The #16 Red Raiders (18-4) took down the California Baptist Lancers (13-6) of the Western Athletic Conference 6-3 Tuesday in a blustery and cold return to Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park. The Texas Tech defense stole the show with multiple stars in the book and Tech turned two double plays in a season that had only seen five entering the game.
Chase Hampton had the midweek start once again and he was excellent as has become the norm as he improved to 3-1 on the season. Hampton struck out 7 Lancer hitters but the fourth and fifth of the evening were perhaps the most impressive. California Baptist third-baseman Mitchell Simon hit a high fly ball into the evening’s jet stream and it carried over the right-center field wall for a leadoff home run in the third inning. Center fielder Ulises Caballero followed immediately after with a no-doubter of his own, this one to left field. Despite giving up back-to-back dingers, Hampton was unfazed, turning around and striking out the one and two-hole hitters and working a flyout to retire the Lancers in order after the home runs.
“It’s just a pretty good luxury to have a guy like that going on a Tuesday,” said Head Coach Tim Tadlock. “He can put teams on their heels a little bit when he’s pitching ahead in the count and when he did that he was outstanding.
Going into the game, Matt [Gardner] had talked to him about hey, how the wind’s blowing. It’s going to happen, you’re gonna probably give up a solo shot on a day like today, just gotta keep pounding it in there. I thought he really handled those two homers really good,” concluded Tadlock.
Hampton retired the Lancers in order in four innings, but helping Hampton along were multiple strong defensive plays by the Red Raiders. In the second inning, an acrobatic snag by Kurt Wilson ranging right with no time to work led to a jumping lineout. Later that inning, Hudson White, catching after Cole Stilwell caught back-to-back games in Iowa, gunned down a baserunner at second base with a perfectly targeted throw for the second out.
The Red Raiders turned another double play in the fifth. It’s notable seeing two double plays from the 2022 iteration of Tadlock’s squad as they’d only turned five on the season coming into Tuesday’s game. Jace Jung put a star in the book as well in the eighth when a lightly hit bouncer came his way, Jung charged it and played it perfectly near the mound to toss to first to end the frame. In addition to Stilwell, Jung turned in the other multi-hit game for the Red Raiders going 2-2, 2B, 2BB. This marked Jung’s 10th game in 2022 without a strikeout.
The Texas Tech bullpen also turned in a strong performance with Josh Sanders and Derek Bridges combining for a scoreless two innings and Trendan Parish brought his intensity to the mound to close things out. While not a save opportunity, Parish went to work, also having to shrug off a wind-aided home run and a double to follow to fan the next batter and slam the door with a flyout.
Offensively, the Red Raiders worked out of the two-run deficit in the third to tie it up. An RBI triple from Stilwell and RBI single from Ty Coleman evened the score and three more runs in the third from the bottom of the order gave Tech the lead and they held onto it. An insurance home run from Stilwell in the sixth was the final run of the day for Tech.
Stilwell finished the game a double shy of the cycle finishing 3-4, 3B, HR, 2RBI for the day. That marks the third time in 2022 that a Red Raider hitter has finished one hit shy of Texas Tech’s seventh cycle in program history. Against Merrimack, Wilson was a triple short in the third game and Jung was a home run short in the final game of that series.
It was the 40th consecutive home non-conference victory for Texas Tech Baseball, part of a 54-3 non-conference home record stretching back to the beginning of the 2019 season.
Weighing heavily on many minds was the absence of Texas Tech Special Assistant Ray Hayward, an assistant for the full length of Tadlock’s tenure as head coach at Texas Tech. Hayward has a long history in professional and college baseball, READ MORE HERE. He is beloved by many former players, teammates, and coworkers across baseball evident by the comments from Hampton, Stilwell, and Tadlock after the game Tuesday.
“To me he means a lot,” said Hampton. “He helps me out almost every day throwing-wise, anything you go to him and he’s always there to help. Just praying he comes back healthy.”
Stilwell followed, “Right when I got here on campus freshman year, me and him struck a bond because we both hunt and fish, so we can go talk about that. It’s just really unfortunate what’s going on and we’ve been all praying for him. Hopefully, he comes out of this on the right side.”
“His family is in our prayers, we talked about it before the game today, he’s one of my best friends,” said Tadlock feeling the emotions of the situation. “You think of what he’s going through, we kind of think of all surgeries nowadays as being standard procedures, and it was kind of standard until about 5:00 yesterday afternoon.
What he means to our program there’s a lot of wisdom there, he’s seen a lot of baseball. You could go across the United States and talk to baseball people, he’s one of the most respected baseball men in the world, not to mention just college baseball. He brings a steady hand to our organization and our program, just having a guy like that around to let young guys bounce things off of him, he’s so steady in what he does and how he goes about things.
As far as his and my relationship it has developed over the last 10 years, we’ve known each other probably since the mid-90s. We know he’ll come through it, but obviously the more prayers for him we can get, the better.”
Family of Ray Hayward Requests Prayers
The Red Raiders will enter Big 12 play this weekend hosting the #2 University of Texas Longhorns in a three-game stand starting Friday at 6:30 pm. It will be streamed on Big 12 Now on ESPN+ with the radio call available on Double T 97.3 FM and their listening area and on The Varsity Network App.
TTU22 Box score