Frogs Blast Murray State 15-6 to Win Series

TCU fans got in a great sports day today. The school provided a shuttle for fans to move them from The Carter, where they played the spring game this morning, to Lupton for the afternoon game. The TCU basketball team was on site at both events, signing autographs with their NIT Championship trophy in tow. The football spring game didn’t feature much offense, but the baseball team more than made up for that.

With one out in the second inning Murray State’s pitcher, Austin Dubsky, hit Josh Watson and Nolan Brown in back-to-back at bats. Barzilli reached on a fielder’s choice for the second out of the inning before Merrill was walked to load the bases. Dubsky proceeded to hit Wanhanen to score the first run of the game, and Austin Wade cleared the bases with a double to make it 4-0.

Still in the second inning, Baker scored two more with a single and Watson reached on an error, scoring Skoug for a 7-0 TCU lead. Altogether the inning included four walks, three hit batters and an error by Murray State, and just two hits by TCU’s lineup. The Racers did get one run back in the top of the third inning, but a six-run deficit was the closest they would get for the rest of the day.

The very next inning was another offensive explosion by the Horned Frogs. Merrill reached on an error to start the bottom of the third. Wanhanen walked and Warner was hit by a pitch to load the bases for Skoug. At this point Murray State was on their second pitcher and was already up close to 100 pitches. Skoug crushed one into the wind in right field, but no amount of wind was going to stop that ball from getting over the wall for a grand slam. After a fly out by Baker and a walk by Watson, Nolan Brown hit a two-run homer of his own to right to push TCU’s lead to 13-1.

Nick Lodolo was looking good through the first four innings, allowing just one run on five hits to that point, but struggled with his control a bit in the fifth. He gave up three straight hits to start the inning and after a strikeout and a wild pitch he walked the next two batters to load the bases with one out. An RBI fly out and a double scored three more before Lodolo got his sixth strikeout of the day to end the inning.

TCU held the Racers scoreless for the rest of the game behind two innings from Jake Eissler and one a piece from Austin Boyles and Dalton Brown. They added two extra runs in the fourth and sixth innings for a final score of 15-6. The win is TCU’s 11th in a row, giving them an overall record of 24-5 (8-1 in Big 12).

TCU will be going for the sweep tomorrow in game 3, which is scheduled to start at 1:00pm CT. The game can be viewed on Frog Vision and fans can listen on the radio at 88.7 FM.