KU baseball falls to TCU’s offensive flurry in Massive 12 tournament

Sports

Opportunity Parker/Journal-Planet Photo

Kansas coach Dan Fitzgerald protests a contact to the umpire through an April game against Kansas State. Kansas fell five-four on Friday, April 14, 2023.

Kansas’ run at the Massive 12 Conference baseball tournament is not fairly more than but, but it sustained a series of punishing blows in the sixth inning Thursday evening.

An inning that started with modest ball for TCU — a single to 1st base, a stroll, a soft-hit ball up the middle to score a run and chase Jayhawks pitcher Ethan Bradford — got significant really speedily when Horned Frogs third baseman Brayden Taylor sent a two-run blast to ideal-center field.

Taylor broke his school’s record for profession dwelling runs and fueled a 5-run inning that expanded KU’s deficit from five-four to ten-four. Relievers Luke Savage and Ben Abeldt quieted the Jayhawks’ lineup for the remainder of the game, TCU walked off with a run-rule victory in the eighth inning, and the Horned Frogs claimed a 14-four win at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, to consign No. eight KU to the secondary bracket of the double-elimination tournament.

No Jayhawk pitcher lasted longer than Bradford’s two innings against TCU’s potent lineup, as Savage took the win and Hunter Cranton the loss. Taylor led the way for the Frogs with a four-for-five, 3-RBI day with two doubles and a dwelling run. Anthony Silva also drove in 3 runs, and hit the go-ahead RBI single that broke open a three-three tie in the third inning.

Certainly, KU went back and forth with TCU early, but couldn’t sustain its pace. The Jayhawks loaded the bases in the 1st inning with one particular out but could only handle a sacrifice fly by third baseman Mark Brooks, and the Horned Frogs responded promptly with a 3-run frame. Nunez singled on the 1st pitch by Thursday’s starter Hunter Cashero, Taylor drove him in, and then Cole Fontenelle whizzed a ball previous the 1st baseman’s glove for a triple just before coming about to score on an error.

The Jayhawks managed a tie right after a Luke Leto dwelling run and two-out RBI double by Cole Elvis, but the Horned Frogs claimed the lead for fantastic following back-to-back-to-back singles in the bottom half of the third.

Mike Koszewski and Janson Reeder, the grand-slam hero against Texas Wednesday, have been the only players with various hits for KU, but neither drove in a run. Rather, the Jayhawks got their final score of the evening on a complete-count solo dwelling run by Jake English.

That flicker of hope was extinguished by the Horned Frogs’ sixth-inning flurry. TCU then added a sacrifice fly by grad student Austin Davis in the seventh just before a 3-run eighth against Steven Andrews, culminating in a Logan Maxwell RBI fielder’s selection that activated the run rule.

KU will now have to reckon with an impromptu Sunflower Showdown elimination game Friday afternoon, as it faces No. five Kansas State at three p.m. The winner will face TCU in a rematch Saturday.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

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