Frogs Face UT Arlington in Final Home Game of Regular Season

The Frogs need something to feel good about right now. They should get that this week just based on the talent that they have scheduled to return. Janczak is supposed to return to the mound this weekend at Cal and Austin Wade will return to the lineup for the mid-week game against UTA according to the Star-Telegram. They’d feel even better if they could go into the weekend with a win Tuesday night.

UT Arlington is 29-21 overall on the year and they lead the western division of the Sun Belt Conference with a league record of 19-8. This last weekend they were swept by Coastal Carolina in Arlington, so, like the Frogs, they are looking for a bounce back win in this mid-week matchup. I’m just happy that TCU is getting to play this game at home, because it seems like any road trip, no matter how short, is a recipe for disaster at this point.

TCU has faced UTA twice this season and they are 2-0, but this will be the first time this year that they play them at Lupton. All-time the Frogs are 97-58 against the Mavericks, and during Schlossnagle’s tenure, that record has been as good as 26-7.

There have been no announcements about who will be the starting pitchers in Tuesday’s game, but both King and Wymer were used in the Sunday finale against Oklahoma, so I would guess it will be Horton again. As spotty as Traver has been this year, and he was on Sunday, I will still feel really good about having him as the fourth starter with Janczak healthy going into the postseason.

While teams like UTA generally don’t have the kind of depth in their four-man rotation as the Frogs, offensively the Mavericks can keep up with TCU all day. They have several starters who hit over the .300 mark, including sophomore Will Olson (.325), junior Omar Salinas (.324) and senior Quintin Rohrbaugh (.318).

TCU will rely heavily on Skoug and Wade to produce some power with Baker out. The two have have 20 and 17 extra-base hits respectively. Wanhanen has also been showing flashes of his Freshman year plate prowess in his opportunities lately, regularly finding his way on base with a .422 on-base percentage and has raised his average up above .260. There is still hope that Baker will return this year for the postseason as well, after finding out that his injury may not be as bad as previously thought.

First pitch tonight is scheduled for 6:30pm CT, and the game will be televised on Fox Sports Southwest.