Iowa baseball: Trenton Wallace shines in blowout 16-1 win

As the Iowa baseball team continues it’s fall exhibition games, Trenton Wallace shined in the blowout victory on Wednesday afternoon.

Iowa baseball fans will have to wait patiently for a few more months before the games actually matter but the handful of games followed by the Black and Gold World Series in mid-October should be enough to properly satiate you. Certainly, the competition is not the best but it’s a great opportunity for Rick Heller to get his ducks in a row and allow some players to get their feet wet.

One of those players is the versatile junior Trenton Wallace. The Rock Island native did a little bit of everything last season for the Hawkeyes. He made 3 starts out of the rotation and 11 more from the bullpen, posting a 6.41 ERA while striking out 31 batters in 26.2 innings. Wallace’s command was a bit shaky last year as he allowed 16 free passes and when put into play, batters were able to hit 0.295 off him.

Wallace also started 13 games in the field with 9 of those coming in right field. He posted a slash line of 0.220/0.339/0.280 with 3 doubles, 9 RBI, and a 1:1 walk-to-strikeout ratio. He’ll have to continue being a versatile player if he wants to find playing time this season but his performance in fall ball has been convincing.

The Hawkeyes were forced to move up their scheduled game on Friday due to impending weather and squared up with Indian Hills Community College on Wednesday afternoon. Drew Irvine was electric in the start for the Hawkeyes, striking out 3 batters and the offense backed his performance, to say the least.

Matt Sosa got the scoring started with a sacrifice fly in the bottom half of the second inning, following by an Austin Martin two-run double in the third inning to make it a 4-0 game. Brendan Sher hit a solo shot in the bottom half of the 4th inning and a two-run double in the 6th inning.

A few more runs here, a couple more there, and with the Iowa baseball team up 11-1 in the 13th inning (as we said, these games don’t matter), Wallace provided the exclamation point with a grand slam. Iowa would go onto win 16-1 and are 3-0 on the fall. Wednesday was the final tuneup before Iowa will play in their annual Black and Gold Series next weekend where Wallace will continue to prove that he deserves playing time in the spring.

One item to keep on, with Wallace, is if Heller plans to utilize him out the bullpen this season and permanently makes him a position player.