Pitching depth – both starting and relieving – is critical for success in the college baseball postseason. As we saw in the recently concluded Gainesville, Florida regional, the Gators’ greater overall pitching depth was a major contributor to why they, and not the Red Raiders, advanced to the super-regionals. Each year, I like to review the past season’s Texas Tech pitching performances. This article covers starting pitching, with relief pitching to come later.
As we’ll see, Tech’s starting pitching in the Gainesville regional was good, ranging from above-average to superlative in the four games. It’s just that, in the final two games, Florida received strong starts from Cade Fisher (seven innings, one earned run) and Ryan Slater (five scoreless innings), pitchers who had had only one and two starts, respectively, prior to the regional. Few teams, I would venture, have that kind of depth and flexibility in their pitching corps.
Like last year, I use Bill James Game Scores for assigning a numerical grade to each outing by Tech starting pitchers. The exact formula for determining a pitcher’s Game Score for a start is available here. In short, a pitcher begins with a score of 50 and then adds points for doing good things (e.g., strikeouts) and loses points for doing bad things (e.g., allowing hits, walks, and earned runs). Hence, Game Scores around 50 are average, those well above 50 are excellent, and those well below 50 are poor.
It will come as no surprise to Tech fans that sophomore Mason Molina was the team’s best starter this season, having taken a major step forward after being a part-time No. 3 starter in 2022. The following two charts display Game Scores for every start by a Red Raider pitcher in 2023. The top chart encompasses the regular season and Big 12 tournament, with space limitations necessitating a separate chart for the NCAA regional. Scores highlighted in green are best, the darker the green, the better. Scores highlighted in red are the weakest, the darker the red, the worse off. Finally, scores with white backgrounds are around average.
To expand on what these scores mean, let’s examine Molina’s 84 vs. Baylor. In that game, he pitched seven scoreless innings, striking out 12, and allowing only two hits and one walk. Using the arbitrary cutoff of scores 56 and higher appearing in green, Molina had nine green starts.
Two areas of concern for Tech are apparent, however.
- First, as good as Molina was, he experienced a midseason stretch of inconsistency (outlined in black in the top chart). Against TCU, for example, he pitched four and one-third, giving up eight hits and seven earned runs.
- Second, only one other starter besides Molina registered multiple green starts, namely Zane Petty with four. Three came in the regular season against UT-Arlington, Grand Canyon, and Kansas (none of whom made the NCAA field), with Petty recording his fourth green start in the penultimate game vs. Florida. He threw five innings, allowing only one earned run, but his success was overshadowed by the 7-1 final score as the Gators pulled away late.
How did this year’s starting pitching compare to last year’s? Some may not consider this a fair comparison, as the 2022 rotation included two pitchers taken within the first five rounds of the MLB draft, Andrew Morris and Brandon Birdsell, whereas this year’s staff was very young. For what it’s worth, however, here are the distributions of Game Scores for the two squads.
Starting pitchers for the 2022 Raiders were nearly six Game Score points higher on average than their 2023 counterparts. Moreover, whereas the 2022 starters had Game Scores mostly above 50, the 2023 starters were about evenly divided in Game Scores above and below 50.
What about Molina himself? His average Game Score improved from 50.86 in 2022 to 55.69 in 2023. In addition, Molina more than doubled the percentage of his starts with a Game Score above 60, from 22% in 2022 to 50% in 2023 (see following graph).
One might wonder why Molina’s average Game Score did not rise even more sharply than it did from 2022 to 2023. The answer is that, along with increasing his frequency of good outings this year, he also increased his frequency of bad ones (four starts below 40 in 2023, compared to only one in 2022).
Considering that the Gainesville regional included national No. 2 seed Florida, which entered with a .298/.397/.557 BA/OBA/SLG team slash line, as well as a UConn squad that slashed .306/.416/.493, Tech’s starters pitched really well. Molina needed to be at his best and was.
Then we have the case of Kyle Robinson. The sophomore righthander had three early season starts, recording Game Scores in the thirties in each, before being redeployed as a reliever (13 appearances from the pen). Robinson then received another chance to start, in the second game against Oklahoma State in the Big 12 tournament, and he delivered a stunning 66. Robinson followed up with a solid 53 against Florida in the Raiders’ lone win over the Gators, demonstrating consistency as a starter (albeit with a small sample size).
Petty added a 57 Game Score against the Gators (as discussed above) and finally, Jacob Rogers, whose most recent outings before the tournament included three midseason Game Scores in the forties, came back with a 52 in the Gainesville finale.
A famous saying developed around the then-Boston Braves of 1948, “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain,” so that inclement weather might prevent the team from having to run some of its less effective pitchers out to the mound. I thought the Gainesville regional might warrant the saying, “Give it to Mason, then two days of pacing.” However, any nervousness Raider fans experienced during the final three games of the regional had little to do with the starting pitching.
