WVU Bounced To Losers Bracket With Loss To TCU
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MORGANTOWN - Randy Mazey's been coaching baseball for a long time and if there's one lesson he's learned is that sometimes the less said the better it is and so it was Tuesday afternoon after his West Virginia baseball team dragged itself into the loser's bracket of the Big 12 Championship with a 5-2 loss to TCU that was both uninspired and uninspiring.
All season long if WVU had been anything it was powerful on offense as it put together a 19-11 Big 12 record to earn the No. 4 seed and almost certainly clinch itself a spot in the NCAA Regional but, after his Mountaineers spent most of the day dragging their bats back to the dugout against two dominant Horned Frog pitchers, the only thing Mazey found offensive was his team's performance.
It set up a 10 a.m. elimination meeting with Kansas State on Wednesday, meaning the wake up calls will come early but not early enough to erase the bad dream they had gone through against TCU.
The Mountaineers managed only three hits all day - just one from any player not named Logan Suave, who homered and doubled. It was only the second time all season WVU had been held to fewer than 4 hits in a game, the other time being on March 22 when Oklahoma no-hit WVU.
Asked what adjustments could be made to change things against Kansas State, Mazey was brief and to the point in a press conference that lasted less than 3 1/2 minutes.
"More hits and strike out less," he said. "That would be ideal."
Kansas State's winner Caedmon Parker and reliever Braeden Sloan completely mystified WVU.
"They made us swing at a lot of pitches that weren't strikes and made us take a lot of pitches that were strikes and that's when your pitchers are having a good day. I don't know how many pitches we swung at out of the strike zone, but it was significant."
West Virginia was a team that had hit 19 home runs in the last seven games, but there was a bit of a tipoff that disaster lay ahead in the final regular season game, also against TCU. The Mountaineers won that game but had only four hits and with this three-hit performance against the Horned Frogs, they now have gone just 7 for 69, a .117 average, over the past two games.
Two games don't make a slump but they sure don't inspire the kind energy you need to win in postseason play.
The performance was so atypical of what you expect out of a WVU team, that Mazey was asked if he thought his team was ready to play, an idea he rapidly brushed aside.
"That's indoor baseball for you," Mazey said, referring to playing in the Texas Rangers' enclosed Globe Life Field. "In a 40,000-seat stadium with only a couple of thousand people here, that's the atmosphere that's created. If you sat and watched the first game, you probably would have said those two teams didn't show up, either.
"Everyone shows up when you play in this atmosphere. Every kid knows how to motivate themselves. I think that's just the indoor baseball aspect of it that gives you that impression.. We're never not ready to play."
Not to second guess (and yes, here comes a second guess), matters weren't helped as early one out into the bottom of the first inning when JJ Wetherholt, the Mountaineers' most dangerous hitter, thought he had to try and jump start a rally by bunting against the shift TCU had put on.
Not that it might not have done something positive if he hadn't been thrown out on the bunt attempt, when on a tournament stage WVU's excitement has to come from Wetherholt hitting baseball into the gaps.
The shift was inviting Wetherholt to bunt, almost begging him to, so why oblige them?
Anyway, taking the dangerous bat out of Wetherholt's hands there wasn't an aggressive sign you like to see early in a game and Parker finished his five innings on the mound allowing two hits, one of them Suave's two-run homer to narrow the game to 3-2.
Sloan came on and took over in the sixth, almost was undressed by a vicious line drive hit back at him by Sammy White as the first batter he faced. Somehow, Sloan managed to catch the ball that was going out faster than it was coming into the plate.
He went on to pitch four innings of one-hit relief with seven strikeouts.
Meanwhile, WVU wound up having to use three pitchers, none of whom pitched terribly and none of who overwhelmed. TCU had enough to get single runs in the fourth through seventh innings and then a final insurance run in the ninth.
The Mountaineers aided their pitchers with some nifty work in the field, Skylar King made a nice running and leaping catch at the wall in left-center and first baseman Grant Hussey made a sliding, back to the plate catch of a foul pop and turned it into a double play when a runner on third tagged and tried to sneak home, Hussey getting to his feet and making a quick, decisive throw that led to a rundown and tag out to end the inning.
WVU's Mazey will probably not get much sleep with the early start on Wednesday trying to figure out some way to get life back into his team's bats.
"If we don't have a better offensive approach tomorrow we are going to be sitting here as the first team to do the press conference, too," he said.