The Hawkeyes allowed 10 free baserunners in Friday's 9-4 loss, and Heller is frustrated with his pitching staff not rising to the occasion.
What do you tell your team after a stretch like this?
Heller: I guess it's just very, very honest that if you pitch that poorly, especially on a Friday night, you really have no chance of winning. You just don't. And if it continues, we're not going to put ourselves in a place to win.
On starting pitcher Jaron Bleeker's short outing
I expected way more out of Bleecker. I thought he'd give us a good, consistent start. And, you know, starts the game off of the walk. And then what, what do we get? Strikes a guy out and then gives up three hits in a row, and we we end up giving up three runs in the first and have to have to fight to come back.
On the offense
I felt like we fought. We weren't our best tonight. He's [Minnesota starter Cole Selvig] good, but we made it pretty easy on him at times as well, when we weren't disciplined in the zone, the guys who had good at bats today were the guys that that were making him, making him throw it over the plate. We play hard. Everybody is ready to go and playing hard. There's no issues there. It's just we have to find a way to start pitching better. I mean, there's not much else to say, and that's why I told those guys. I mean, it doesn't get better. We're not going to win. Simple as that.
How tough is it right now, not only for for you guys as a coaching staff, for the pitching staff, to not have a guy that's just been able to go out there, a guy or two to go out there and set the tone?
It's not really easy right now to try to figure out a plan on what to do, not having a Friday guy that's going to go out there. And you pretty much know you're going to get six, seven innings, and it's going to be a close game, regardless of a good day, bad day, he's going to give you a chance. It makes it really tough to manage a bullpen as well. You know, it's not easy to do that, and when the plans don't go the way you want them to, it makes it feel worse.
Was this your biggest concern coming into the season?
Oh for sure, it was. We lost 434 innings last year and had really no experience. ....It's definitely been challenging, just because nobody's really stepped up and grabbed the roles that you wanted them to do. And I really felt like, we might scuffle at times early first month or so, but I thought guys would rise to the occasion and and really go after that role, you know. And that's not really what's happened. Guys have had good outings, but then the bad outings have been catastrophic. And that's the issue. The bad outings need to be better.