ARLINGTON – In the quiet of the Clay Gould Ballpark outfield, after TCU had dropped a 6-3 decision to UTA on Tuesday night, Horned Frogs coach Jim Schlossnagle gathered his moundsmen for a little heart-to-heart talk.
Uh-oh. Hold your ears. The pitching staff appeared to be in for another Schloss-ing, which has been a thing lately.
“That’s certainly something I’m concerned about,” Schlossnagle admitted. “My personality is not to fake it. I don’t believe it’s puppies and ice cream around here.
“But I also believe in telling them when they did great, and that’s what I just told them.”
There has been little wrong with TCU’s hitting this season. The lineup is solid. The team batting average is .307 and it’s been scoring 6.89 runs per game.
But it’s the recurring failures of the pitching staff – with the notable exceptions of Nick Lodolo and Marcelo Perez – that have had Schloss dipping into his reservoir of colorful adjectives.
In a mere 10-minute conversation last week, Schlossnagle variously described his team’s pitching as “miserable,” “inexcusable,” “disappointing” and “pretty shameful.”
Yet, there he was after Tuesday night’s game, with his pitchers huddled around, complimenting them, not burying them.
“I was like, ‘Guys, that’s what it’s supposed to look like,’ minus the PFPs (two fielding miscues),” Schlossnagle explained. “The aggression that Haylen Green showed when he came into the game, how quickly he was working, throwing strikes. And then Matt Rudis did a nice job there, when he could have folded.
“Haylen Green – if we get that the rest of the year from him, boy, that would be awesome.”
Most encouraging, though, were the four-plus innings and 75 pitches thrown by senior starter Jared Janczak, whose journey back from multiple surgeries has been a slow grind.
“On one hand it was a huge positive step forward for him to be able to go out and throw 75 pitches,” Schlossnagle said. “I think the quality and crispness of his stuff is showing more and more of what he was each time out.”
That’s the goal – to get Janczak back to where he was two seasons ago, when he was Schlossnagle’s choice to start two games for TCU in the College World Series.
After two surgeries, he’s now healthy, all parties agree. But Janczak’s problem remains the same – he’s able to throw strikes, for the most part, but he’s been unable to command the strike zone and put his sinking fastball where it needs to be.
UTA made him pay for that Tuesday night. All six of their hits came off Janczak, including a solo home run by 6-foot-6 first baseman Dylan Paul.
Janczak committed two errors that proved costly, throwing away a force play at second base and misfiring on a pickoff throw. As a result, only two of UTA’s six runs were earned.
It marked the third midweek defeat of the season for TCU, which continues to hover around the No. 20 spot in the college baseball polls.
Midweek games bring conflicting reactions from those who follow college baseball. Some dismiss the Tuesday and Wednesday night games against non-conference foes, saying they have little or no impact when the NCAA fills its tournament field.
Schlossnagle totally disagrees.
“That’s not true whatsoever,” he said Tuesday. “I told the team before the game tonight, ‘How fired up would you be to play Florida State tonight?’ Yeah. Good.
“’How fired up would you be to play Cal State Fullerton? Yeah. Good.
“’How’s about Arizona, 2012 national champion and runner-up in 2016?
“Well, UTA has a better RPI and is in a better position to play in the NCAA tournament right now than all three of those teams.”
Schlossnagle is correct. Though it’s not a precise indicator, a college team’s rating on the RPI charts weighs heavily, measuring things that include its opponents’ winning percentage and strength of schedule.
And there’s the problem: TCU dropped 15 places last week and currently sits at No. 65. Coach Darin Thomas’ Mavericks are No. 57.
There are six Big 12 teams with higher RPIs than TCU – Tech (15), West Virginia (16), Oklahoma State (29), Texas (31), Oklahoma (39) and Baylor (40).
The Frogs won weekend series over both Texas and Oklahoma, but they’ve been hurt in the ratings by losses to Seton Hall (No. 213), Long Beach State (222), Rice (140) and Grand Canyon (127).
“Obviously, the last two Tuesday nights (TCU played Dallas Baptist a week ago) have been huge missed opportunities,” Schlossnagle said, “because they’re road games against top 50-60 RPI clubs.”
The game Tuesday at UTA was the third meeting of the season between the two teams. TCU won the first two, 5-3 and 3-2.
“I hate that we lost tonight,” Schlossnagle said, “but if we can have a good next 18 games, the fact we beat those guys two out of three is good on our resume. We need UTA to be good.”
Oh, UTA is good. The Mavericks have a six-game winning streak and have beaten two Big 12 teams (Baylor is the other one) in eight days. Thomas’ Mavs definitely pass the eyeball test, not just the RPI math.
“That’s a really good club,” Schlossnagle said. “That’s the best UTA team that I can remember them having since the first one we faced that had Hunter Pence on it. And Darin knows that. I think they’re a really good team, a regional team.
“So on the one hand, I’m super encouraged . . . sometimes your team gets better, but you don’t win the game. And I think that happened tonight.
“The problem was, it ain’t February.”
TCU has only 18 games left to figure out, among other things, who its regular Saturday starter is going to be. Schlossnagle would like it to eventually be Janczak.
“We’ve got 18 games left,” he said. “We’re still sitting in the position where we control our destiny in our conference. And we have work to do.
“I saw some really good things tonight. It’s not a moral victory, but it’s some things I’m encouraged by.
“But we don’t have a lot of time . . . we’ve got to win ballgames.”
UTA hosts Louisiana-Lafayette this weekend. The Frogs have a weekend Big 12 series at Kansas State.
