CCU Baseball Notebook: Ace pitcher Cunningham out with injury

Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore was almost too frustrated to speak after the Chanticleers lost Wednesday night at No. 20-ranked College of Charleston for their fourth defeat in the last five games.

But it’s not just the losses that have Gilmore concerned.

Sophomore right-hander Alex Cunningham, the team’s ace pitcher, is not going to be available this week due to soreness in his pitching arm and there’s no clear timetable for when the hurler might return.

“He may be out for the year, I have no idea,” Gilmore said after the game Wednesday night. “It’s [his] elbow, this and that. I don’t know exactly what it is. It has something to do with his tricep.”

Pitching depth was already a problem for this team from the onset with a lack of experienced starters on the roster. That’s why Cunningham, who hadn’t pitched since April of 2013 while recovering from a fractured right elbow, was thrust into the No. 1 starter role in the first place.

And he’s played the role well, going 6-0 with a 2.64 earned-run average and 59 strikeouts in 58 innings.

He lasted only four innings in his start last Friday against Radford, though, due to this latest injury, which Gilmore said is not believed to be related to the one that cost him a season and a half.

Without Cunningham available, the Chants will have to shuffle arms from the bullpen to fill that void.

Junior right-hander Tyler Poole made his first start of the season Wednesday night, giving up five hits, four walks and four runs in 2 2/3 innings.

As for the weekend rotation, junior righty Mike Morrison will take Cunningham’s spot Friday afternoon in the series opener at Presbyterian. It will be the first start for Morrison, who is 2-1 with a 2.55 ERA and 45 strikeouts in 35 1/3 innings out of the bullpen.

Senior lefty Austin Kerr (7-0, 2.31 ERA) will maintain his Saturday role and the Chants have not yet announced a Sunday starter.

“It’s catching up to us,” Gilmore said of the pitching situation. “If we don’t win enough games in the conference, we [aren’t] going to the conference tournament. The number we’ve got right now [isn’t] going to get us in and I’m deathly concerned about that, to be very honest with you – that we don’t even make the tournament. You take [Cunningham] out of the mix, I have to move a bullpen guy into there, which devastates our bullpen.

“We are what we are. This is not this team’s fault. This is a three-year process to get to this point.”

Despite losing four of their last five games and falling out of the Baseball America top-25 poll this week, the players are staying optimistic that they can work around this latest setback.

“AC works hard. Hopefully he’ll get the stuff he needs to get done to get back in the rotation next weekend,” junior catcher Casey Schroeder said. “But I’ve got confidence in the guys that we’ve got going this weekend. And hopefully we can get three wins this week.”

Schroeder connects

While there weren’t many highlights for the Chants on Wednesday night in that 8-5 loss at College of Charleston, Schroeder had Coastal Carolina’s biggest hit.

His three-run homer to right field in the top of the eighth inning cut the deficit to three runs and added some intrigue to an otherwise lopsided game.

And it provided some positive encouragement for Schroeder, who hadn’t homered since March 31 at Wake Forest.

Nonetheless, that blast Wednesday tied him with junior David Parrett for the team lead with nine homers this season. Overall he is batting .233 with 22 RBIs.

“It was big. I’ve been working a lot with coaches on my swing,” he said. “I haven’t found a lot of holes, but I’ve been working hard and the swing felt good today.”

Scouting the Blue Hose

Presbyterian enters the weekend next to last in the Big South standings with a 23-18 overall record and a 4-11 conference mark.

Nonetheless, the Blue Hose rank third in the league with a .293 batting average, led by Cam McRae (.356 average, four homers, 29 RBIs) and Jay Lizanich (.337, 4, 28), who both rank in the top-10 in batting average individually.

On the mound, the Blue Hose are expected to start lefty Brian Kehner (1-1, 4.65 ERA) on Friday, lefty Beau Dees (2-3, 6.37) on Saturday and righty Tanner Chock, a 2014 graduate of Loris high school, (2-2, 3.18) on Sunday.

This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 3:58 PM with the headline "CCU Baseball Notebook: Ace pitcher Cunningham out with injury."