It was time for winter break, yet the TCU baseball coaches could hardly wait to get back to campus.
They had a team.
“We were so excited about this club going home at Christmastime,” coach Jim Schlossnagle said.
Power, pitching, speed — all there, and on opening weekend it showed in victories against Virginia and top-ranked Vanderbilt.
Eleven weeks later, the Frogs are missing their leadoff hitter from those games and his replacement at the top of the lineup, plus the right fielder, limited to designated hitter because of ankle and shoulder injuries, as the team opens a three-game Big 12 series against Kansas on Friday.
The absences of Porter Brown (shoulder), Hunter Wolfe (ankle) and Andrew Keefer (shoulder, ankle) leave TCU with 11 position players as they scramble for a late-season push to avoid missing the NCAA tournament in back-to-back years for the first time under Schlossnagle.
“I’ll never make an excuse for anything, but I do believe there are reasons for things,” the veteran coach said. “The first weekend of the season, we win two out of three in that tournament. Everybody was like me — they were super excited about our offense and the speed and power side of it. And we’ve lost the two main speed guys. Guys have been shuffled around. Guys we had planned on redshirting are playing.
“I will say that none of that is an excuse for the level of baseball that we’ve played.”
The level of baseball, since April 1, is a shade below .500. The Frogs are 9-11 in their last 20. They won a series at Oklahoma but missed a chance to make it back-to-back series wins by dropping a Game 3 walk-off at Kansas State.
Two weekends ago, they were swept by Baylor in one of the worst weekends ever at Lupton Stadium. They rallied with a near-sweep of West Virginia last weekend, but a blown save meant another walk-off loss in a Game 3.
Since April, five losses are on the bullpen, and the Frogs have 31 errors.
“Last year, I don’t remember us playing ugly baseball,” Schlossnagle said. “We played clean baseball. We threw strikes. We didn’t score very many runs. This has really been something that I’ve never been through in my career with this level of injury.
“The tough thing is there’s nothing you can point a finger to. There have been teams in the past that had like four back injuries, and maybe it was something in the weight room, maybe it was something in practice. These things have all been across the board.”
That’s not to mention the preseason Tommy John surgeries that sidelined left-handed starter Russell Smith and right-hander Caleb Sloan. They are two arms TCU had very high hopes for in 2019. They helped provide the pitching depth that lent Schlossnagle his optimism.
“We felt like we were deep enough on the mound,” the coach said. “We felt Nick Lodolo had taken a big step. We knew Caleb had taken a huge step. He was voted the No. 1 prospect in the California summer league he played for out in Santa Barbara. He was really turning into a future Friday night starter. Russell Smith was a guy who always gave us five good innings on a Tuesday, and he was getting better. We have a reliever, Dennis Cook’s son, Asher Cook, who showed up hurt. He’s missed the whole season.”
No one’s given up on anything. Wolfe could return by next week, providing a speed boost on the bases. Next weekend, the Frogs have a huge RPI opportunity when they close the regular season at Texas Tech.
“I think every experience makes you better, depending how you channel it,” Schlossnagle said. “I’m super confident in the culture of our program, the manner in which we develop players. Certainly there are things we need to get better at. In 2013, we had a bad year, but not an injured year, and out of that came great experience and four seasons to Omaha. Sometimes I feel like we’re paying the piper for 2014 to 2017.”
