Don’t look now, but a good thing is happening for TCU baseball.
Starting pitchers Nick Lodolo, Charles King and Brandon Williamson are all hitting a late-season stride at the same time, just in time.
Hardly anything could be better news for a program that prides itself on pitching, particularly starting pitching.
Lodolo (6-4, 2.43 ERA) has been lights-out all year, with nine quality starts. King (4-2, 3.07) has two complete games and three victories since joining the rotation six turns ago. Williamson (3-4, 4.21) is coming off a season-high 11 strikeouts in a season-high 8-plus innings.
Last weekend against Kansas, all three went six innings or more, and none allowed more than two earned runs.
Quality, quality, quality.
It was the same case the weekend before at West Virginia. All three starters went six innings or more, and only Lodolo gave up as many as three runs.
“We’ve had some huge pitching outings,” catcher Alex Isola said. “Now we just got to get all cylinders firing. We know what we can do. We’ve had some amazing wins. We’ve just got to commit to our process.”
To paraphrase Horned Frogs coach Jim Schlossnagle, the process begins and ends with starting pitching. It keeps games close. It keeps bullpens rested and reduces injury. It keeps a potent TCU lineup within striking range at all times.
It’s one reason to think TCU can still climb into the postseason picture with four regular season games left, highlighted by a three-game series at Texas Tech starting Thursday. The Frogs first close their home schedule Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. against Lamar.
“I think it sets up,” Williamson said. “If our bullpen does what they did this weekend and our starters can keep going out and giving good outings, seven-plus, our bats have been there all year. If we can keep being consistent like this, if we can get into the postseason, we’re going to do some damage.”
Schlossnagle does not mind postseason conjecture. But first things first. The Frogs need to keep winning games, and they can if Williamson continues his upward arc. The junior from Welcome, Minn., was pitching at North Iowa Area Community College a year ago. But he missed fall workouts with an injury, perhaps preventing him from rounding fully into form until now.
Since April 7 at Oklahoma, the 6-foot-6 left-hander has gone six-plus innings in four of six starts and not allowed more than three runs in any conference game.
“He looked like the guy that we thought he would be,” Schlossnagle said of the transfer, drafted in the 36th round by the Milwaukee Brewers last June. “He missed a lot of development time during the fall.”
Doesn’t matter, Williamson said.
“Even if I missed the fall, I still should have been there earlier than this,” he said. “It’s good that it’s finally coming around and starting to feel like it’s in form.”
Williamson said a change in mentality kicked him into another gear.
“Before, my mentality was, if this doesn’t work, I need to do something different,” he said. “Now, I trust a lot more. I trust in what the coaches are saying. I trust in myself. … West Virginia was where Coach Saarloos and I talked about my mentality going into games versus my physical mechanics. He said, you need to go to the mound like someone’s trying to take something from you. That’s where the biggest change came. I think as long as I keep doing that every pitch, every game, and the rest of our team does that, I think we’re going to be just fine.”
King’s entry to the rotation on April 6 at Oklahoma stabilized the Frogs’ mound fortunes. The long reliever went seven innings, allowing two runs, and won to set up a series victory the next day on Williamson’s start.
The junior pitched complete-game victories at Kansas State on April 19 and at West Virginia on May 4. The right-hander from Coppell has struck out 27 and walked five in six starts.
“I’ve really enjoyed starting. I focus on throwing every pitch the best I can and worry about the next pitch when it happens,” King said. “It’s been a whole lot of fun just sticking to that process. Whenever they take the ball out of my hands, they take the ball out of my hands. Pitching to that moment has been huge mentally for me. It’s on to the next pitch, on to the next pitch. Having that mindset is what we need to have.”
Lodolo is likely in the home stretch of his time at TCU. The junior left-hander projects as a first-round pick in June.
The Frogs are 30-13 in his starts over three years, but this season has been his most consistent and dominating. Only three times has he given up as many as three earned runs, and he reached 100 strikeouts in 83 innings last weekend in his 13th start of 2019.
Drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016, Lodolo was the highest-drafted player not to sign and opted for three seasons at TCU.
This may be his third and final year in college, but it’s not over yet.
“Win ballgames,” he said, asked what he and the Frogs can do from here. “Put them together. Honestly, everyone just contribute and do what they can do to help us win at this point. Try to see what we can do. You never know. That’s baseball. Keep going and put ourselves in a good position here and win these conference games and see at the end of the year where it puts us.”
