14-10), taking two of three in early-April. Barr took the only loss in the series but allowed just one run on four hits in 4 1/3 innings.

“Our mindset has kind of been the same since we started Big Ten play,” Barr said. “The mentality was “win the weekend, be weekend warriors.’ It helps we’ve seen them a little bit. I’ve thrown four or five innings against those guys and we did win the series against them last time so that gives us a little bit of confidence heading into this game.”

Likely to oppose Barr is Iowa ace Brody Brecht, a projected early-round pick in the MLB draft. Michigan touched him for five runs in 5 2/3 innings in April, but he’s a tough matchup when he’s on his game. He features a high-90s fastball and has struck out 118 in 71 innings.

The Wolverines need to win the tournament to reach the NCAAs after missing last year for the first time since 2018.

“Our thing is, ‘Who are we playing today?’” Smith said. “It is always Michigan. We are going to worry about what we are doing in our dugout because we think if we do that well, it doesn’t matter who we are playing. If you go back and look at some of our box scores, they are generally not very pretty, but we find a way to win. Just keep scrapping and keep battling, and that served us well all year.”