For the majority of the season, Syracuse head coach Shannon Doepking hasn’t trusted pitcher Miranda Hearn. Hearn’s struggled for the bulk of this season, allowing 25 earned runs in her first 21.2 innings pitched. She often couldn’t command her pitches in both starts and relief appearances.

“(Hearn) came out super slow this year,” Doepking said, “and she struggled a lot and had a lot of bad outings for us.”

But since allowing seven earned runs to North Carolina State on April 6, Hearn has honed her pitches and earned the No. 2 spot in Syracuse’s (21-28, 8-13 Atlantic Coast) rotation. On Wednesday afternoon, the sophomore had her best outing of the season in an eight-strikeout, complete game shutout of Cornell (10-33, 5-13 Ivy League). Hearn used a combination of “backdoor curves” and fastballs to keep Big Red hitters off-balance and lead Syracuse to a 3-0 victory. She’s allowed six earned runs in her last eight appearances as Doepking’s willingness to use Hearn more frequently has grown. 

Cornell struggled to time up Hearn’s off-speed pitches from the start of the first inning to the end of the seventh. After a 1-2-3 first inning, Hearn struck out cleanup hitter Bridgette Rooney on an inside curve in the dirt. The next batter, Hanna Crist, swung-and-missed at two pitches before whiffing on a 2-2 drop-ball over the plate. Two batters later, Hearn struck out Olivia Rooney to end the inning.

Hearn said she likes to throw her “backdoor curve,” which dips from the middle of the plate to the inside of right-handed batters, on about half of her pitches. She’s more confident in the pitch now compared to earlier in the season, because she’s worked on spinning it and getting it to break as it approaches the plate — too late for batters to decipher it.

“I think progressively over the season it’s gotten better and better,” Hearn said about her curveball. “And I’ve gotten more consistent with it.”

SU freshman Alexis Kaiser, whose solo home run in the first inning gave Hearn an early cushion, has seen the backdoor curve in action during practices. Hitters have less time to swing than they think, because it breaks inside, unlike a typical curve. Kaiser has seen Hearn make many SU players “look dumb” with the off-speed, Doepking said.

“I think it’s the fact that you see it outside, and timing-wise, you’re thinking ‘let it get deep’ because it’s outside, but then it comes in and you jam yourself,” Kaiser said.

In the third inning, Cornell had its best scoring chance with two outs. Miranda Lawson lofted a double down the left field line, and a walk and single loaded the bases for Rooney, whose seven home runs leads the Big Red. Hearn fell behind 2-0 in the count, but battled back with two fastballs. Then, a backdoor curve and an outside curve made Rooney nearly fall over and ended the inning.

“It always looks cool when she makes people look foolish,” Kaiser said. “We love seeing that.”

As Hearn continued to mix up her curveballs and fastballs, she held Cornell hitless for the rest of the game. The Big Red batters were either way ahead of the sophomore’s off-speed or late to react on fastballs. Four batters got out on soft hits to the left side of the infield, and two grounded out down the first base line from the fourth inning on.

Hearn threw 74 of her 121 pitches for strikes. Her ERA dropped from 4.92 to 4.39. The three-hit gem was the first complete game shutout of her career. And her recent success has given Doepking reasons to believe in Hearn, an emerging option in SU’s already deep rotation.

“I’m really confident in her, and I’m super proud of her,” Doepking said. “The strength to be able to stick with this and figure it out, grind it out for this team shows a lot of what Miranda’s about and who she is as a person…it’s just time before it all came together for her to give us these performances.”

Published on May 1, 2019 at 7:32 pm

Contact Danny: dremerma@syr.edu | @DannyEmerman