It’s time to start worrying about this Texas Tech baseball team. It’s something that we discussed, briefly, on The Air Raid Podcast this past week, but now the trend is a few weeks old. The loss of Davis Martin and the inability of the bullpen to find any type of consistency on the back half of games is troubling. Unless it’s a week mid-week opponent or a Saturday game started by Steven Gingery, Tech coming up with a win is basically a toss up, at best.
The Evidence
March 24th... Friday opening game of the series vs Wichita St. We learn that Davis Martin has some tendinitis in his throwing arm. Seems to be a good point to as the catalyst of the downward trend we’ve been noticing.
First 23 games Tech gave up an average of 3.13 runs per game. (Note this is not ERA, just Runs allowed)
Beginning with the Wichita St series to date Tech has played 20 games. In those 20 games, Tech has allowed an average of 4.60 runs per game. A full run and a half more per game!
Now before everyone starts in with the “Yeah, but Tech is still averaging 13+ runs per game in that same stretch” and “losing a conference series isn’t a cause to panic, this team is 33-10 and will be fine”. I agree... those are two definite pluses for this team and without averaging 13 runs per game over that stretch, we are in real trouble. However, looking past the 33-10 record, Tech’s conference record is only 9-6. Not exactly domination of the schedule.
I’ll always be the first to say that any team in any series can take that series and baseball teams lose. It’s true. However, with arguably the most crucial and toughest part of the schedule still to come, Davis Martin still not close to being back in the rotation and the fatigue on the rest of the staff his departure is having, it makes us baseball people following trends nervous.
The Schedule
Starting tonight, Tech plays two with New Mexico (predicted to be in Tech’s regional pool), followed by a weekend series with TCU, a mid-week series against Ohio State and two weekend series against West Virginia and Kansas to finish the season. WVU and Kansas being arguably two of the hottest teams in the conference. Who saw the last two series of the year being this big?
@ New Mexico (23-16-1, 14-2-1)
@ New Mexico
vs TCU (30-8, 11-4)
vs TCU
vs TCU
@ Ohio State (16-24, 4-8)
@ Ohio State
@ West Virginia (23-15, 9-6)
@ West Virginia
@ West Virginia
vs Kansas (19-20, 8-7)
vs Kansas
vs Kansas
And before anyone says... “Yeah but it’s Kansas”, Kansas has won 3 of their last 4 series including taking two of three from Texas, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. Other than Texas, Tech lost series to OSU and OU. It’s murder’s row folks. Time to start digging deep. Even if Tech gets through relatively unblemished, Tech cannot keep giving up 4.6 runs per game and hope for a deep run in the post-season.
Rankings
1. TCU
2. West Virginia
3. Texas Tech
4. Kansas
5. Oklahoma St.
6. Texas
7. Baylor
8. Oklahoma
9. Kansas St
After this past weekend, ranking was difficult. Almost wanted to give everyone a participation trophy it was such a mess. Fun, but a mess.
We’ll see how it plays out this week. Be sure to tune into The Air Raid Podcast for more baseball coverage and an in-depth look at Mahomes landing spot in the draft.
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