TCU baseball slugs its way back into series against Texas Tech

The TCU baseball team put up a reminder Saturday in a 13-6 victory over Texas Tech.

It can still score runs.

The Horned Frogs rallied with a seven-run fifth inning and tacked on five more over the next three innings, halting a short offensive slump at home, and evened the Big 12 series before 6,451 at Lupton Stadium — its fourth-largest crowd ever.

“We’ve known all year we can hit, for sure,” said right fielder Austen Wade, who drove in three runs with a groundout, a single and a double. “Today was a good day to kind of get stuff rolling.”

TCU (30-11, 11-6) trailed 5-1 going into its half of the fifth inning after Cory Raley’s three-run homer for Texas Tech (33-13, 13-4). At that point, the Frogs had scored six runs in their 21 previous innings at home.

But a walk, single and hit batsman loaded the bases with no outs, and Josh Watson and Elliott Barzilli each walked on full counts to force in two runs. Dane Steinhagen then was hit by a pitch to drive in a third run.

With one out, Mason Hesse’s single against reliever Parker Mushinski produced a 5-5 tie, an error at shortstop allowed another run to score, and Cam Warner singled in another run against reliever Dalton Brown for a 7-5 lead. Evan Skoug then faced a third reliever, Jacob Patterson, and beat out a double-play relay to score another run for an 8-5 lead.

“For us to totally just turn it around and say, “One at-bat after another, just keep passing the stick,” it was huge for us,” Wade said. “That’s all it takes — a few guys getting on base, suddenly putting a rally together.”

Barzilli and Connor Wanhanen doubled during a four-run sixth that pushed the lead to 12-6, and Wade’s double in the eighth scored Steinhagen, who had stolen second and third base — evidence of TCU’s aggressiveness even with a big lead.

“We’ll take the end result,” TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “Obviously they didn’t throw strikes out of the bullpen, and that let us back in the ball game.”

Preston Guillory (1-1) got the win by getting three outs in the fifth inning, although he gave up Raley’s home run on the first pitch.

Jared Janczak allowed a run on three hits in three innings, striking out six.

Every TCU hitter had a hit, and all but one had an RBI.

“We had a quote on the board early that said, ‘Punch back,’ ” Wade said. “We took a punch in the mouth yesterday. We had to show up today to come out and get back into a fight. Tomorrow, we have to finish a round.”

TCU can close within a game of the Big 12-leading Red Raiders with a series victory Sunday.

This story was originally published April 30, 2016 at 10:54 PM with the headline "TCU baseball slugs its way back into series against Texas Tech."