TCU Baseball: Big XII Tournament Game 2 (TCU vs Baylor) Preview & Gamethread

Ooooh what a beautiful morning. Oh what a beautiful daaaaay. The Frogs are chirping (Does that work? I'm going with it), and today we open the Big XII tournament against the lowly, eighth-seeded Baylor Bears. The Horned Frogs swept the regular season series between these two teams and they need another win today to get off on the right foot in this tournament. Getting into the losers bracket early makes it very difficult to win these things. Oklahoma State can attest to this. Last year, they lost their second game of the tournament to Texas and, while they were able to fight their way through the loser's bracket and reach the championship, by the time they met up with the Frogs on Sunday they didn't have a lot left on the bump. The result was that we beat them pretty handily to win the tournament.

My point is, even though Baylor is 4-6 in their last 10 games, any team in the Big XII can beat you if you're not ready to play. The only player in Baylor's lineup right now hitting .300 or above--and he is hitting exactly .300--is their Senior CF Logan Brown. It is also of note that Brown has been hitting .352 over the last 23 games with 10 multi-hit efforts. Everyone else on their team is below .300 on the season, but like Brown a number of them are hitting pretty well over the last half of the season; most notably first-baseman Mitch Price (.346 over last 29 games), second-baseman Johnathan Ducoff (.327 over last 21 games) and right-fielder Adam Toth (.353 over last 13 games). With a team ERA of 4.82 they probably aren't going to beat us with their pitching, but we do need to play solid baseball because their hitters can make us pay if we don't. Still, the Frogs are 9-1 in their last 10 games and are playing arguably their best baseball of the year.

The pitching matchup today definitely favors the Frogs. I was surprised to see Young’s name because earlier this week they had Traver tabbed to start today’s game. I don’t know what changed, but I have to say I like this a lot better. Young has just been practically unbeatable in big games this season. He has shown the ability to go deeper into games more consistently than Traver, and a solid outing that eats up innings is very important in this first match of the tournament. The last thing you want is to burn up a lot of your bullpen guys in this first game.

The format of the Big XII tournament is great because each side of the bracket essentially plays a regional and it is also almost identical to the format of the College World Series. This makes the tournament great practice for the postseason which should really help us seeing as how we have so many contributors this year that have never played in the college postseason. I know that the younger Frogs on the team have likely played double elimination tournaments before, but probably never after already playing 52 games during the regular season. In any event, I believe that Schlossnagle will have the team ready for this opening game. Boo Baylor. Go Frogs

Where to watch/listen:

TV: Fox College Sports, FSSW+

Radio: KTCU 88.7FM

Live Stats on Big XII Sports (Not being updated)