Southeast's baseball team finds successful approach at the plate

When it rains for the Southeast High School baseball team, it can pour.

The Spartans have an offense capable of producing at a high level, despite their 9-17 record through Thursday.

Through 26 games, Southeast has five hitters above .300 and two more hitting better than .250. Junior Ethan Murphy leads the bunch, batting .414 (24-for-58) with nine doubles, two triples and 19 RBIs.

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The Spartans are scoring nearly 14 runs per win, and that includes a 3-2 win over Jerseyville on April 6.

Many of the juniors and seniors on the team are familiar faces around the Central State Eight Conference. They were thrown to the fire early in their high school careers, but Southeast coach Brad Leininger said they’ve grown with the experience.

“They gain some confidence over those years,” Leininger said. “I understand, we’ve got to put them in some tough situations, and I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think they couldn’t handle it.

“They’re pretty mentally tough for the most part. When you see those types of pitchers (in the CS8), you don’t see much better than that in Illinois. You have one good at-bat, and you build on those failures and learn how to be successful against good pitchers like that.”

Murphy said he’s still learning from every game and every plate appearance, and he hopes to get better from every failure as much as he does from every success.

“A good example is (Tuesday)," Murphy said. “We played Chatham (a 12-0 loss), my first at-bat, was against Alex (Chopra), and your first at-bat, you’ve got to get a feel for the pitcher ... that gives you a good lead on your next at-bat, where to be aggressive and what to go up there looking for.”

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After the loss, the Spartans packed their bags and went to Robin Roberts Stadium, where they beat Lanphier 14-0.

The team is hitting .294 with a.415 on-base percentage. Junior Tim Herrington, who has a .351 average, credits Leininger for adapting his philosophy.

“When I was a freshman and sophomore, (Leininger) was kind of (conservative) about swinging on the first pitch,” Herrington said, “but then he started looking at college stats and seeing that swinging at 0-0 pitches have a higher percentage of getting a hit or getting a hard hit somewhere and he started being more lenient and wanting us to attack that first pitch.”

The key for the Spartans, Murphy said, is stringing together hits. A typical lineup has senior Carter Hood leading off, followed by Herrington, Jaxon Cook and Murphy. If Southeast threatens early, that has a contagious effect.

Cook has a knack for getting some of his biggest hits with Spartans on base ahead of him. The senior, who has a .338 average (26-for-77), leads the team with 28 RBIs.

“I think every time I’m up there and there are runners on base, everybody knows I’m going to drive someone in,” Cook said.

Southeast focuses on the small-ball approach. The Spartans have just one home run — courtesy of senior Braxton Twist.

“I’ve got some hitters that can hit,” Leininger said. “But with a lack of power, we’ve got to go gap-to-gap or string singles and sometimes it’s hard to string four or five together."

Cook added, “We have a ton of guys that can just put the ball in play and make something happen. We don’t need the pop every swing.”

Southeast opens the Class 3A Jacksonville Regional against No. 9 Lanphier on Monday at 4:30 p.m. If the seventh-seeded Spartans advance, they'll get a shot at redemption with No. 2 Jacksonville on Wednesday, also at 4:30.

If that rematch happens, Jacksonville's 11-0 win on May 9 won't be at the forefront of the Spartans’ thoughts.

Every game, if you don’t go in there thinking you’re winning, you’ve already got the wrong mindset,” Murphy said.

Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: IHSA baseball: Southeast turns to small-ball to score runs