Sights From the 2011 Fort Worth Regional

Brandon Williamson goes to work Friday afternoon against Oklahoma.


Michael Wacha goes to work against DBU. Didn’t get much of a shot to take many pictures of the Sooners this weekend…

Featherston (likely) & Pena (definitely) took their final infield warmups in Lupton Stadium this weekend.

Jason Coats digs in and Kyle Winkler gets caught in a vocal expression in the dugout.

Sincere thanks to ESPN3 & cameraman Dwight Schrute for making the Fort Worth Regional available nationally.

DBU rallies everyone from Dallas County w/ a red shirt to come cheer on the Patriots in the Regional Final.

Not sure who is pleading with who here as DBU Coach Dan Heefner heads back to the dugout.

ORU’s Chris Elder had a slamming good time in Fort Worth.

The DBU Infield chats during a pitching change.

Landon Anderson works on his swing (or tennis backhand) in center field.

Oral Roberts’ Mark Guest threw a complete game gem on Sunday night to give the Golden Eagles a fighting shot to advance on Monday.

The Patriots sport Rally Hats & Glasses in an effort to close out the Regional on Sunday.

The great doubles machine himself, Jason Krizan digs in.

Brandon Williamson had such a great time at the Fort Worth Regional that he gave it another go Monday, despite throwing 118 pitches on Friday.

ORU’s Chris Elder’s swing is a blur as I fight camera speed & focus settings for the one-millionth time at Lupton Stadium.

 

An Unfitting End

Kyle Winkler’s career as a TCU Horned Frog deserved a much better conclusion than this. The Horned Frogs wound up well short of the Round of 16 for the fist time since 2008, but as a baseball man who primarily resides just east of Lupton Stadium is fond of saying: “That’s the way baseball go.” Despite not capitalizing on seemingly endless momentum coming into 2011 to win a Mountain West tournament championship, not clinching a top 8 seed, and not even reaching the round of 16 (let alone Omaha) – Horned Frogs fans would be foolish to become too desolate about the state of their program. To a degree, these Frogs even in 2011 still managed to maintain their position amongst college baseball’s stronger programs and will likely be sitting somewhere near the middle of the 2012 preseason top 25 even if they were to lose Purke, Featherston & Coats. Perhaps more importantly, there’s a pretty strong baseball scene and culture going on in Fort Worth now, and I don’t think it’s just my perspective in being an invested fan that makes me believe the Horned Frogs have a foundation in place to compete with the top 20 or so programs in college baseball for (at least) the next several years. And while coaches Schlossnagle, Mazey, Whiting & Vitello ultimately deserve the most credit for the establishment of this strong foundation, it has been the performances over the last 3 years that have truly allowed this program to “arrive” at, or be on the brink of being an elite, nationally-recognized program. And Kyle Winkler, perhaps moreso than any other singular player over the last three years with the exception of Bryan Holaday, had everything to do with why this program has the national & local respect that it does.

So I will say this about the final time we’ll likely see Winkler on the bump at Lupton – if he asked for the ball to pitch Sunday’s elimination match with Oral Roberts – he absolutely deserved it. And while I may fault Jim Schlossnagle for giving him that ball, and the potential damage that giving him the ball may have done to Winkler’s professional career, draft stock, and potentially the TCU Baseball program – that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why Schlossnagle gave him the ball. He deserved the right to make his own determination on whether or not he could pitch, and in some respects Schlossnagle had no grounds not to give it to him. Winkler’s legendary performances in the 2009 Fort Worth Regional, game 3 in Austin in 2010 and as one of the only stabilizing forces in a long & turbulent 2011 season until it all started to come crashing down should & will take its place in TCU athletics’ lore alongside other recent legends Andy Dalton, Jerry Hughes, Bryan Holaday, & Matt Purke. Purke’s presence since he arrived on campus in August 2009 has overshadowed the steady brilliance & leadership that came from Winkler’s role in the rotation. Where Purke happened to command the mound in a way few in college baseball ever do for the best possible moment in the 2010 postseason, Winkler steadily improved from a pitcher who continually put himself in jams as a freshman in 2009 to a true ace in late 2010 to 2011. Likewise he’d pitched himself from a high school draft choice in the 37th round to the edges of the first & sandwich pick rounds of the 2011 MLB draft. That he wound up drafted in the 10th round – with his pitching arm in a sling – is a testament to how respected he had become as a pitcher by the time he became draft-eligible as a Horned Frog.

So Winkler deserved to end this season in a way that was representative of the momentum he himself had acquired in his career. And if the forces in the world of baseball dictated that his career wouldn’t come to a close on the bottom of a dogpile in Omaha’s TD Ameritrade Park, then at least he – and the TCU program – deserved to benefit from the hard work he & this staff put in. Instead, Kyle Winkler didn’t last an inning as he walked off the mound, clearly in pain, just hours before the MLB draft officially commenced in a chain of events that proved that even two and a half years worth of progress & hard work can be essentially wiped out in a bad, obviously-injured outing thanks to the volatile stock market that is the MLB draft for prospects, especially pitchers. Kyle Winkler was not going to be a first-round or likely even a sandwich round pick before June 5th thanks to his being shelved with arm “soreness” issues for 2 out of the 3 weeks prior. But it wasn’t until his arm wound up in a sling on a nationally-available broadcast in the college baseball playoffs that all MLB teams had unequivocal evidence that there was something truly (& likely structurally) wrong with Kyle Winkler. And that’s the perverted, unfair thing about the MLB Draft – if he just hadn’t pitched, even if Winkler had the very injury & potential structural damage to his arm – some team would’ve bought TCU’s explanation that he was just battling fatigue & soreness, and likely drafted him at some point sooner than he was.

Nobody wanted to completely shut down Kyle Winkler as the season turned into the postseason and everybody associated with TCU hoped this team would start to put it together for another magical Omaha run. But as long as Major League Baseball continues to completely disrespect the college game by forcing young ballplayers to worry about their professional future literally in the middle of some of the most pivotal, pressure-filled playing moments of their entire lives – shutting down high-ceiling pitchers that have developed fatigue or soreness issues weeks before the draft is exactly what you have to do, for the sake of everybody involved. Even if & when that means that the team’s short term goals of advancing become significantly hindered. It’s not fair to the team and it’s cruelly unfair to the player, but the associated monetary value with 18-20 year old pitchers and the dominance that Major League Baseball maintains over the college game will likely forever mean that college baseball is still ultimately just a minor league to MLB – only with players working to earn a payday. Most college players will never even get a chance at a meaningless payday, let alone a significant one. But it’s the significant ones that are currency for elite college baseball programs, as that gives them association with proper development to get kids who believe they’re going to get a big payoff actually to that big payoff.

It might seem harsh to suggest that TCU should’ve completely shut down a pitcher who the TCU staff (wrongfully) assumed was (magically?) incapable of further injuring himself. But for TCU, Schlossnagle & Mazey – they especially could not afford the debacle that happened at Lupton on Sunday, thanks to the fact that two other high-ceiling arms in the TCU weekend rotation had likewise already been significantly compromised. TCU managed to turn a first-round draft pick in 2009 into a late-third round pick who finished the 2011 season with iffy command and a sudden departure in his velocity. They also managed to turn a 2010 6th round draft pick into a non-prospect with yet another undisclosed, unknown arm injury that would result in him not getting drafted until the 37th round in 2011. It’s not as if Schlossnagle and Mazey are known as arm-abusers – I can’t remember any time recently where any of last season’s rotation was extended significantly past 100 pitches in either of the last two seasons – but to suggest that there is not some sort of developmental, instructional, or training & diagnosis problem somewhere in this program is likely wishful thinking. And even if this team just got hit with a stroke of monumental bad luck while other programs had no problem maintaining their prospects’ status – at minimum that’s likely not a benefit of the doubt that many future prospects & their parents are going to give this program, until they get some sort of better explanation than what the public has been given thus far. For the sake of an emerging program that has so many great things going for it, TCU fans need to really, really hope that emerging stars Mitchell, Crichton & Frey stay healthy & mature into the prospects they’re more than capable of becoming.

The only face we tend to put on prospect pitching abuse is when Augie Garrido trots his first rounder back out on the mound after one day’s rest in the hopes that he’s not going to injure himself with a seriously fatigued & recovering arm for the benefit of the team’s short term goals. But TCU’s hopeful “resting” of Purke, Maxwell, & especially Winkler honestly has to be considered as well, as all three developed arm problems throughout the course of this season and the Horned Frogs’ staff believed (or was it hoped?) that a couple weeks’ worth of rest followed by being thrust into the most pressure-filled baseball of the entire season was a proper rehabilitation route. It’s true that not every pitcher who develops a shoulder, bicep, or elbow issue requires surgery. But in professional baseball, those prospects who just need rest get the benefit of rehab assignments in what are (ultimately) meaningless games at some minor league level. TCU rested each of these guys for only a matter of weeks before bringing them each back in incredibly crucial moments in the season – the last regular season series (Purke), the Mountain West conference tournament championship (Maxwell) & a Fort Worth Regional elimination game (Winkler). All three were placed on the mound at the beginning of the game in their very first appearance back from injury as opposed to given an opportunity to work up endurance, familiarity, or strength in the bullpen. The problem with treating a pitching injury like an ankle injury is that there is no such thing as limited movement or “half-speed.” Where an injured outfielder on a bad ankle can limp around with a brace on, a pitcher is only going to labor harder – regardless of pitch count – in the attempt to work through the painful obstruction their own arms are imposing upon them. Which is ultimately why I find the reasoning Schlossnagle provided regarding Winkler’s injury – that he was unaware Winkler could do further damage to himself while pitching at less than 100% – either terrifyingly naive or just a flat-out lie. Even if he actually did believe that Winkler could somehow do no further damage to his arm – he still put his pitcher on the mound in an elimination game the day before the draft with acknowledged less than 100% strength. So even if he hadn’t hurt himself, every scout at Lupton Stadium Sunday afternoon would have only noted that everything about Kyle Winkler was worse from the last time they had seen him.

College baseball’s goals will always be at odds with players’ professional development, regardless of at what point in the season the draft actually falls. College baseball places a premium on team achievement in a way that even Major League Baseball can’t compare to. Power sluggers drop down bunts against struggling pitchers in the name of their team’s tying or go-ahead run. Players throughout the entire lineup sacrifice their at bats (and often their bodies) to do absolutely anything just to get on base. And pitchers push themselves on short rest in arm-shredding double-elimination weekends just to get their team the outs they need to keep their season alive. It’s incredible and it’s why the sport is unique in a way that none of us would ever want to change. But the sport becomes a mine-field when dealing with the elite few on any team that actually have futures beyond that level – they play by different rules and should be handled with kid gloves because the benefit for a college program is to be able to say tomorrow that that successful prospect came from your program. Those players are your program’s savings plan and when times get rough you cut things out of the short term budget in the name of preserving your savings. TCU’s incredible recruiting to date meant that even without Purke, Maxwell & Winkler they still brought a comparable pitching arsenal to any of the other three teams in the Fort Worth Regional. And even though TCU owed it to those three just to let them help their team with their backs up against the wall, this program would’ve been better served to keep them on the bench. It isn’t fair, but Kyle Winkler had already done his part for the program just to get TCU to the position they were in when they called on him to take the mound in the Fort Worth Regional. TCU owed it to him to prevent him from taking it all away.

 

The Dallas Baptist Patriots Surge Their Way Into The National Spotlight

As I walked up to the first of a weekend’s worth of scorching games at Lupton Stadium for the Fort Worth Regional, I honestly contemplated if I was underestimating the Dallas Baptist Patriots’ chances of doing some serious damage in this tournament. And while I feel like I may have been even more aware of the significant threat they possessed than most – it’s one thing to say a team is capable of making noise, but it’s an altogether bigger leap to actually think that they will make noise, to the tune of not being the first, or even last team eliminated. So for the sake of meaningless self-disclosure, I thought these Patriots would claim a win in the Fort Worth Regional – but probably not much more.

And yet after watching four games’ worth of relentless, attacking & determined baseball, one has to wonder what anybody was thinking who didn’t think these Patriots had an actual chance of winning this Regional. Sure they went 2 & ‘cue in 2008 – a fact that the Patriots themselves were more aware of than anybody else – but this time they could do it in an environment that they could (& would) essentially call their own home. It’s hard to believe in retrospect that these Patriots were literally down to their last out in Friday’s extra-inning win over the Sooners, a game that saw Brandon Williamson work himself out of one baserunners jam after the next despite conceding the lead in the bottom of the 7th. That Williamson rebounded for a scoreless 6 outs to give the Patriots a fighting chance to attack & tie the game in the 9th may have actually been the moment turned these Patriots took hold of their fate in this Regional. Because it seemed like once Behmanesh boarded in the 9th of that game, the Patriots just flat-out knew they were going to get him in. And once they did, the sense that came over the Fort Worth Regional’s participants & onlookers was that you could not afford to let anyone from DBU on-base, because as soon as a Patriot boarded – the game completely swung to their favor. There were several striking moments in this Regional but no sight will ever be more representative of this Patriots team as when Behmanesh rounded third to emphatically barrel into home for the first run of Saturday’s game against the TCU Horned Frogs as Josh Elander clumsily failed to locate the ball. It was that moment where the DBU faithful exploded as Behmanesh sat right there celebrating on home plate that the Horned Frogs lost this Regional. Because after that moment, the Frogs, the Sooners, & (eventually) the Golden Eagles saw nothing but red.

Saturday’s game between the Patriots & Horned Frogs will hopefully be remembered by both fan bases as an incredibly nervy & hard fought game. The Frogs & their fans were completely distracted by the Patriots – Purke jawed at baserunners and obnoxiously stared down the home plate umpire. Schlossnagle treated the close play at first where Coats failed to reach in the 9th as if it was the moment that cost his team the game, regardless of the fact that he was sacrificing in the first place, that the runner still had to be driven in from second and that the very baserunner on second had only boarded via a fielding error in the first place. And then of course was the moment where Behmanesh took his time returning to the Patriot dugout while the Horned Frog faithful booed heavily, only to be outdone by the Patriot crowd & dugout that exploded in support as soon as one of theirs had been attacked. The Frogs were genuinely distracted by the Patriots attack & style of play, and each time Purke & Appleby put another Patriot on the base paths you just got the sense that the Frogs could not keep treading water much longer. Once the Frogs fell behind in the bottom of the 6th, there was only one moment where it seemed as if the Frogs were going to test their relatively unproven opponents at this level – but that moment lasted all of about 5 seconds before Landon Anderson made the singular most incredible play of the Regional on the Sportscenter-worthy full-extension catch of Von Tungeln’s extra-bases-bound liner. And even that moment came with two outs against them, as Jared Stafford was masterful in his command of the strike zone, continually getting first-pitch strikes with breaking pitches and forcing the Frogs to swing at pitches they might otherwise not as opposed to sitting & waiting for ones they could drive – even though those never really came anyways.

I read tweets & message board rants while listening to complaints around me of just how blatant the Patriots were being with their emotions (a pretty hypocritical perspective for any Horned Frogs fans), and there was probably no bigger offender or more representative of the Patriots’ unabashed pride than DBU closer Chris Haney who slammed the door shut on the Sooners and blew away the Horned Frogs. In fact on Monday night’s Regional rubber match with Oral Roberts, after the Patriots piled up an early massive lead in the top of the first thanks to Golden Eagles mistakes, it seemed like these Patriots were desperate to just get the game to Haney because only then could they be sure in the outcome. And as the Golden Eagles whittled away that lead against a Brandon Williamson that looked like he had just thrown 118 pitches two days before, you wondered if the Patriots were most vulnerable when they seemingly were not vulnerable at all – playing with a big lead and having to defend against the provocateurs as opposed to being them. But once Haney finally took the mound – the crowd & the team went back to being themselves again as Haney emphatically struck out Elder & King to essentially clinch their place in the round of 16. Haney is this team – rash, emotions blatantly on sleeve but most importantly – talented enough to actually deliver on the intent. Because after all, the Dallas Baptist Patriots were not the first team to take the field with a sense of purpose & a chip on their shoulder in the NCAA tournament. That the Patriots have just enough starters in Williamson & Stafford, a Huston Street-like automatic closer & enough gap power throughout their lineup of Krizan, Elkins & Behmanesh to play as an offensive force in the new-bat era in college baseball is why they took this stacked Regional. And it’s why they may not be done yet.

It was a bizarre scene on Monday night into Tuesday as seemingly nobody in the college baseball world knew even what area code the Super Regional between the Patriots & the Cal Golden Bears would take place, but hopefully it’s the type of moment that Patriots’ faithful look back upon as the definitive turning point for their program. I’ve remarked before on the Patriots’ Plan to build their program, though I bet even the Patriots’ most optimistic supporters never believed that the success part would come so soon. The Patriots have intentions on building a 2500-seat NCAA-endorsed facility, it’s just asking an awful lot of a tiny campus & baseball program that has been all of 8 years removed from NAIA to have those types of resources so quickly. So the Patriots tried their best to find a place nearby to host Cal – but ultimately were probably fighting more forces than just a Tejano music festival at QT Park – forces of NCAA-familiarity & comfort, hurried planning and ESPN’s geographical preferences. I mean come on, the Patriots came into Regional weekend just happy to know that they were in the tournament. You might forgive them if they hadn’t completely hashed out the possibility that 4 other teams would lose in a way to force a Super Regional matchup between two teams that could not have believed in the beginning of the season that they would ever even be in a position to host a Super Regional.

The Patriots’ Super Regional opponent in the Cal Golden Bears is arguably the other story of the year in college baseball – a team that was informed at the beginning of the season that they would cease to exist at the conclusion of this one. Then the Bears raised ten million dollars to save their program, only to find out that it still wasn’t enough to save them. Yet they raised another five to finally secure their future and then improbably rallied to win the Houston Regional after losing their first game and plating four runs in the 9th against a Baylor team that was apparently no match for the Bears’ script-like fate. The Bears vs. The Patriots is a how-do-you-root-against-this-team type of matchup from any perspective. The Bears were an abandoned (albeit stacked) program at a widely-known state university with tons of history (date back to 1892 & have a 1957 National Championship). The Patriots are from a tiny private school that few have heard of where baseball is the flagship of the athletic department in being its only NCAA-competing team and is currently making its history. The only thing these teams really have in common from an aesthetic standpoint is that they were both 3 seeds coming into this tournament.

The Patriots have made their move in the college baseball world by shocking the Fort Worth Regional and securing a potential future in the Missouri Valley Tournament. Dallas Baptist is making a name for themselves nationally via their brand of baseball & a noted focus on their religious faith. This is why Dallas Baptist plays baseball at all – for the success of their team to give them an opportunity to show the world the power of their faith-based approach. And suddenly it starts to make sense that regardless if you’re aligned with the Patriots’ religious beliefs or not, you can start to see why this team plays with such a collective & unified drive and identity. They have a purpose they genuinely believe in & they are actively realizing their goals and you can’t help but assume that this dedication to a collective purpose is what helped give them an edge in close games against the seemingly better-equipped Sooners & Horned Frogs. Now they’re about to meet another team that’s had an incredible sense of drive & (albeit vastly different) purpose in their season, and frankly I think you’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who confidently feels that they know how the outcome of this series is going to turn out. The rest of the college baseball world was focused on the presence of an opportunity that these teams had earned themselves for next season. The Patriots & Golden Bears decided instead to focus on the incredible opportunity they still have this season.

 

Wild Nights Are Calling – So Come On Out And Dance

At risk of sounding like I’m trying to sell tickets on behalf of TCU for the Fort Worth Regional, I genuinely believe that a stage has been perfectly set this weekend for some high stakes, high drama, highly exciting playoff baseball. Sure, if you’re an invested fan of the Oklahoma Sooners or TCU Horned Frogs, then there’s going to be quite a bit of tension at Lupton Stadium Friday through potentially Monday. But even if you group yourself into one of those two fan bases, at least take a moment to join the whole of the college baseball world this weekend and take a step back to soak in the new summer sun to the point of a fresh burn while the BBQ smokers in the parking lot blow tantalizingly in on the capacity crowds that are continuously refreshing d1baseball.com and appreciate the fact that we’re going to get to witness some very entertaining baseball in one of the sports world’s best kept secrets – NCAA Regionals Weekend. Even though (at least) one of the 2010 College World Series Alumni’s season is about to come to an extremely disappointing close, don’t let the pressure of the moment take away from the pure energy that these four teams are bringing to Lupton Stadium Friday night as every one of these teams is expecting to make an impression on the college baseball world. And even though every single team in the NCAA postseason carries unbound hope before the first pitch, when it comes to the Fort Worth Regional, each of these teams’ hopes & dreams may be actually attainable.

For as much intrigue as the Horned Frogs & Sooners are carrying into this weekend as two teams who have spent the season desperately trying to recapture their form from last season and are desperately hoping that this is the weekend that it all starts coming together again – the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles & Dallas Baptist Patriots are more than capable of stealing this show before either of those teams know what hit them. While the Horned Frogs waffle over who is even fit to be their first, second, & third starters, Oral Roberts will bring two established & effective right-handed starting pitchers with decent stuff & experience on the year in soph Drew Bowen & freshman Alex Gonzalez. The Golden Eagles were the 4-seed in last year’s Norman Regional and after losing to the Sooners in game 1 by only a run, ORU eliminated the Cal Bears in the Saturday elimination game. Perhaps even more relevantly, the Summit League champs were the last regular season game of the year at Lupton Stadium, a game that the Horned Frogs bats initially got out to a comfortable lead, though Erik Miller let ORU back into the game with an ineffective 2 innings and Crichton faced the go-ahead run at the plate in the ninth inning before sealing the victory. Whoever the Frogs start on the mound Friday night, they will be facing a decent lineup that has acquired some lofty stats against the Eagles’ Summit League opponents, highlighted by 4 hitters with over .500 slugging percentage and 31 homers between them. The Golden Eagles are still a 4-seed and demonstrably have the weakest resume of the 4 teams in Fort Worth this weekend, but as far as 4-seeds go they are a tough out with ample tournament experience and easily the toughest, most balanced 4-seed TCU has met in their three years of hosting regionals.

In more ways than just one, the 2011 Fort Worth Regional has an extremely similar vibe to the 2009 Fort Worth Regional from the perspective of the Horned Frogs. The 2009 Frogs had a handful of arms doing good things for the Frogs over the course of the season, but lacked a definable hierarchy going into the Regional. This year’s Frogs team has the hierarchy on paper – a stat sheet from 2010 that hasn’t seen any of their top 3 arms pitch more than 60 pitches in over one month, each hamstrung by their own undisclosed injury that nobody in the draft-nik or college baseball world can for the life of them get a read on. The 2009 Frogs were coming off a Mountain West tournament where they got buzz-sawed by a pair of losses to the lowest seed of the tournament where the Frogs did themselves no favors by committing one mental error after another. The only thing more notable than the mistakes this year’s Frogs team has made throughout this season are the number of base runners this team has stranded in games that they’ve lost. Against New Mexico specifically out in San Diego, the Frogs time and again put baserunners in scoring position with an out-situation that essentially guarantees the plating of the run, but the Frogs continually found a way to have the poor contact, poor at-bat, or just plain poor bad luck that resulted in nothing getting put up on the scoreboard. Of course the 2009 Horned Frogs put things together nicely in that historic Fort Worth Regional, though note that that year’s can’t-seem-to-beat-this-team from the Big 12 was the Texas A&M Aggies, who the Horned Frogs never wound up playing thanks to Oregon State’s repeated wins over a suddenly slumping A&M. But it bears reminding to Horned Frogs fans that in the Friday night game against the 4 seed Wright State that year, the Frogs went down 3-1 in the third inning before responding with 3 “rebound runs” (as Schlossnagle was so fond of saying that year) in the bottom half of the inning to take the lead for good. The question that should bug Horned Frogs fans after watching this team struggle against New Mexico – can the Frogs shake the bug that we’ve seen in this team in its inability to come from behind?

To be completely fair though – these Horned Frogs are built to survive this regional no matter how tough it winds up playing and even how big of a hole they dig for themselves. In the event that Purke & Winkler are capable of giving significant innings in the first two games, you have the possibility that recent starting stalwarts Erik Miller or Nick Frey might not even get time on the mound. Even one of the biggest holes on this team – the bullpen – becomes somewhat of a non-issue in the event that you can get 2/3 of a game from Purke and Winkler as you could move Frey to long relief, complemented with the rubber-armed, junk-baller Appleby and sudden LOOGY Nowell with freshman Crichton on for the save – and still have starters Mitchell and Miller ready to go on Sunday and/or Monday. Though let it be known that the wealth of this year’s Horned Frogs’ pitching takes advantage of young, postseason-unproven arms. Expect quite a bit of heartburn if the Frogs are clinging to a close lead and Freshman Crichton is going to work on his first postseason save. Expect quite a bit of nauseous feelings when newfound-starter Erik Miller or freshman Andrew Mitchell take the mound in a potential elimination or regional-clinching game, the same Erik Miller and Andrew Mitchell that got bashed around the park when the Sooners beat up the Frogs in both Lupton and Norman. And expect to be downright terrified if we find out that Purke and Winkler are only capable of a handful of innings of questionable effectiveness this weekend. While it tugged on the heart-strings a bit to see Mr. Purke throw up a fist pump while running off the mound last week, consider me unconvinced that the pitcher is confident in his arm. He relied on off-speed in a way that I’ve never seen him do before, presumably because it was the only pitch he could throw effectively (and albeit, devastatingly) for strike. It may have been an overly-analytical assessment on my part for a kid who was only in his 2nd appearance since being shelved over a month ago, but considering the question marks that have surrounded his status since before the season even began – well, let’s just say we know even less today than we did then.

The Frogs are undeniably licking their chops at the prospect of getting a revenge victory over Oklahoma or Dallas Baptist in the time when it matters most, yet both the Patriots and Sooners have more than enough matchup problems to the Horned Frogs and to each other. Much has been made of the Patriots “gaming” their big-name wins over OU, TCU & Rice by throwing their weekend guys midweek, yet this weekend those very same arms in Stafford and Williamson will be going to work on Oklahoma and potentially the Horned Frogs. It’s incredibly pertinent that if the Patriots are going to shock the world and move on to the Super Regionals, they need to stay in the winner’s bracket for their starting pitching hierarchy is a little too established, with Williamson & Stafford shouldering a combined 200+ IP between them and the next Patriots in starts & IP has only 50. But don’t discount the Patriots’ ability to get in the winner’s bracket in their first two games thanks to a stacked lineup that heralds the nation’s record holder in doubles (and not to mention a .738 slugging percentage), Jason Krizan. Robbins & Anderson fill out the power side of the lineup nicely as well, but the Patriots just score runs at a staggering pace, plating 488 this year over 400 by the Horned Frogs and 413 by the Sooners. If the Patriots find themselves in the loser’s bracket, they score runs at such a rate that at the very least they may be doing some eliminating of their own. And then who knows – if the Patriots can push it to a Monday game, maybe we’ll see Williamson or Stafford on the hill yet again as the Patriots have done all year long in asking those guys to go on short rest with their season’s prospects on the line. As I alluded to in my most recent entry, do not underscore the drive in the 2011 Patriots to make this the greatest season in their young program’s history. The 08 Patriots could not get a win in the College Station Regional but this year’s team is more than capable of upsetting somebody at some point – say for instance an emotionally shell-shocked TCU Horned Frogs team after a gutting loss to Oklahoma on Saturday night? Or an Oklahoma team on Friday afternoon already writing their lineup for TCU on Saturday? These Patriots are desperate to make noise and be their program’s first, and TCU fans shouldn’t have to think very hard to remember just how powerful of a motivating force that can be.

And finally, 1700 words later, we come to the Oklahoma Sooners, a stacked team that like TCU in June 2010 made noise with some late, dramatic nights in the twilight of Rosenblatt Stadium and entered 2011 with limitless potential and expectations of a potential national title yet hindered by the inconvenience of a 2011 regular season that wouldn’t shoo away. Seitzer, Ogle & Casey Johnson highlight a formidable bat attack that scoffs at the notion that the Horned Frogs are deep in pitching. The ruthlessly efficient Rocha, whether he goes Friday or Saturday gives the Sooners the added benefit of minimal baserunners and even less runs to ensure that the Sooners will likely be hanging around through at least Sunday. And finally there’s head coach Sunny Golloway who definitely seems to be playing a step ahead of Schlossnagle evidenced by his recent dominance over TCU and who last year had no issue going into a stacked-then-too Virginia home field and emerge with a ticket to Omaha as unexpected as the Horned Frogs’ job down in Austin. This year, nobody wants to face UCLA, nobody wants to face a healthy TCU, and nobody wants to face Oklahoma – teams you count out yet the postseason rolls around and suddenly you’re presented with so many matchup problems you wonder why the committee had it in for you, pairing you with a team that is largely the same as that which made so much noise in Omaha, let alone the obliterated bracket it left behind it en route there. This may be the Fort Worth Regional – but surely the Sooners are not considered underdogs in this bracket. You’d have to consider them equal favorites to TCU to advance to the winner of the Houston Regional, at absolute worst.

For the Sooners and Horned Frogs, no matter how their seasons evolve over next weekend, there are already questions about why this season has gone the disappointing way that it has. And should either of these teams fail to advance, this season will formally go in the books as one that went from reasonable, justifiable hope to an undeniable disappointment. The difficult, painful questions that linger beyond the horizon of either of these teams’ seasons coming to an unexpectedly sudden close will find an offseason bound in the depths of frustration as crippling as it seemed limitless only a year ago. But this week, fans of the Sooners and Horned Frogs aren’t asking those tough questions because they know that this team is going to put it together when it counts most, thanks to the memories, drive & experience gained from the incredible year before. Just like this week the Dallas Baptist faithful know that this is their opportunity to show that other private school, the one that calls itself an underdog while having the baseball powerhouse, what it’s really like to get punched in the face & outplayed right off the field and into the stands. And just like this week Tulsa’s Golden Eagles know that they are a 4-seed in the eyes of the NCAA only, and that anybody who thinks that they’re going to be the first team eliminated from this incredible bracket is likely going to be the team that they send home first. Fort Worth is about to witness a Regional dogfight unlike any that they’ve ever seen. Tomorrow’s meltdown may be a day away – but you don’t know that yet.

 

Dallas Baptist Baseball And The Next Step

While one DFW area college baseball team gets to rest easier knowing that they’ll be sleeping in their own beds for the first weekend of the 2011 NCAA tournament, the team down the road and tucked away in the hills just north of I-20 frets over one last sleepless night before they find out if their season is still alive. And while the Dallas Baptist Patriots take strength knowing they took 2 of 2 from that very team that gets to host as a top 16 seed next weekend, they’ll also know that their program’s place in the hierarchy of college baseball world resulted in them playing a schedule that was undeniably weighted by teams in the grisly 200+ RPI underworld w/ 15 games alone against teams like Mississippi Valley State, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Houston Baptist & Alcorn State. The Patriots sit at the cusp of a tenuous at-large bubble with an RPI of 46 that looked worse and worse as each 1-bid league gave a tournament berth to a team that was not already considered on the inside of the tournament. Coming into the conference tournaments there seemed to be a comfortable consensus that the Patriots would be selected as an at-large in the area of a 3-seed, but with teams like TCU losing the Mountain West tournament to the improbable run of the New Mexico Lobos, the Patriots have to hope the committee focuses on their wins over tournament hosts Texas A&M, Rice & TCU as opposed to noticing the rest of the teams that filled out the Patriots schedule. Their season’s fate undeniably rests on the whim of the committee’s mood tonight. But perhaps the most significant development in the 2011 Patriots’ season is the fact that potentially in 2013, the Patriots may hold the fate of their postseason hopes in their own hands by way of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.

Even in a world revved-up on conference realignment, it was a news item that only reached me by way of a by-note in an Omaha writer’s blog and a twitter-reply from the generous @DBUPatriots feed. According to Dallas Baptist, the Patriots will play a full Missouri Valley schedule in 2012 as a provisional affiliate member for baseball only. The Patriots are still an independent next year, meaning they will not be participating in the 2012 Missouri Valley tournament, but even next year it is an arrangement that greatly benefits both parties. The Missouri Valley has been hurting in scheduling with only 9 members since Northern Iowa dropped baseball. The Patriots meanwhile get to fill out the majority of their weekend schedule with RPI-friendly Missouri Valley opponents. From the Missouri Valley’s standpoint, this is an almost unbelievable opportunity – they don’t have to upset the balance of the conference for the rest of their sports, they acquire an RPI-friendly opponent in the Patriots in the process, and get the benefit of a potential recruiting trip to North Texas once every couple of years. I would assume that the main obstacle presented to the Missouri Valley is meeting the scheduling quirks of the non-Sunday Patriot schedule, and determining if this means their teams will have to make quicker Tuesday to Thursday turnarounds, or force their teams to double-up on Fridays or Saturdays as many of DBU’s opponents currently opt to do. The Patriots meanwhile are forced to fill out a squad immediately that can compete with quality opponents on the weekends as well as during midweek, as currently they’ve had an admittted advantage getting to focus on their big names on Tuesdays while giving the rotation a chance to rebound against some of the lesser opponents they encountered on the weekends.

But while my time following Dallas Baptist has been brief, I have to admit that this is somewhat close to what has to be a best-case scenario for the Patriots. I remarked a year ago on the Patriots’ quest to add to their program’s profile, yet questioned what sacrifices they would make in the process. Now, they find themselves on the cusp of a very respected baseball conference with a significant amount of history as Creighton, Missouri State, and Wichita State have been to the College World Series in the last 20 years, and the Shockers even have a title to their name from 1989. Even in 2011, the Missouri Valley found itself as a strong college baseball conference, sitting 7th in Boyd’s World’s Conference RPI strength, well ahead of the Mountain West (11th), WAC (12th) and Big East (13th). However the conference has suffered from the lack of a distinguishable hierarchy between teams, resulting in the league potentially being a 1-team invite only in this year’s tournament. The Patriots have arguably already demonstrated their ability to compete in conference in 2011, with a sweep over Indiana State, a win over Southern Illinois, but losses to Wichita State and Missouri State. But again, Patriots coach Dan Heefner has a bigger challenge on his hands in 2012 where his team will be faced with a full slate of MVC opponents each weekend while still balancing their midweek slate with quality opponents that props up their own & the conference’s RPI.

But for now, let Heefner enjoy the moment. The Patriots are on the bubble – but that’s an accomplishment alone with the challenges of just assembling a schedule as an independent has proven, and should the NCAA let the Patriots in this team will be eager to mark this season as the most successful team in their program’s short history, as their 2008 2-seed appearance in College Station resulted in them going 0-2. I suppose it bears reiterating that the Patriots don’t have an official invite from the Missouri Valley yet either, but the program has clearly put themselves in a potential situation to make an incredible next step that could result in the raising of their program’s & even university’s national profile as well as right here in the metroplex. TCU currently has the attention of the college baseball world, but as the Patriots proved in Lupton Stadium already this year – and may still even do in Lupton again this postseason (or elsewhere) – everyone best keep an eye on Heefner’s rising bunch as well.

 

The Committee’s Guide to Justifying A Fort Worth Regional (with graph)

Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report vs. 05/16 Boyd’s World & 05/16 Warren Nolan RPI with Boyd’s World Top 8 & Top 16 RPI Needs

Teams in bold square box were projected Top 8 by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report, Teams in non-bold square box projected Regional Hosts by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report. Teams in blue shading were teams “on the bubble” for being a Top 8 seed by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report.
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Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report vs. 05/16 Baseball America Top 25 Ranking, 05/16 Perfect Game Top 25 Ranking, 05/16 Collegiate Baseball Top 30 Ranking & 05/16 ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll Ranking

Teams in bold square box were projected Top 8 by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report, Teams in non-bold square box projected Regional Hosts by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report. Teams in blue shading were teams “on the bubble” for being a Top 8 seed by Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report.
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Baseball America Week 12 Stock Report vs. 05/16 Boyd’s World RPI, 05/16 Warren Nolan RPI & 05/16 Poll Rankings

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Since the Week 12 Stock Report came out, Stetson dropped a series and has fallen out of the top 16 in the RPI & rankings, and Oklahoma State dropped a series to Baylor which should all but eliminate them from the Ark-homa-tex hosting race. Arkansas dropped a close series to South Carolina which hurts them from a resume standpoint (more on this in a bit), but probably doesn’t remove them from TCU’s regional hosting competition. Southern Miss also dropped their series to Houston.

I’ve expanded the scope of this week’s RPI analysis to look at all hosting candidates and not just the local TCU competition, because finding a 4th regional in Ark-homa-tex becomes a little more believable thanks to the potential elimination of Stetson and possibly even Southern Miss from hosting consideration. I’ve also expanded the scope of the analysis to look at the discrepancies between Boyd Nation’s RPI & Warren Nolan’s RPI, which unfortunately notes a considerable difference for the Horned Frogs. Finally, in the second table and graph I’ve added the 4 major college baseball polls referenced by most to illustrate the reference point that may be just convincing enough to land a Fort Worth regional – perhaps over Rice and even Oklahoma.

Aaron Fitt made a reference in this week’s Top 25 chat that “the committee doesn’t care where we have teams ranked” and I’ll echo that sentiment and remind everyone that no matter how much agreement you see across regional projections – prepare yourself for head-scratchers come selection Monday. There is going to be some inclusion or exclusion that is going to send people into a fit of rage on a message board somewhere, and considering the local competition for hosting spots we already know for a fact that at least one of these Ark-homa-tex teams are going to get sent packing.

The point I kept coming back to as I sat at Lupton this weekend is how the polls are not just in the Horned Frogs’ favor over their nearby competion – they’re overwhelmingly in their favor. The Frogs’ lowest ranking is 10th – in a world where objective metrics (RPI) don’t exist, the Frogs are bubble team for a National Seed. I point this out not to say that the committee is going to be influenced by these polls, but to moreso represent what seems to be the closest thing one can find to a “consensus” when it comes to a public perception of a team’s strength. The perception exists out there that the Horned Frogs are a top 10 team and have played at that level all season (regardless if this is actually the truth). Provided the Frogs win the New Mexico series and win the Mountain West tournament (not taking the ease of these accomplishments for granted, just using that assumption for this particular discussion) – I think the committee gives TCU a Fort Worth Regional based on their resume of quality wins, record against the Big 12, and a “justified” RPI that was weakened by a poor year in the Mountain West in which the next best team is 54th (UNLV). If TCU proves they are demonstrably better than their conference – and by winning the regular season & conference tournaments, I believe that would satisfy this position – I think the committee will cut TCU some slack on their RPI ranking if it ends up being in the 16 to 24 range. If the committee doesn’t come to this type of conclusion for the Horned Frogs, then my best guess is that they exhausted the extent of their RPI-welfare on the incredibly weak ranking of Oregon State.

My best projection of the 8/16 is as follows, but I want to stress this is not what I necessarily think should happen – this is what I have a feeling is going to happen:

Top 8:
Virginia
South Carolina
Florida
Oregon State
Texas
Arizona State
Florida State
Texas A&M (more on this in a minute)
Regional Hosts
Vanderbilt
North Carolina
Georgia Tech
Cal State Fullerton
TCU
Oklahoma
Clemson
Rice -or- Southern Miss

“Justification”:
- Unless Vandy wins the SEC Tournament, I think they’re going to be gun-shy about giving the SEC East 3 Top 8 Seeds.
- I don’t think the committee is going to be able to stay immune to how incredibly ACC-happy the RPI is this year, and the result is the 5 host spots you see here.
- Because a split-title of the Big XII between A&M & Texas is possible, I think we’re going to have a head-scratcher about how strong the committee is going to be on the Big XII. It wouldn’t be the first time. On the heels of the justification that each of these teams (Texas & A&M) are top 8 seeds, I think you’ll see Oklahoma get a regional host as well, and also a propping-up of TCU’s resume based on their strong record against the Big XII.

The biggest flaw of my “i’m just guessin’” logic displayed above is this – should Rice take Conference USA from Southern Miss next weekend, that actually means that there are an improbable 5 regional hosts between Texas, A&M, Oklahoma, TCU & Rice. Oklahoma gets propped up by the perception of a strong conference. Rice gets propped up by an “undeniable” RPI & Conference USA champ, & TCU gets propped up on the perception of being top 10 and the Mountain West champ. I think Arkansas gets left out (provided they do not win the SEC tournament) based on the fact that they’ve lost 6 weekend series, and a committee that gives less “empowerment” to the loaded SEC dialogue that you read in every outlet on college baseball. In other words, your pissed-off fanbase come selection Monday are going to be SEC fans who don’t understand how the Big XII manages to carry the same reputation as them. It’s just my hunch – I just see it coming.

Each year the committee gets tasked with “regionalizing” the Regionals, but the reality of available seeds generally means that something has to give – and be prepared to see lots of Pac 10 teams across this litany of potential Texas regionals. And in 2011, I guess I see the potential for the committee to “give” on the geographic requirement (at least to the point of allowing up to 5 regionals in Ark-homa-tex), in order to not face an angry Monday conference call demanding to know how College World Series alumni TCU or Oklahoma – who have had regular seasons essentially as strong as the prior season, where they were also hosts. But make no mistake about it – there is a wealth of acceptable hosts with 3 to 6 hours’ drive of Fort Worth, and unless the committee is willing to bend on their geographic limits, one of these deserving teams is going to be a 2-seed somewhere. If Rice wins Conference USA – I’d say that the Frogs are standing on the shakiest ground of all, by just not having the RPI in their favor.

It’s been a pretty heartburn-inducing year for the Lupton faithful, and in a way I guess it only makes sense that like so many games we’ve seen the Frogs in this year, it’s coming down to the wire on whether the Frogs are going to get the benefit of Lupton in June like they have for the past two years. The late-season emergence of the back-end rotation guys of Mitchell, Miller & even Frey genuinely means that the Frogs can make it out of any Regional, even if they find themselves in the losers’ bracket. If the return of a healthy Purke (assuming Winkler is also full-strength) means that another of those 3 who stepped up for TCU against Utah can be moved to middle relief, so that Schlossnagle’s only option is not just Appleby before handing the lead to suddenly-closer Crichton, then the Frogs will genuinely have the tools to even make it back to Omaha.

Elsewhere in Warren Nolan-related Heartburn…

The confidence of the Dallas Baptist Patriots has to be sky-high after doing what they were supposed-to (and desperately needed-to) by taking 4 of 4 from Alcorn State after winning their midweek test against Stephen F. Austin. The Patriots have a challenging week ahead of them – Baylor just took the series from Oklahoma State, and a win there may not be entirely critical, but could definitely slam the door shut on any uncertainty on if the Patriots are in. If the Patriots can’t emerge victorious from Waco, then the a series win at home against the RPI-decent UNC-Charlotte (94) becomes a necessity – and a sweep would go a long ways towards helping them relax come selection Monday. I highly recommend making it to Patriot Field this Thurs – Sat for an early taste of must-win playoff baseball.

And one more thing…
So is Kyle Winkler healthy, and did Schlossnagle just shut him down to give him rest? Or at what point will we be able to say that all 3 pitchers of one of the strongest weekend rotations in the last several years of college baseball went down with injury in 2011 after an absolutely dominating 2010?

Admittedly, I’ve held off on a follow-on to my blog-rant regarding the handling of Purke once the injuries to Maxwell & Winkler were announced – if only because yet again, we just don’t know what really is going on. A&M’s life-line John Stilson was similarly shut down last week and is in questionable status for the series of the year between those two teams, and Gerritt Cole – while at least not being injured – hasn’t exactly had a dominant follow-up season either, so pointing the accusatory finger at only Schlossnagle & Mazey probably isn’t completely fair. But I just have to ask – if the story we’re supposed to believe now re: Purke is that he took too much time off this past offseason which resulted in him being out-of-sort when this season rolled around, then why was he handled that way – and would we be wrong to assume a similar connection (poor offseason coaching instruction) to the injuries of Maxwell & now Winkler?* Supposedly all 3 of these guys are eligible to contribute as this season comes to a close – and again, for all I know there’s some sort of plan at work here to limit exposure & overwork under the guise of a systemic injury problem that has taken down 3 of the best pitchers in TCU history. This coaching staff deserves immense credit for the fact that on the last homestand of 2011, TCU had the program depth to start 3 more prize arms and clinch a conference championship while potentially planting the seed of a promising 2012 TCU rotation (though Miller is draft-eligible). But this coaching staff also must be held accountable for the fact that the entire history-making 2010 TCU rotation is still on the team, yet exists in a completely unknown status as this Horned Frog team looks to make postseason magic happen again. If last year’s rotation is to be hailed as a triumph, then there is just no other way to accept their encore, at this point in the season, as anything other than a tragedy.

*This reasoning was described at length during the Oklahoma State Fox Sports broadcast, though I can never tell if this explanation is referring to his blister problem or his shoulder-strength problem. I’ve also read this prognosis on the always-factual message boards & draftnik blogs.

 

The Great Okla-Tex Hosting Race of 2011

Current Ratings Percentage Index & Iterative Strength Ratings

All values courtesy of Boyd’s World. RPI Needs indicate the record that team would have to finish with in order to have an RPI in the top 8 or top 16.

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Remaining Opponents and Opponent RPI

All values courtesy of Boyd’s World.

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(Very) Quick Thoughts:
Using Aaron Fitt’s Week 11 Stock Report from last week as a guide, where nothing that happened this past weekend should’ve altered these assumptions too drastically – the hosting hierarchy of these teams as it stands this morning likely goes (1) Texas, (2) Texas A&M, (3) Oklahoma, (4) TCU, (5) Oklahoma State with a top 8 seed going to Texas and top 16′s going to A&M & Oklahoma. The Frogs’ strong comeback showing in Stillwater this weekend put them firmly in fourth, though will still need a likely sizable status change to the teams above them in order to get themselves into the 3rd hosting spot that the Sooners currently maintain. And more on this in a minute – but that’s operating under the assumption that the 3rd hosting spot that is currently maintained by the Big XII’s Sooners is as readily available to the Mountain West’s TCU.

Barring something drastic (Aggies losing series to Nebraska, Texas somehow losing to Texas Southern) – when Texas A&M & UT play for the regular season title next weekend, they’re likely playing for a top 8 seed as well. The main way this gets complicated (assuming all other top 7 seeds maintain their status) is if the team that loses this series goes on to win the Big XII tournament while the other team would have to go winless – and even then, I think if Texas was to win the series against the Aggies there could be nothing that would unseat them. What the Sooners (and Horned Frogs) need are for the Longhorns to roll the Aggies and for A&M to drop another game or two in Oklahoma City. While Texas is not going to have a top 8 RPI (something the Aggies are capable of, btw), I can unequivocally state that if the Longhorns win the Big XII regular season title, there is no way they are not going to be a top 8 seed. The Aggies should be in safe top 16 hosting territory provided they finish the season without any definitive losing statements, and the Sooners need to finish the season in dominant fashion in order to maintain their grasp of a top 16 hosting spot.

Despite being continually ranked within the top 16 in many of the national polls, the Horned Frogs are going to need help in order to actually land a top 16 Regional Hosting spot, in addition to finishing the season in flawless fashion. The help that the Horned Frogs likely need is for one of either the Sooners or Aggies to finish the season with their stock greatly slipping – and even the Aggies may be safe no matter what, so the Frogs are left with hoping for an unexpected Series loss by the Sooners. The best case for TCU actually would be for New Mexico to have an unexpectedly strong showing against OU before TCU goes out to Albuquerque and would hopefully sweep them, as that would give the committee some evidence to use in favor of the Horned Frogs considering the Frogs got beat rather soundly in both instances where those teams met (albeit midweek, but right now the Frogs’ past-midweek guys are their back-end weekend guys).

Another disadvantage the Horned Frogs face is that all of the Big XII teams have an opportunity of essentially improving their stock with another game (or more) against ~20 RPI opponents in the Big XII tournament in OKC. The conference tournaments are usually only used by the committee to solidify one team’s stock as opposed to penalizing it, and for the Frogs, even if the Sooners weren’t to have a great showing in OKC the Frogs will still not get the benefit of playing a similarly-highly-ranked RPI type of opponent that the Big XII teams will. And finally – to venture into the territory that’s a little harder to measure – the committee usually plays a strong preference to the “brand” of baseball being played in the Big XII, and while I think that the Oklahoma-Texas region is probably safe at getting (at least) one national seed and two more hosting spots… even if the Sooners were to slip, it’s not a guarantee that the committee would reward a similarly-RPI’d TCU over them. OU & TCU have remarkably similar profiles being 2010 CWS 4th place finishers, and since they’re both fighting for essentially the last hosting spot in this region – I can’t think of a scenario where TCU could capture a 4th hosting spot for the region considering just how close geographically these 4 teams are. Unfortunately, you might also consider Arkansas who had a huge showing against Florida this past weekend in competing for a “4th” regional hosting spot in this general regional vicinity – and they get the benefit of playing in the most respected conference in the nation.

Apologies for the rambling form – just trying to sort out the cards that the Horned Frogs are up against… in addition to having very challenging midweek matchups with Baylor & Oral Roberts now with the fact that the Horned Frogs are down another starting pitcher in Steven Maxwell.

UPDATE 11:47 AM Stupidly, I’ve left Rice completely out of this discussion which further adds to the crowd of hosting-bubble teams the area has. Rice has an RPI of 15 and closes the regular series with a 3 game set at Southern Miss (RPI of 10) where one would have to assume with a series win, Rice would be absolutely a lock to host a Regional. If you were to add Rice to my hierarchy above – Rice would probably be 3rd moving OU to 4th and TCU to 5th – however this also starts to get into the grey area of what exactly is considered a “geographic region” by the committee – where the Frogs could be considered part of either the Oklahoma-Arkansas area, or the Houston area which features the Aggies, the Owls, and a host of other teams to fill out a regional from the southeast. Whether you simply add Rice to the hierarchy of host teams around here, or you just replace OU with them because you’re looking at that particular “region” – the prospects do not improve for TCU.
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Meanwhile in other DFW postseason uncertainty…
Current Ratings Percentage Index & Iterative Strength Ratings

All values courtesy of Boyd’s World. RPI Needs indicate the record that team would have to finish with in order to have an RPI in the top 32 or top 45.

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Remaining Opponents and Opponent RPI

All values courtesy of Boyd’s World.

The Patriots made noise down in College Station with a Friday night win though getting blown out in the series rubber match on Saturday afternoon. Projecting bubble teams is an even murkier & conditional mess than the hosts, but the Patriots do have a strong opportunity to end the season on a loud note – though one that will essentially require them to go undefeated. And while the midweek games against Baylor and Stephen F. Austin will give the Patriots a chance to make midweek headlines as they have all season long – it may actually be the 4 game series against Alcorn State that could unseat their postseason hopes, a marathon of a series that will feature a Friday doubleheader where the Patriots absolutely cannot afford to lose to the 229th ranked Braves. The Patriots and their lack of a conference slate means that their presence thrusts the committee into particularly unstable territory, where they cannot operate under assumptions of conference strength and are forced to weigh a slew of midweek wins against quality opponents against an overall record that winds up disappointing once you realize they’re playing 4 game sets against teams like Alcorn State. The Patriots last tournament appearance came in 2008 when they carried a 29th ranked RPI and a similar record and were rewarded a 2 seed in the College Station regional. The Patriots of course do not get the “benefit” (from an RPI-perspective) of playing a conference tournament, and from my perspective can only afford maybe a singular loss to UNC Charlotte for their postseason berth to have any chance.

Just thinking out loud here though – think if DBU was to make the same regional as the Horned Frogs that the Patriots would have some confidence in that matchup?

 

Dead (Arm) at 20

It was only on June 25, 2010, that Matt Purke capped an absolutely transcendent college baseball postseason – one that saw him go 5-0 while racking up 43 strikeouts over 33.4 IP while conceding only 6 earned runs over those 5 starts. Nine months & 23 days later, TCU Coach Jim Schlossnagle told Baseball America’s Aaron Fitt that Purke is going through “a dead arm deal” and two days later announced that Purke was being shut down indefinitely and would travel to have his arm diagnosed by Dr. James Andrews, a renowned physician for working with professional athletes with arm injuries. Last summer over drinks with friends outside Rosenblatt Stadium, I’d remarked how I felt Purke was on the brink of a Strasburg-esque type of season in 2011. While I was referring to Strasburg’s historic 2009 college season, I’m afraid the prophecy nonetheless is on the very brink of being validated.

Schlossnagle has indicated that the hope in the clubhouse is that Purke will only need a shot for tendinitis or bursitis and will be able to rejoin the Frogs on the hill in the Mountain West Tournament. And while I may have a hard time believing that the problem of Purke’s disappearing velocity will be solved with a shot & 3 weeks of rest – I have to ask, is it honestly worth it to him as a prospect to trot him back out there at all, even if the recommendation is (improbably) that surgery is not needed? The “Dead Arm” theory, the most ambiguous & non-scientific a diagnosis possible, at minimum implies loss of strength from overuse (and at worst it means your pitching days are over) – and if you’re an MLB team with Purke on your draft board and his coach is saying he’s already strained, then every single time you trot him back out there just makes him that riskier of a prospect. I personally don’t believe that Purke’s story ends in anything other than surgery – if only because surgery provides his agent at least some bargaining power to say “hey – he was injured last summer, it’s been fixed, and next summer he’ll be throwing even stronger.” Again from the MLB perspective – the longer Purke goes and doesn’t have surgery, or at least continues to pitch under the cloud of his “Dead Arm” – the MLB team is thinking that the clock on Purke’s rehab period hasn’t even started yet, and they’ll have to wait that much longer until his development in their organization can truly begin. Purke, despite his super-prospect type of performance in 2010 has seen a huge introduction of risk into his profile and to teams he becomes an even bigger gamble than pitching prospects already are. The influence of this added risk will take the form in a (very?) reduced signing bonus for Matt Purke.

It has been a tough campaign for Schlossnagle, who is still (and always will be) a saint to the Lupton faithful but has nonetheless fell under fair criticism in his management of games & his team’s progression. The first half of the season was characterized by his team’s poor defense, inability to bunt & his own willingness to keep bunt or squeeze situations on (despite said inability to bunt successfully) in two strike counts, zero out innings, or with his cleanup hitters at the plate. These issues resulted in TCU losing a handful of RPI-costly games to teams that the Frogs needed to beat easily and the likelihood of the Frogs getting to host a regional is now incredibly thin (need to finish 17-2 per Boyd’s RPI Needs chart). The Frogs are coming off a big midweek win in College Station after a sweep of San Diego State though, and as Schlossnagle has always said – in this sport, you don’t need to be the best team – you just need to be the team playing the best at the right time. Even if the Frogs do get hot though, the bullpen depth that has haunted this team since Kaleb Merck was ruled-out last fall is still costing this team games and that was before the departure of Purke from the rotation. And in the hopefully (for his, or his agent’s sake) unlikely event that Purke pitches again this season – his ability to go late into games would (should) be significantly hamstrung if only because he’s hasn’t pitched regularly all season.

The bigger picture for TCU, as much as it pains me to write this, is more damning. I’ve written several times about the risk/reward that comes with the territory of high ceiling pitching prospects, and while TCU reaped that reward to program-defining heights last season – it now gets to deal with the realization of what’s becoming a worst-case scenario in 2011. Whatever Purke’s problem is – and no matter how preventable it may have actually been – the fact remains that Matt Purke’s sophomore year will serve as an example of why not to go to college, or at least – why not to go to TCU. Purke has lost millions this year, and whether it’s fair or not – the TCU coaching staff carries that burden. Whether he pitched too hard late in a long season last year, whether he threw too many sliders, whether there’s a hitch in his delivery that went unnoticed, whether he didn’t pitch enough in the offseason – whatever – when a head coach is telling the most widely-read prospecting publication that his prized 20-year-old prospect has a “dead arm” two months before the draft, things have undeniably gone terribly wrong. And I’m sure any agent, anywhere, would advise a coach to never use the words “dead” anything, regardless of truth, for the sake of their client’s post-collegiate career opportunities.

This season is far from over, and if this TCU team is able to overcome their issues and make another amazing run deep in the postseason it would undoubtedly be an impressive coaching job. Your author is certainly not a doctor and it may be that Matt Purke takes the mound in less than a month and manages to slam the door shut on questions about his health with another dominant performance just in time for the draft. He has certainly proven to have a hugely competitive spirit and a big heart for his team & TCU family. The problem that will linger for Schlossnagle, even if those things happen, is that prospecting is as much about not bursting improbably high ceilings that get placed on 18 year olds so that those kids can collect millions purely because of what they might become. The fact that scouts & organizations don’t know what’s wrong with Purke (just that, something is wrong with him) two months from the draft is as worst-case as it gets in the prospecting game, aside from career-ending injury. Regardless if Purke’s fate this season was preventable or not – he will now be faced with the burden of having to respond to questions of his health, pitching makeup, or being able to rehabilitate himself from injury and/or surgery – a burden he did not have to face when he was drafted 14th overall two years ago. And fair or not, Jim Schlossnagle is going to have to answer to parents who may have illusions of their son pitching in the major leagues someday, but don’t want him to become the next Matt Purke.

 

June Baseball at Lupton Dependent Upon February Outcomes (Again)

Making just his career debut last Friday, Andrew Mitchell could find himself on the hill with the critical series balance on the line come Sunday.

The hype & hope for this weekend’s series between TCU and Cal State Fullerton at Lupton Stadium was actually in place even before the Frogs took 2 out of 3 at Fullerton for the second year in a row last year. When the home-at-home series was announced two winters ago, the North Texas baseball fan didn’t have to stretch their imagination too far to think about how an emerging TCU program with substantial young talent could potentially be maturing & making a name for itself around the time that the Titans made the return trip back to Fort Worth. Keep in mind that for most intents & purposes – this (as in 2011) was supposed to be the emerging year for the TCU program. Of course instead in 2010 – TCU took the series at Fullerton en route to a dominant season & postseason resulting in an Omaha swing that found them within a game of the Championship Series. That same team now returns almost their entire roster and finds themselves the higher ranked team with arguably higher expectations at the time that this series is finally happening. Still, in a reminder of just how far the TCU program has come so quickly, this weekend’s Fullerton series marks the biggest weekend matchup of college baseball powers the TCU campus has ever seen (trumping the last visit Fullerton made to TCU in 2008) – and don’t think for a second the TCU faithful don’t know it. If the weekend feels like anything other than a pivotal, hang-your-breath-on-every-pitch Super Regional weekend at Lupton Stadium, I’ll be shocked.

Yet even with drama for a series that’s been building over the course of two seasons, the stakes for the 2011 Horned Frogs in winning this series are probably even higher than Jim Schlossnagle could have imagined when the series agreement was inked. The Frogs with preseason rankings consistently in the top 5 find themselves in the driver’s seat to not only potentially host an NCAA regional for the third consecutive year – but potentially enter the postseason with the ability of hosting their way through to Omaha by being a top 8 seed. And yet for all of the progress that the TCU program has made in the last several years – the Frogs are still hamstrung in 2011 by a conference schedule that pales in comparison to the powers of college baseball and will force them to essentially be flawless in nonconference play in order to obtain the resume & composite ranking needed to have any hopes of hosting a Super Regional – or even a Regional – come this June. While superconference powers can continually overcome a slow start with quality opponents as the season grows warmer, the Frogs simply don’t have the quality of opponents down the stretch to match the rest of the top 10 in college baseball. After Fullerton this weekend, the Frogs will most likely only see ranked teams for 3 more games this season: a midweek home-at-home with Oklahoma, and a midweek away trip to Texas A&M. The Frogs’ 2010 Strength of Schedule ranked 41st nationally, and their preseason 2011 projected strength of schedule according to Boyd’s World is 66th. Simply put – the Frogs were so dominant last year at 46-11 that the only way they can reasonably improve their resume for 2011 is by adding more quality wins. Therefore the next 3 games this weekend represent half of the limited window of opportunity TCU has to make the next step in the committee’s eyes (from the perspective of a blogger who is not a committee member).

Win-Loss Resumes of the 2009 & 2010 Top 8 Seeds and how TCU compared. Win-Loss archived rankings & outcomes provided from www.d1baseball.com & Baseball America Regional Previews. 2009 RPI data from www.boydsworld.com, 2010 RPI data from the http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/weeklyrpi/2010MBArpi1.html.

The story is nothing new for Jim Schlossnagle though, who has been faced with the challenge of being largely perfect in nonconference play in addition to being completely dominant throughout all of conference play for the last two years. And while the Lupton faithful probably flinched when word emerged that Purke had been pushed to Sunday with a blister issue, it’s easy to forget that Purke accounted for all of 2.1 innings pitched and 4 earned runs en route to TCU’s only loss at Fullerton last year, while winning starters Winkler & Maxwell will go for the Frogs on Friday and Saturday. I am curious to consider – if not even a bit skeptical – if Purke will even have a noticeable role on the mound Sunday, thinking about a variety of scenarios (say, TCU already clinched the series) where Purke might actually be kept on the shelf in order to properly heal while the unhittable (or at least, yet-to-be-scouted) Andrew Mitchell carries the brunt of the workload Sunday along with the rest of the high-ceiling freshmen that Aaron Fitt cites who have yet to even find the mound. Or maybe Schlossnagle sees this as a win-win where his first-rounder gets two more days to heal while getting the call in the game where the Frogs might need a win to clinch the series. (Purke’s blister issue unfortunately begs a host of other questions on its own: How hard exactly was he working in the alumni game? Did it develop alone over the course of the 4.0 IP/~60 pitch outing last Friday? Was there a difference in his offseason training compared to last season due to the questions about the health of his arm? What exactly happened with the arm over the offseason, again?)

In terms of actual baseball to talk about – as opposed to obsessing over strength of schedule issues before we even know if a team’s going to finish .500 or not – I guess I’d tell the Lupton strong to strap in for a tight series of low-scoring games where defense and baserunning will very likely determine the outcomes. In the limited sample of all of four games, the Titans have only plated up to 5 runs in a given game, while the Frogs seemed to noticeably be pressing at the plate after last Saturday’s win. The Frogs would really like for the streaky Coats to fill out the lineup a bit, but I’m tempted to believe the Frogs could be just fine this weekend if they don’t try to be too aggressive on the basepaths – whether that’s messing with the pitcher from 1st or just trying to stretch out an extra base that’s probably completely unnecessary given their lineup strength which is stronger than Fullerton’s. Regardless, in the face of the stakes that the 2011 Frogs face this weekend, I hope everyone from Schlossnagle to the students to the hill people enjoy every minute of it. While the outcome of this weekend’s series will likely go a long ways towards dictating the year-end positioning for the Frogs, it’s fitting that this series essentially is a dream Super Regional type of matchup. These Frogs have certainly earned the opportunity to play their season & program-defining games in front of their own faithful for once.

And don’t forget elsewhere in the Metroplex this weekend:
Lots of baseball over at Clay Gould this weekend where UTA hosts Dallas Baptist, South Dakota State, & Missouri State in an everybody-plays-everybody tourney. Two games per day on Friday & Saturday with the Patriots playing at 11 each day and the Mavs playing at 3 each day, and South Dakota State & Missouri State play each other on Sunday.

 

Opening Day 2011

New bats, new stadiums, new coaches, mysterious clocks in center field – where 2010 feels like the distant past…

Matt Purke deals in front of the newly-renovated & more intimidating Lupton Stadium

Lupton’s new college baseball shot clock

Coach Schlossnagle speaks to Taylor Featherston as Jason Coats digs in

After an entire offseason reading about the undeniable impacts the new bats in college baseball were going to have on the game, I guess I’d have to admit I was somewhat caught off guard when two pretty normal college baseball games broke out on this flawless North Texas afternoon & evening. It’d be foolish for me to imply that the bats had a noticeable – or for that matter, undeniable – impact on the games I saw today. The wind was blowing out at Patriot Field and blowing in at Lupton Stadium – I saw a grand slam bomb by DBU and I saw a handful of warning track shots by TCU & Kansas. Truthfully we’re not going to know just how profound of impact these bats are having until the end of the season when we can statistically verify their significance. And even then, given the noise of each year in & year out in college baseball – it will probably take several seasons across a critical mass of weather conditions & talent crops to say without a doubt that the new bats are suppressing run support & making the college games shorter. For now – just rest assured that these games haven’t taken away the college game we all know & love. The ping doesn’t ring like it used to, but truthfully I didn’t miss the sonic experience as much (at all, actually) as I’d assumed I would.

What I did notice Friday night was that the Lupton Stadium college baseball experience is no longer one of the best kept secrets in DFW. An all-time attendance record was shattered on Friday night by 1700 people, but its important to emphasize that they only added 1000 seats. Nearly as many people were parked on the hills and standing room only spots of Lupton as the two massive sections they added to the grandstand alone, and the result for any fan who has ever been to that ballpark before tonight was undeniable – the place was a blur. As my wife and I pushed through a concourse so packed with people it invoked the spirit of Rosenblatt Stadium during a severe thunderstorm, we finally found our section – yet were blocked in the aisle by numerous people just standing there to get a view. I was frustrated until I saw that the individuals using our aisle as standing-room only spots were all Major League club scouts, complete with their stopwatches, guns & notebooks. There is no better descriptor of the absolute zoo that the entire Lupton Stadium environment was on Friday night than the fact that club scouts were relegated to standing in the aisle – and the furthest one away from home plate at that.

The university & the metroplex noticed when Schlossnagle’s bunch lived on ESPN throughout the majority of last June. Tonight’s environment at Lupton Stadium matched some of the best home-field crowd experiences I’ve ever witnessed in my time following college baseball (and that includes my trip to Baton Rouge last spring). The parking lot was packed full of students tailgating even during the game, the general admission hill was stuffed with people in a way it never was during any past Regional – and I know for a fact that the view from the hill is a significantly-obstructed one. But above all else, the presence of the two new sections at the ends of the grandstand now serve to make Lupton one of the most intimidating environments in college baseball. The lower deck at Lupton is so shallow that the upper deck seemingly sits on top of the infield, and with the presence of students on aluminum bleachers at each end, complemented with the sections in the middle that are amplified by the awning – the stadium sounds raucous even when it isn’t trying to be. Sure, tonight may have been bumped by gorgeous weather and the thrill of opening night for a top-ranked team in the country. But remember, with college baseball it’s all about the awakening of those that don’t know of just how much fun it can be to spend a few bucks and enjoy spring outside while hollering at a rival. For college populations – sometimes it just takes the right game to remind people that a baseball game can actually be just as much of an event as a football game is. Friday night will not be the last night this stadium is (uncomfortably) packed beyond its limit. In fact I can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be that way tomorrow afternoon – and especially next weekend.

And who knows, maybe Lupton will be packed during it’s very own Super Regional in 2011…
It’s far too early for the breakdown of whether or not this will be the year TCU can actually bring home the top 8 postseason seeding – but I will put this in the back of your minds for the time being. TCU’s impressive preseason rankings (1st, 3rd, etc.) could be a lot more critical than we realize when you start to consider that it looks like all of Oklahoma, Texas, & even A&M look more than capable of having top-8 types of seasons. In fact, even if TCU can manage to hold on to their top 8 rankings throughout the season, I’d bet that one of those 3 could be seeded to be coming through Lupton with a berth to Omaha on the line. It’s early, and we’re only talking preseason perceptions which are inherently flawed in the first place – but no matter where that potential series could take place, it would be a dogfight. But breaking down the strength of TCU’s RPI & seeding before the season takes place is taunting fate a bit, and moreso just a repetition of the themes of the last two years (important: beat Fullerton).

Elsewhere in the metroplex…

I was only able to catch the first four innings of Dallas Baptist’s opener against the Indiana State Sycamores, but that put me there long enough to see an Austin Elkins Grand Slam to LF that put the Patriots on top 7-1 (they would hang on to win 9-6). The stands were mostly full Friday with impressive DBU student support, and it’s hard to not underscore just how friendly and amicable everyone is when it’s Opening Day in mid-February and its 80 degrees.

It’s hard to describe how unsettling – or just unnatural – the presence of TD Ameritrade Park as the pinnacle of College Baseball is, but credit to the Patriots for forging us into the new era thanks to some impressive photoshop of an almost-finished stadium. The Omaha v. Rosenblatt Stadium debate is one I’ve tried to ignore altogether because of my indecisiveness on the issue, which is now obviously a moot conflict – but its undeniable just how awkward it is going to be until we can give this new place a history of its own. For me personally, I was just in awe that it took all of 5 minutes at my first stadium of 2011 to get the nostalgia montages going in my head. //the preceding paragraph should be read to the tune of a sad trumpet playing whatever song makes you sigh//

This is an important year for Dallas Baptist baseball – my perception this year is that they have a more challenging schedule that could potentially give them the opportunity to obtain the RPI needed to sneak-in as an at-large – provided they can finish with a better record than they did last year. A tournament appearance would go a long ways towards validating Heefner’s program as one that is actually emerging – versus the perception that their 2008 2-seed was anything more than a fluke. Last year’s team really struggled to win with any sort of consistency – especially when faced with opponents that they should have been competitive against. I’m looking forward towards giving the Patriots some more attention this year.