Better hope it's a slump
Coach Skip Johnson's Sooner baseball just suffered an unimaginably bad three days at the plate
This is what it came to for coach Skip Johnson’s Sooner baseball team Saturday afternoon.
Trying to avoid being swept on its home diamond and needing two runs to tie it in the bottom of the ninth inning, rather than send .310-hitting Kyle Branch to the plate to face LSU reliever Zac Cowan, he pinch-hit .154-hitting Brayden Horton instead.
Then, two batters later, rather than sending Dawson Willis to the plate, who’s hitting .243 with some pop, he sent .200-hitting Christian Hoffman to collect just his seventh plate appearance of the season.
On its face, it was crazy.
Yet, absurdly, it made real sense.
Branch was 1 for 10 in the three-game set to that point, his only hit an infield job in the fourth inning that might have been an out had Tiger third baseman Tanner Reaves made a clean transfer from glove to throwing hand.
Willis was also 1 for 10, his only hit a Friday single.
Nor were they alone.
In the entire series, Oklahoma finished with 15 hits, five in each game, facing five LSU pitchers, total, and scored only four runs, a state of affairs that might not be repeated for years and years and years.
What Johnson did was send two batters to the plate who’d yet to fail against the Tigers, whose confidence wasn’t already crushed and it kind-of, sort-of almost worked.
It didn’t, LSU claiming a 3-2 victory, but it might have.
Hitting lefty into a heavy shift, Horton managed to shoot the ball the other way.
Michael Braswell, a defensive replacement at third base, forced to hurry given the ground covered to gather it up, fumbled and Horton reached.
Braswell was hit with an error, but Horton made him work.
Next up, Dayton Tockey struck out swinging, before Hoffman grounded out, sending Horton to second base.
Dasan Harris then singled Horton home and Jason Walk walked, putting the game in the hands of Trey Gambill, who entered the Sooners’ leading hitter at .375.
He struck a liner right at Tiger center fielder Chris Stanfield.
Game over.
“I’d want Trey at the plate [every time] … with two guys that can fly,” Johnson said. “If the ball gets hit in the gap or down the line, that’s the ball game.”
Who wouldn’t?
OU should hope it’s trapped in nothing worse than a horrendous three-game slump. Of course Tiger pitchers deserve tons of credit, but if it’s all about them, it’s bad news for the Sooners who are bound to face more terrific pitching in a conference claiming eight of the nation’s top-10 teams until the new polls come out Monday and ninth-ranked OU (23-8, 5-7 SEC) drops, while sixth-ranked LSU (30-3, 10-2) jumps into the top five.
What the Sooners can’t do is continue to disappear like the basketball team that plays across the street did way too often in conference play. But that’s what happened against the Tigers.
In Thursday’s opener, a 2-0 complete game shutout from LSU starter Kade Anderson, Anderson retired the last 12 Sooners he faced.
Friday, a 10-2 defeat, LSU pitching retired nine of the last 10 OU batters it faced and the only one to reach, Dawson Willis in the ninth inning, did it on an error at the wall from Tiger right fielder Jake Brown.
Saturday, it wasn’t quite the same thing. The Sooners had baserunners in five of the nine innings, including multiple baserunners in the eighth and ninth.
Still, LSU retired 13 of 14 Sooner batters over a stretch that began in the fourth inning and ended in the eighth and, punctuating it all, Cowan needed 15 pitches, total, to retire OU in the sixth and seventh frames.
It’s also no good when your offense lays down on days you get more than enough pitching to win, but that happened, too, on Thursday and Saturday, when the Witherspoon brothers, Kyson and Malachi, were both effective, only to get no, and little, run support.
Perhaps in an effort to shield his team, Johnson took the philosophical route.
“When you have the wind blowing at your back and it’s 27 degrees, I don’t care if you bring in a big league baseball team, they’re going to hate it,” he said. “It is what it is.
“Usually this place plays really offensive and this weekend it didn’t play offensive, and the scores might have been doubled if the wind was blowing out, who knows?”
They might have.
Of course, the Tigers were playing in the same elements, too, and they found a way to plate runners in scoring position, get an occasional two-out hit, stay ahead in what seemed like every count.
You know, the things that win baseball games.
It’s a good Sooner team, there’s no doubt.
What may be in doubt is how good it can be this season in this conference.
It was off to a fine start but it was a cruel weekend.
Better hope it’s a slump.
OU Baseball needs to get back to the basics: Swing Bat, Hit Ball!