Baylor Baseball’s Recent Struggles, Plus Final Push for Big 12 Tournament
For those paying attention to the Baylor baseball team, the crooked final scores against No. 18 West Virginia may have been rather disheartening to see after the team appeared to be peaking in mid-April when the Bears went toe-to-toe with No. 19 Texas in a thrilling series.
However, the final scores from this past weekend’s series don’t necessarily indicate how competitive Baylor was against the league-leading Mountaineers.
Friday, the Bears led West Virginia 4-3 before blowing a late lead in the eighth inning due to a couple of defensive miscues.
Entering the seventh inning Saturday, BU trailed 1-0 before surrendering nine runs over the final three frames. And on Sunday, Baylor fell behind 8-4 before collapsing and giving up five spots in both the eighth and ninth innings.
"This weekend was disappointing. Obviously, we had an opportunity to win Friday and couldn't finish it off,” coach Mitch Thompson said after the loss Sunday.
“Then Saturday and Sunday, both get away from us late. Even today, it's a ballgame through the first six innings … West Virginia is a good club. They play hard. They well. They are fun to watch play. They are not fun to play."
Since the series against Texas concluded on April 16, Baylor has gone 2-6 and has been outscored by opponents 73-to-33.
“It’s kind of how this season has been at times. You take two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward, one step back,” Thompson said after the 6-2 loss to Tarleton on April 25.
Offensively, injuries to sophomore 3B Hunter Teplanszky and junior LF Hunter Simmons have depleted an already thin lineup.
To make matters worse, the Bears' other top two hitters, freshman SS Kolby Branch and junior 2B Cole Posey, have faced their own struggles in recent weeks.
Branch has gone 1-for-15 with six strikeouts in his last four games. For the first time in his young career, the stud freshman went hitless in three straight games. Before the West Virginia series, Branch had yet to have back-to-back hitless games.
Conversely, Posey has five hits and 15 strikeouts in his last 35 plate appearances and has not drawn a single walk during that span. After the Texas series, Posey was hitting .324. And now two weeks later, his batting average has dropped to .279.
While the top of the lineup has cooled off in recent weeks, the bottom of the order has remained competitive. The real issue facing this team is the lack of pitching.
In the sweep to West Virginia, BU’s pitching staff combined to issue 35 free passes. The league-leading Mountaineers handed out just seven, six of which came Sunday in the series finale.
"If you can't throw strikes, it affects the entire ballgame,” Thompson said after Sunday’s loss.
“Our defense is out there on that field way too long, way too many times with nothing happening. Four or five hitters in a row with nothing happening. A strikeout, a walk, hit by pitch, another walk. Nothing happens, and you are out there for 25 pitches, trying to be ready to play, and we expect the plays to happen."
Thompson was also frustrated with the rotation’s inability to get through first innings.
In the WVU series, Baylor’s starters allowed five runs and threw a combined 86 pitches in first innings. Meanwhile, the Mountaineers starters didn’t surrender a run and threw just 38 combined pitches.
The Bears are currently last in the conference in virtually every pitching category, and it’s not particularly close: ERA (7.05), Hits (493), Earned Runs (307), BB (244) and B/AVG (.309).
Right now, there aren’t many bright spots on the pitching side of things, but there’s no need to overreact; there were always going to be growing pains this season.
However, if Thompson and his staff want to reach the NCAA Tournament in 2024, they must retool the pitching staff completely. And to no fault of his own, Thompson inherited a staff with very little D1 pitching experience.
There’s talent on the roster that will have to continue to be honed in on, and there is talent out there that Thompson and his staff will have to search for in the transfer portal this offseason.
As a side note, West Virginia’s starter, Blaine Traxel, threw a complete game shutout against Baylor Saturday. Traxel leads the country in innings pitched and is a gamer on the mound, but even he was a transfer portal addition last summer from Cal State Northridge.
For the first time in program history, the Baylor baseball team may risk missing out on the Big 12 Tournament. With one conference series remaining, the Bears are currently dead last with a Big 12 record of 6-15.
Most of the conference has two series yet to play, but it appears to be a four-team race between Baylor, Kansas, Oklahoma and TCU for the final three spots in the conference tournament.
And it’s mostly a race between Kansas and Baylor for the eighth and final spot.
Kansas (6-12) holds the tiebreaker over Baylor if the two finish with the same record. The Jayhawks will welcome Texas in Lawrence next weekend and then travel to Lubbock to finish the season against No. 14 Texas Tech.
The Bears hold a tiebreaker over Oklahoma (9-9), but unfortunately for BU, the Sooners swept Texas in Austin two weekends ago. OU still has to play first-place No. 18 West Virginia (11-4) on the road and will finish the season at home against Oklahoma State (11-7).
Surprisingly, TCU (7-10), the preseason favorite to win the conference, has lost five straight and is limping across the finish line. The Horned Frogs were a lock for the NCAA Tournament all season until recently where they have fallen on the wrong side of the bubble.
TCU has Baylor and Kansas State remaining on its schedule. While highly unlikely, the Horned Frogs could keep skidding and lose series to both BU and KSU and finish last in the Big 12 standings.
However, the most likely scenario for Baylor to make the conference tournament would be to win at least two games over TCU and hope Kansas goes 1-5 in its final two series. If that were the case, BU would finish with a one-game lead over KU.
If Kansas goes 2-4 down the stretch and Baylor wins two games against TCU, both teams would finish 8-16, but the Jayhawks would hold the tiebreaker.
If the Bears hadn’t blown the late lead Friday to West Virginia or the Sunday game to Kansas, they’d be sitting in a more favorable position.
Regardless, it’s highly likely that Baylor will miss the tournament for the first time in program history altogether, but there are technically still several paths to get to Arlington.
The Bears (15-29, 6-15) will look to get back on track with midweek matchups against Abilene Christian (26-16) Tuesday and Texas A&M - Corpus Christi (20-23) Wednesday.
With final exams occurring over the next week and a half, Baylor won’t start its final Big 12 series against TCU (23-20, 7-10) until May 12.