Pitching Rotation Key As Mountaineers Prep For Postseason
May 20, 2024 03:59 PM | Baseball, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The good news for West Virginia is there are no RPI killers in this year's Big 12 Championship being played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, starting on Tuesday morning.
The bad news is the tournament begins a day earlier than usual because BYU is now in the league and the school does not play athletic events on Sundays, meaning this year's championship game will be played on Saturday night instead of Sunday afternoon.
Consequently, there are some serious discussions going on as to how teams are going to line up their pitching rotations for the conference tournament. West Virginia's Randy Mazey is among those scratching his head right now. West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said this morning he's not sure who will be his starting pitcher for game one of the Big 12 Championship on Tuesday against TCU (WVU Athletics Communications photo).
"Sitting here now, if I really loved our chances of getting a bid for the postseason, then we'd set it up one way, but we don't know if we are fighting for our postseason lives or not," he explained earlier today via zoom call with the media. "We're in that situation where we don't know. We think we are going to get in, but I've thought that before and it hasn't happened, so you just never know how it's going to shake out."
Two years ago, West Virginia's RPI was sitting in the low 40s when it entered the Big 12 tournament. The Mountaineers dropped their first game to Oklahoma, which possessed an RPI of 5, so that wasn't a big deal.
But the elimination-round 8-5 loss to No. 98 Kansas State was a big deal, and it ultimately knocked West Virginia out of NCAA tournament consideration.
"If you lose a game, everybody's RPI is in a pretty good spot," Mazey noted. "We lost a (tournament) game to a team two years ago, and I think that had a lot to do with not making a regional that year because I think we dropped 10 spots in one day. Hopefully, that won't happen to anyone this year."
It shouldn't.
This year's 10-team Big 12 championship is made up of solid baseball teams.
Top-seeded Oklahoma is 15th in this week's NCAA RPI, two spots ahead of No. 17 Oklahoma State, the tournament's No. 2 seed.
Fourth-seeded West Virginia jumped up to 33 in the RPI following last weekend's series win at TCU, which dropped slightly to No. 40. No. 3 seed Texas has an RPI of 39, while No. 6 seed Kansas State is 41.
The rest of the tournament field consists of No. 42 UCF, No. 55 Cincinnati, No. 58 Texas Tech and No. 73 Kansas. Obviously, avoiding games and losses to Kansas and to Texas Tech would be optimal for any of the bubble teams hoping to get into the NCAA Tournament.
As for the pitching, that's an even bigger conundrum, which could carry over into the following week for Big 12 teams that qualify for a regional.
Mazey explains.
"It's a super, super stressful situation when you're trying to win a regional next weekend and you know this weekend you have to throw pitchers on short rest, and it could potentially affect our ability to win regionals across the Big 12," he said.
"If we feel good about our chances of playing next weekend, you don't want to take your best guys and pitch them on super-short rest. That would be crazy to do that and not get the most out of them," he said. "On the other hand, you don't want to lose and go home without pitching your best guys. It's sort of a juggling act that we must address."
Three days later, one of the 10 used in Fort Worth is likely going to toe the rubber again when West Virginia meets the Horned Frogs for a fourth time this season at 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
"The weekend that we just played going into this week, you're going to try and win all those games, and you can't save any pitching waiting for the tournament, so it's a very unusual circumstance to say the least," Mazey said.
The new tournament format would include an idle Wednesday for West Virginia if it can win game one. That also automatically applies to third-seeded Texas if it gets past Texas Tech in the 8:30 p.m. ET game. Cincinnati and Kansas State would need upsets in the other games for that to happen for them.
No. 1 seed Oklahoma and No. 2 seed Oklahoma State get Tuesday off.
"That would be a godsend to have Wednesday off to give you a day to rest and recover, but you can't even attempt to think about Wednesday before you think about Tuesday," Mazey explained. "TCU is in different spot because even if they win Tuesday, they can't take Wednesday off.
"If you can script this thing, that's how you would script it," he said.
To advance and play deep into the tournament, Mazey believes it boils down to starting pitching.
"You need your starting pitching to save as many arms as they can, and then late in the tournament, you need your hitting to be able to smash the ball," he said. "This team is capable of doing that.
"With the unusual format, it's not unrealistic to think that on Tuesday you are not going to see a lot of complete games coming out of anybody because very few teams are going to be able to throw their guys that are capable of doing that. This could be high-scoring games on the front end and the back end, and low-scoring games in the middle the way everybody's weekend rotations will be able to pitch in the middle of the tournament.
"We'll see how it goes."
As for his team's NCAA Tournament resume, Mazey is confident it is much stronger than in 2022 when it was left on the outside looking in. Road series wins at Oklahoma and TCU, a three-game sweep at Kansas and a three-game sweep of UCF at Kendrick Family Ballpark will be difficult for selection committee members to ignore.
"We went 19-11 in the Big 12 and finished in fourth place, so for them to not let us in would be a crime, really," he said. "But they've committed crimes before, so I won't go to bed at night feeling all that great about it until I see the Mountaineers' name pop up on the screen."
All four Big 12 tournament games on Tuesday will be televised on ESPN+.
ESPNU will televise the first game on Wednesday, the two later games on Thursday and Saturday's championship game.
The Mountaineers' last deep run in the Big 12 tournament came in 2019 when they lost to 13th-ranked Oklahoma State 5-2 in the championship game.
