Late meltdown prevents TCU baseball from winning Big 12 championship outright
TCU baseball will have to share the 2021 Big 12 regular-season title with Texas.
The Horned Frogs had a meltdown on Saturday in Manhattan, Kansas, blowing a four-run lead in the ninth inning and losing 11-8 on a walk-off home run by Kansas State’s Chris Ceballos.
TCU (36-16, 17-7 Big 12) will be the 2-seed at next week’s Big 12 tournament in Oklahoma City. Texas (40-13, 17-7) will be the 1-seed by virtue of winning the regular-season series against TCU, 2-1. The teams are co-champions, though, as the Big 12 does not break ties for regular-season championships. Head-to-head results are only used for seeding purposes.
The Frogs enter the postseason reeling, having lost their last three three-game series to Texas, Louisiana Monroe and now K-State.
TCU only has itself to blame for the latest loss.
The Frogs got off to a strong start offensively on Saturday. Porter Brown led off the game with home run and Phillip Sikes added a two-run home run later in what became a four-run first inning.
But that 4-0 lead didn’t last long.
K-State scored four runs of its own in the bottom of the first. TCU starter Johnny Ray struggled, giving up a homer to K-State’s leadoff batter Cameron Thompson.
Ray then gave up a single, another home run and a single before exiting without recording an out. Charles King entered in relief and delivered eight scoreless innings.
King was dominant, retiring 10 consecutive batters at one point. He finished with a career-high nine strikeouts and no walks.
As King quieted K-State’s offense, TCU slowly built what felt like a comfortable lead.
The Frogs took a 5-4 lead with one run in the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Brown. They cushioned their lead to 7-4 with two runs in the seventh on a double by Zach Humphreys and a RBI groundout by Hunter Wolfe. TCU added one more run in the ninth on an RBI single by Brayden Taylor.
Leading 8-4 and with the normally reliable Haylen Green entering to close it out, TCU seemed destined to win the outright championship. But K-State spoiled those plans.
The Wildcats had five straight one-out hits, including run-scoring doubles by Thompson and Terrence Spurlin. Then Dylan Phillips brought in the game-tying run on a single.
TCU stuck with Green to try and force extra innings, but K-State ended the game on a three-run homer by Ceballos. The seven runs given up by Green were more than double his previous high this season, which was when he allowed three runs to Sam Houston State on March 7.
The Frogs will still go down as Big 12 co-champions. TCU also won Big 12 regular-season championships in 2015 and in 2017 when it shared the title with Texas Tech. Both of those seasons saw TCU advance to the College World Series.
Continuing that CWS trend doesn’t seem promising given TCU’s play of late, but maybe it’ll find something within the next week.
TCU will play its first game of the Big 12 tournament on Wednesday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City.
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