TCU baseball is ‘going to respond the right way,’ Jim Schlossnagle says
Jim Schlossnagle is confident TCU baseball will handle its first rough stretch of the season well.
The Horned Frogs have lost four of their last six games, including two of three against Gonzaga last weekend. These types of stretches are expected given the length of the baseball season, but they can’t become prolonged droughts.
TCU (10-6) has a chance to get back on track Tuesday against Arkansas-Pine Bluff (2-8). First-pitch is set for 6:30 p.m. at Lupton Stadium.
“I’m confident that we’re going to respond the right way,” Schlossnagle said. “I feel like we battled through the entire weekend against Gonzaga. We’ve just got to get healthy and pitch better. That’s the bottom line.”
TCU’s pitching has been an issue of late. Of the four losses, three of them have come with the opposing team scoring double-digit runs. Against Gonzaga, TCU had a lead through five innings on Friday and six innings on Sunday and lost both games.
The Frogs have been short-handed with COVID-19 protocols sidelining Johnny Ray and Marcelo Perez early on. Ray, the Opening Day starter, could return to pitch in the series at Louisiana this weekend, while Perez has returned and made an appearance Friday. Right-hander Dalton Brown was unavailable for the Gonzaga series with a knee injury.
All of it has led to TCU piecing together its pitching staff and putting guys in roles that may not be ideal. As Schlossnagle said, he can’t use left-hander Haylen Green in every game. Green has already pitched in eight of TCU’s 16 games, going three or more innings four times.
“Hey, we knew exactly what this was going to be going into the season when you have COVID to deal with and you have normal injuries. It’s going to take everybody,” Schlossnagle said. “You’re supposed depth is going to get exposed one way or the other. I can’t run Haylen into the ground. I’ve already pitched him more than I want to pitch him this time of year, but we’ll figure it out.
“I feel very confident we’ll get the right mix of nine or 10 pitchers that do the bulk of the pitching. The best teams we’ve ever had were with pitching staffs that had very defined roles. I think I know who needs to be in the right role, but we haven’t had them available except for right at the beginning of the season.”
Along with the pitching issues, the Frogs have had a few players get off to slower than expected starts at the plate. Shortstop Tommy Sacco, for instance, is batting just .135 (7 of 52) through 15 games. First baseman Gene Wood is batting .208 (10 of 48) through 15 games as well.
Through 15 games in the shortened 2020 season, Sacco was batting .304 and Wood had a .353 average with five home runs.
Asked if it’s too small of a sample size to make judgments on, Schlossnagle said: “It’s hard to tell. Was last year’s sample size an outlier? But what the fans don’t get to see is what they do in practice, what they’ve done against our pitching in fall practice and in spring practice.
“Leading up to the season, Sacco was one of our best hitters. He hit three home runs, two from one side of the plate and one from the other, but it is what it is. We’re a quarter of the way through the season.”
Injury updates
TCU has three position players sidelined with injuries for now in third baseman Conner Shepherd (elbow) and outfielders Luke Boyers (hamstring) and Hunter Wolfe (hand).
The program is hopeful to get Shepherd back for this weekend’s series at Louisiana, and Boyers back for the Big 12 opening series against Baylor at the end of the month. Wolfe’s timeline is unknown.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 1:53 PM.
