Oklahoma baseball entered Wednesday night on a six-game winning streak behind consistently supreme offensive output and improved pitching over the past week. The stretch was easily their best of the season as the team looked to have really started to find their stride just about a month into the new campaign.
Unfortunately for the Sooners, that successful run would come to an end at the hands of Texas State on Wednesday night in a 5-2 Bobcats win. It had been quite some time, but the bats finally cooled off for a night where they were unable to get much going.
Getting the start was right-hander Javier Ramos, who was sharp in his two innings of work not allowing a hit and striking out a pair. Ben Abram would relieve him in the third and would run into some trouble in his second inning out of the bullpen. He allowed two runs to cross in the fourth inning which put Oklahoma in a deficit they would never climb out of, giving Abram his first loss of the year to go to 1-1.
The Sooners would get one of those runs back right away in the top of the fifth on an RBI single by catcher Jimmy Crooks. His grounder up the middle scored left fielder Kendall Pettis all the way from first base. The Bobcats, however, would immediately push their lead back to two in the bottom half of the frame on a solo home run by right fielder Jose Gonzalez.
A two-run homer by Texas State shortstop Justin Thompson in the seventh extended their lead to 5-1 and seemingly put the game away, but Oklahoma would not go quietly into the night.
In the ninth, first baseman Tyler Hardman picked up a run-scoring triple to narrow the deficit to 5-2. Then, the Sooners managed to get two more runners on to load the bases with two outs for the designated hitter Logan Kohler. But, alas, Kohler popped out to shallow center to extinguish the rally and end the game.
The loss is the first in ten days for Skip Johnson’s club, and dips them down to 12-8 on the year. Now, after a day off, come some very important games for Oklahoma as Big 12 play opens on Friday against rival Texas.
An off game in the middle of the week against a lesser opponent right before a big series is not exactly unheard of, and shouldn’t be too much cause for concern as long as they bounce back with a good weekend in Austin. These games happen a lot over the course of the college baseball season.
Game one of the Red River Showdown baseball series is set for Friday night at 7:00 p.m. CT.