TCU baseball appears to have found its ace in left-hander Austin Krob
The college baseball season is young, but TCU appears to have found its next staff ace.
Junior left-hander Austin Krob turned in another terrific start on Friday night, throwing six scoreless innings with six strikeouts in leading TCU to a 4-1 victory over Nebraska to open a three-game series at Globe Life Field.
Krob has thrown 10 scoreless innings in his first two starts of the season.
“I feel great,” Krob said. “I had amazing defense. You can’t beat that. The slider was pretty good today. They were sitting back on a few, which I was like, ‘All right, now I’ve got to attack with the fastball some more.’ Once I started getting that fastball command back, it was game over for them.”
Yes, Nebraska didn’t get much going against Krob. The Huskers had a baserunner reach in each of the first four innings, but those threats came to an abrupt halt.
Krob ended the third inning with a 6-4-3 double play. The fourth inning came to an end on a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out on a nice sequence by Krob and catcher Kurtis Byrne.
Krob retired eight of the final nine batters he faced. He threw 80 pitches, 47 for strikes.
Asked about how much his slider has improved, Krob said: “It’s always been my go-to pitch. It’s always been my bread and butter, but now I’ve just refined it to where I can throw it down as a back foot to where they’re going to swing over it 80%, 90% of the time. I’m also able to land it in there for that backdoor to where it’s like, ‘That’s going to be hard to hit when it’s starting in the left-handed batter’s box and going in.’”
Krob has set the tone early on for the rotation. Every starter pitched well the first time through and the second time is off to a promising start courtesy of Krob.
Krob entered the offseason as the favorite to win the No. 1 job. He went 8-1 with a 3.81 ERA in 16 starts last season, and held off a push by right-hander Riley Cornelio during the preseason. Cornelio is the Frogs’ No. 2 starter and started Saturday against the Huskers. Cornelio earned the victory, allowing two runs over six innings in an 8-3 victory by TCU.
“Riley and I have been competing this whole year. We knew it’d be me or him being the Friday-night guy,” Krob said. “We fought for it. It just happened to be where I had more experience than he did. That’s why I’m at the Friday spot.
“My job now is to make a statement. All right, I’m going to pass the ball to Riley the next day where he’s confident that, ‘Oh, Krob did it. Now it’s my turn to do it. Do the same thing Austin did, if not better.’”
TCU’s offense delivered the runs on a solo home run by Tommy Sacco in the third inning and a bases-clearing three-run double by David Bishop in the fifth inning.
Bullpen matters
TCU used four relievers to close out the final three innings, allowing one run. But the Frogs made things interesting every inning.
Nebraska brought the potential game-tying run to the plate each of the last three innings, including the possible go-ahead run with the bases loaded in the eighth. But TCU managed to get out of it each time.
Still, that made for some stressful situations in the dugout.
“We’re still trying to define roles down there,” TCU coach Kirk Saarloos said. “We made it hard on ourselves a little bit in terms of some hit-by-pitches and some walks out of the ‘pen. We need to clean that up.”
But Saarloos liked that the Frogs were able to get out of jams.
Luke Savage and Augie Mihlbauer combined for three strikeouts to end the seventh. Marcelo Perez got two outs in the eighth but exited with the bases loaded. River Ridings ended that threat with a strikeout. Ridings then worked around a hit-by-pitch and two-out single in a scoreless ninth.
“The cool thing is, a great bullpen picks each other up,” Saarloos said. “So you had Augie coming in and bailing out (Savage), then Marcelo helping him out, and then you had River helping him out. So I think those are really good characteristics of a bullpen, being able to come in and execute pitches in big situations.”
Briefly
▪ TCU improved to 5-0 all-time against Nebraska in baseball with Friday’s victory. It’s the first time the programs have played since 1989.
▪ Game 3 is set for 1 p.m. Sunday at Globe Life Field. The projected starters are right-hander Brett Walker for TCU and right-hander Dawson McCarville for Nebraska.
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 9:56 PM.
