French’s complete game propels Baseball past Texas Tech, 2-1 in Big 12 Championship opener

Wednesday, May 20

Tulsa, Okla.

9 a.m.

University of Texas

27-25

Texas Tech

30-23

Texas

Texas Tech

French’s complete game propels Baseball past Texas Tech, 2-1 in Big 12 Championship opener

05.20.2015 | Baseball

Box Score

The senior righty went the distance, allowing just one run and striking out six in the win

Video Highlights | Texas Press Conference

TULSA, Okla. — Senior right-handed pitcher Parker French tossed his first career complete game to lead the Texas Baseball team past the Texas Tech Red Raiders, 2-1 Wednesday morning in the Big 12 Championship's opening game from ONEOK Field in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

French (4-3, 2.25 ERA) was brilliant all game long, surrendering just eight hits (seven singles) and one walk while striking out six in the Texas (27-25) victory. The nine inning performance matched the senior's career high, set earlier this season against West Virginia (March 13) in an extra inning UT win.

The senior from Dripping Springs controlled the game throughout, working four 1-2-3 innings and coming through with big pitches to escape jams with runners in scoring position in four more frames, including the ninth. The lone run French surrendered in the seventh inning snapped his streak of 20 scoreless frames against Texas Tech dating back to last season.

Zane Gurwitz aided French's effort by driving in one of the Texas runs and scoring the other. The sophomore center fielder went 2-for-3 on the day with an RBI double, a walk and a run scored. Gurwitz also made two terrific plays in center field, one of which was a running catch near the wall in left-center that preserved a run from scoring in the sixth inning.

Collin Shaw contributed a triple and a run scored, and Ben Johnson had a ninth inning single that pushed his reached base streak to 14 straight games.

Cameron Smith (6-5, 2.83 ERA) was the tough luck loser for the Red Raiders (30-23), surrendering just one earned run on five hits and two walks over 6 1/3 innings of work while striking out a career-high eight.

The Longhorns broke out front 1-0 in the top of the second courtesy of a two-out rally. After the first two batters of the inning were retired, Shaw laced a triple to deep left center field, and Gurwitz roped the next pitch down the right field line for an RBI double to break the scoreless tie.

French cruised along for the most part over his first six innings of work. He alleviated a threat in the bottom of the fourth with runners on first and second and one out by starting a 1-6-3 double play, and in the sixth with a runner on first and two down, Gurwitz ran a ball down near the wall to escape the inning.

In the top of the seventh Texas pushed its lead to two without the benefit of a base hit. With Gurwitz on second base after a walk and a sacrifice bunt, pinch hitter Bret Boswell hit a grounder to second base off of reliever Dominic Moreno that looked to be an easy out, but the throw to first was errant, allowing Gurwitz to come around to make it 2-0 Texas.

The Red Raiders quickly struck back to make it a one run game in their half of the seventh when Orlando Garcia came through with an RBI infield single to shortstop with runners on second and third. However, French was able to rebound following the hit by inducing a fly out to center and a strikeout swinging to stop the rally with Texas still leading 2-1, and with the top of the Tech order up in the eighth inning, French returned to the mound and promptly worked a 1-2-3 frame.

In the top of the ninth, Kacy Clemens was thrown out at the plate trying to score from second base on a Johnson single with two outs, but the insurance run proved to not be necessary.

In the bottom half, French quickly retired the first two Red Raiders before allowing back-to-back singles that put the winning run on base, but he bore down from there, striking out the final batter looking on a 2-2 pitch to clinch the victory for the Longhorns.

Texas returns to action tomorrow afternoon from ONEOK Field at 4 p.m. in a winner's bracket matchup vs. either TCU or Baylor.

Quotes

Head Coach Augie Garrido

Opening Statement: "Our game was driven by Parker French from the defensive side, and then some good defense behind him. We made one mistake with a passed ball that led to a run. Besides that, we played real well defensively. Zane made a good catch look easy in center field that would have been runs had he not caught it. Then on the offensive side, it was about two-out hitting and two-strike hitting. Their pitching is very good, as you noticed. This is why all of us are complaining about the RPI system. I think you see teams that can win, both of those teams can win at a pretty high level. So with the offense we got some timely hitting. Joe's falling was really legitimate. You don't like to have to say that, but there were two puddles, one in front and one behind each other and he stepped right in the middle of the biggest one, and that's where he went down. So, that was not just being anxious or clumsy, there was some water in there that added to it. And then the really good throw from the left fielder to hit Casey at home plate was another fine defensive play that kept them from scoring. A lot of it was about the pitching. Zane's performance today offensively and defensively added a lot to the victory."

On leaving Parker French in the game in the 7th inning: "We left him in the game because of his focus and his competitiveness, and the fact that his pitch count was reasonable. It wasn't out of range for him. He has the right Longhorn spirit and he was in focus. He really competed, but he was under control at the same time. You just play your punches."

On benching all but one left handed batter: "I played the lineup we played when we scored 11 runs against Baylor, that's why I played it. That's the only way I thought about it. I just played this group against their [Baylor's] best left handed pitcher, we scored five runs in the first inning and 11 runs total, a higher total then we had scored in a long time, so why break that group up? That was my way of thinking about it."

On starting P Parker French with his past success against Texas Tech: "It really didn't matter who we were going to play, he was going to be the first starter. You really need to win that first game and he is our best pitcher, so he was going to start no matter who we played."

On the benefits of postseason experience: "The main thing about that is that we put a lot of faith in the fact of that it was going to be one of our major assets. That the experiences last year would create the kind of leadership and mentality that provided that type of leadership and competitiveness and balance. In some cases, it drove the player to expectations. They expected to be perfect. They expected to do too much. (Zane Gurwitz) was one of them. He made the adjustments, so it worked on different people in different ways. It was surprising to the coaching staff, quite frankly, because we went through the fall and had great workouts and did really a great job. Nobody missed anything. Everybody was working full blast and on the same page with everything and what it did, I think, was elevate the expectations of all of us. Expectation is a demon that wouldn't fit in this room because it's not real. So we had to get through that and we had to pay a high price in the nine one-run games that we lost and the six extra inning games that we lost because we were expecting things to be easy or we felt like we didn't have the right to fail. So we tried to hard and we started living in a little bit of an unrealistic world. Baseball is about that. The difference between last year is that no one was playing with expectations. We were playing just to play and fighting the fight. I hope I am making myself clear on that because it is one of the huge demons in this game. There are two that are bigger than everything else. One is batting average and two is expectations, not necessarily in that order."

On selecting next game's starting pitcher: "We're going to take a look at who we play before we make that call because we want to size up the ability of the left-handed hitters on both teams. We've got to get there first, so we will TBA our next game until we know who we're playing."

On the potential matchup against TCU: "There wasn't a series where we weren't competitive. It seems like Friday night we would be playing 11 innings, 18 innings or 12 innings, so my position is that, and they can contradict this if I'm wrong, I think that they know they can win. I think the problem was that we expected to win and we thought it was going to be easy, but when it got tough we tried too hard. We were afraid we were going to lose. Fear of failure comes from expectations. Then once fear enters the minds of players, and now what feeds that fire, the fuel for that is losing. And we did that. Now this thing starts raging on us, but that's gone."

So. OF Zane Gurwitz

On what it means to contribute in a big game: "It's great. Especially since our teammates have been carrying me and carrying all of us throughout the entire season, especially when I was struggling early. To come out and play well and provide the team when some of the guys who have carried us all season didn't do as much today, it means a lot to help us win."

On being benched against Baylor: "It was something that I needed. Coach and I had talked about that after it had happened. It's something, like walking after a ball, that is inexcusable. No matter how good you are or how bad you are, something you can always do is hustle and just play hard. I had gone away from that and Baylor took advantage of that and exposed that. It's what I needed because it allowed me to reevaluate what I had been doing and get me back out to playing hard and just playing as hard as I can. Sitting me on the first game, me and coach talked about it and I deserved it."

Sr. RHP Parker French

On today's pitching blueprint: "I had to tailor a little bit because they have seen me before. They were a little bit more aggressive this time with the fastball early in the count so we had to throw more breaking balls, more sliders. I think later in the game once they had seen our adjusted play we could go back to the soft away, hard in, and finish them early off. Early in the game I had to really go soft because they were looking to ambush a fastball early in the count, so that was a little adjustment there."

On staying in the game in the 7th inning: "Coach said, 'how do you feel?'. I said, 'good', and he said, 'go back out there', so I did. Really simple, when it comes to tournament time you have to win a baseball game and you're going to do whatever it takes. There wasn't much discussion, you just have to win baseball games."

Notes

- French (4-3, 2.25 ERA) matched a career-high nine innings pitched in his first career complete game, allowing one run on eight hits, one walk, and striking out six in the victory. The complete game was Texas' first of the season.

- The lone run French surrendered in the seventh inning snapped a 20 inning scoreless streak of his against the Red Raiders dating back to last season. In his career vs. Tech, French owns a 3-0 record with a 1.06 ERA in 34 innings pitched.

- On May 1 this year, French worked 7 2/3 shutout frames against Tech with seven strikeouts en route to his third victory of the season in his final career start at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.

- French now holds a career postseason (Big 12 and NCAA Tournament) ERA of 1.95 over 37 innings pitched, and has a 3-1 record with one save.

- French induced a key, 1-6-3 double play with two on in the fourth inning. That was the 11th double play induced by French this season, the most of any Texas pitcher.

- The win today gives Texas a 5-2 record against Texas Tech in the Big 12 Tournament, including an 8-3 victory over the Red Raiders in the teams' opening game of the 2014 tournament.

- Johnson's ninth inning single extended his reached base streak to 14 games.

- C.J Hinojosa doubled in the contest, giving him a nine-game reached base streak, and a team-high six-game hit streak. The junior has also recorded an extra base hit in each of the last four contests.

- Shaw's triple in the second inning gave him his team-leading 25th extra base hit of the season (18 2B, 2 3B, 5 HR).

- Gurwitz picked up his 10th multi-hit game of the season with a 2-for-3 effort at the plate.

- The Longhorns played error-free defense for the 22nd game this season and own a 15-7 record in those games.

- Texas was at its best with two outs, going 7-for-15 in the game. Conversely, French limited Tech with two outs (2-for-10) and also with runners in scoring position (1-for-7).

- Texas started four freshmen on Wednesday: catcher Michael Cantu, first baseman Travis Jones, second baseman Joe Baker and third baseman Jake McKenzie.