Cole Warehime shines as SEMO baseball splits series with Indiana State

If there is one day of the week that the Southeast Missouri State baseball team seemingly owns this season, it’s Sunday.

The Redhawks split the weekend series against Indiana State with an 8-6 win on Sunday at Capaha Field.

Cole Warehime went 3-for-4 with four RBIs and a home run. The junior also went 2-for-3 with an RBI to help SEMO score its first-ever win over ISU during Saturday’s doubleheader.

"We have not done as good of a job in leverage counts," SEMO head coach Andy Sawyers said. "We define leverage as plus two, so 2-0, 3-1, 3-0. We haven't done as good a job and those counts, but he got a fastball elevated on a 2-0 count, and he sure didn't miss."

In his first season as an everyday outfielder, Warehime is batting .357 (15-for-42) with four home runs and nine RBI.

"He's just older," Sawyers said. "He's growing up, and so he always showed signs of what he could do. There's a reason why he's here."

On a team filled with players coming from junior college seasoning, Warehime arrived as a freshman and is finally emerging as a star in his fourth year with the Redhawks.

"I think in today's world, you don't see the guy who sticks," Sawyers said. "We used to have the line, 'Stick and stay and make them play.' It's like the guy that shows up and gets better and maybe redshirts, or maybe it just takes them a while, but they grow up in the program. You don't see that as much anymore. Kids want to play right away, so they're going to transfer to junior college or enter the transfer portal. Cole's a guy who has always had ability and always had talent, but he's just worked hard. And I think it's just natural, the natural accumulation of a good kid with a good work ethic and paying his dues and getting older and getting smarter, and now you're seeing the fruits of all of his hard work."

Warehime was a solid bat off the bench as a spot starter in 2024, He batted .306 with five home runs and 20 RBIs in 72 at-bats in 27 games.

The Redhawks established a lead that they fought to maintain after a five-run second inning. Highlighting that rally is Ty Stauss, who hit an RBI double. Stauss was moved down the lineup for the first time this season after struggling early in the season and responded with a 3-for-5 performance at the plate.

"We assumed he'd hit in the three-hole, just wasn't having a ton of success, and we kind of shuffled the deck yesterday with the lineup and shuffled it again today," Sawyers said. "Maybe he takes a load off and doesn't put as much pressure on himself. Maybe he gets more fastballs further down the order. I'm not sure. We haven't been going great on offense, so we wanted to kind of mix it up. He got three hits so I mean, certainly, the credit belongs to him, not the rearrangement of the lineup. But sometimes you drop a guy down a little bit and maybe get him a couple more fastballs on that bat and sometimes it pays off."

Coming off a season in which he batted .329 on a championship team, Stauss struggled to the tune of .254 through 18 games. Sawyers said a prime spot in the lineup sometimes comes with pressure but is confident in Stauss returning to form as the season goes along.

"Ty has always been a slow starter," Sawyers said. "You know, Paul Goldschmidt, wonderful career, he was always a slow starter. You look at the end of the year and there's 100 RBIs and there's 30 homers. It's like every year, like clockwork. And Ty has been a little bit of a slow starter. I don't know why, but it's just the way he has been. He led our team hitting last year."

Hayden Dow came off his first career complete game with six strikeouts and four earned runs over six innings for the win.

Dow isn't just the most experienced starting pitcher among the Redhawks but was among the best pitchers in the Ohio Valley Conference last season. That is a resume that usually has him pitching on Fridays. However, Sundays are Dow's day, and the Redhawks are 3-0 on that day because of that advantage.

"He is our top pitcher statistically," Sawyers said of Dow. "If you look at it by stuff, I mean, he's an 86-87 mph left-hander. Certainly, he's an elite-level performer, but, we tried him on Fridays last year. Friday's typically your lowest-scoring game, and he was super competitive for us, but it wasn't like we were always winning that game."

SEMO split the season-opening double-header against Memphis but are 2-3 on Fridays overall this season. Establishing a starting pitcher for Fridays is a work in progress. Stange has a 5.79 ERA through four starts and his only win came on an outing against Northern Illinois in which he went six innings for the first time this season. Sam Heyman is another pitcher who has started on Fridays and has seen similar results.

"If we pitch [Dow] on Sunday and we give like Brian Strange, for example, who's got really good stuff, he's up to 95 mph," Sawyers said, "if Brian can grow into the Friday job and be that kind of dominant type guy, we're gonna have the best Sunday starter in our league, hands down. It's not even close."

SEMO (8-7) will host Evansville on Tuesday, March 11, at Capaha Field. The Purple Aces won the Missouri Valley Conference title and took top-seeded Tennessee (who went on to win the national championship) to three games in the super-regional last season.