TCU starter rebounds in near-perfect win over Wichita State
Yes, Alex Young knew he had a perfect game going.
Yes, he knew when it was over.
“As soon as I let go of it, I knew that it wasn’t what I wanted,” he said.
It was a 1-1 fastball from the TCU left-hander, and it ended up in left-center field — breaking up his run of 16 consecutive outs to start Sunday’s game. But it was the only thing he could kick himself for after the Horned Frogs’ 11-2 victory against Wichita State at Lupton Stadium.
“Yeah, I didn’t want to think about it,” he said of his perfect game bid, which reached the sixth inning with one out. Wichita State catcher Bob Arens laced the ball to medium left-center, where even the speed of Cody Jones was not enough to track it down.
“Obviously, it happens rarely,” Young said. “But I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to keep the game rolling.”
In the big picture, it was a bounce-back game for Young after a bad outing last weekend against Oklahoma State, when he gave up six hits and six unearned runs in 2 2/3 innings.
And for the Frogs (21-4), it finished a sweep of the series against Wichita State (11-16) and a 10-2 homestand.
“That’s the thing I’m most proud of,” coach Jim Schlossnagle said of Young’s rebound. “Everybody’s going to have a bad day. It’s not what happens, but how you respond to it. I thought he was really good. That’s how he looked against UCLA — those are the two best games he’s pitched.”
Young blamed himself for the showing against Oklahoma State.
“The game sped up on me,” he said.
And that sometimes leads to over-thinking.
“I get too much into the moment, I feel like,” Young said. “I’m a competitive person; adrenaline’s running high — I’m the hardest critic of myself. I needed to be able to go out there and be able to pitch and not worry about anything else.”
Following the Oklahoma State start, Young said he worked on fastball command. And Schlossnagle liked the way the pitcher handled his emotions.
“Sometimes, he lets things spin out of control on him,” Schlossnagle said. “He didn’t have that many opportunities [to let that happen] today. Even after the double, he came back and threw a strike and made good pitches.
“With Alex, that’s part of the maturation process to becoming an elite starting pitcher.”
Young’s final line looked elite — seven innings, nine strikeouts, no walks, two hits. His ERA dropped to 0.98, and he bumped his record to 5-1.
He left with a 4-0 lead, and the Frogs put the game out of reach with a seven-run bottom of the seventh. Connor Wanhanen and Jeremie Fagnan each had two-run singles in the inning.
Evan Skoug doubled twice and drove in two runs in the sixth, and Nolan Brown had a pair of RBI singles.
For the weekend, TCU had double-digit hits in each game, totaling 37, and scored 33 runs.
“I thought it was a very professional win,” Schlossnagle said. “We knew we were going to see the best pitching of the weekend today.
“Obviously, Alex was really good, and we had to battle some good pitchers there in the first five or six innings, and then really got to them.”
Carlos Mendez, 817-390-7760
This story was originally published March 29, 2015 at 6:28 PM with the headline "TCU starter rebounds in near-perfect win over Wichita State."