Injuries plague Red Raiders as they head to Morgantown

On Thursday of this week before the West Virginia series, Kendall Rogers of D1 Baseball reported just how bad the injury front looked for #8 Texas Tech.

Just last Sunday, Tech lost Brandon Birdsell to a rotator cuff injury for a significant amount of time, now this news breaks. Losing just one of these guys would be rough, considering Dru Baker has been out for a bit as well, but this is absolutely brutal for the Red Raiders. Dylan Neuse was the preseason Big 12 player of the year, and Kurt Wilson has played in 27 of 31 games this year. This is probably the closest you can get to a worst case scenario if you’re a Tech fan. Neuse done for the year and Wilson is out until the last weekend of May at the earliest. Heartbreaking news for the Red Raiders.

The injury-ridden Red Raiders will be in Morgantown this weekend to play against West Virginia. The Mountaineers are 13-14 on the season and 4-5 in conference play. The Red Raiders took two games from Stephen F. Austin during the mid-week series and now stand at 24-7 overall and 5-4 in conference play.

The Mountaineers send Jackson Wolf, Adam Tulloch, and Ben Hampton to the mound on the weekends, Wolf has a 3.05 ERA in 41.1 innings, while Tulloch has a 7.03 ERA through 24.1 innings, and Hampton has a 3.10 ERA through 20.1 innings this season. On the offensive side of things, West Virginia is led by Mikey Kluska, Vince Ippoliti, and Hudson Byorick. Kluska has played in all 27 games, hits .311 and has four homers with 19 RBIs, Ippoliti leads the team in average with a .324 clip, and Byorick has a .320 average.

Tech will look to piece together a lineup that might look similar to what it did in the mid-week series against Stephen F. Austin:

1. Murrell-RF
2. Fulford-C
3. Jung-2B
4. Stilwell-1B
5. Conley-SS
6. Masters-DH
7. Carter-CF
8. Kelly-3B
9. Marusak-LF

Now the only way I see any of that changing is if we get the first good news in a while, and that would mean Dru Baker would be in the lineup. If that happens, I would think Baker takes Marusak’s spot and ends up somewhere towards the top of the order. Everyone knows that Jace Jung has been on a tear and hopefully that continues along with the team pushing large amounts of runs across the plate.

Game times are as follows:

Friday-5:30 p.m. -ESPN +

Saturday-3 p.m. -ESPN +

Sunday- 12 p.m. -ESPN +

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