Inside Kansas baseball’s Big 12 tournament pitching strategy, and what could have been

LAWRENCE — As Brandon Scott recalled during the Big 12 Conference tournament, Kansas baseball’s pitching strategy for the event found its origins during a regular season series at Texas.

Scott, the Jayhawks’ pitching coach, said they went into that mid-May series feeling their season would be in good shape if they could take two of those three road games. So, led by the starting pitching duo of Reese Dutton and Dominic Voegele, they sold out on trying to win the first two games. They came close, too, before losing by a run both times in walk-off defeats.

So, before the final game of the series, which also served as Kansas’ regular season finale, Scott said the plan changed. Now, they felt as if they needed to make a deep run in the Big 12 Conference tournament. Instead of the Jayhawks using their starting pitcher, Evan Shaw, as long as they could in the last game of the series against Texas, they kept his start short so he’d be ready to open the Big 12 tournament a few days later.

But while the idea to use Shaw this past Tuesday against Kansas State worked, and he pitched well in what became a 2-1 win for Kansas, setting the Jayhawks up well for the week didn’t lead to the four wins they were looking for in Arlington, Texas. Neither Dutton nor Voegele, aided by more rest, were able to enjoy enough success in the games that followed.

Kansas still found its way to the Big 12 tournament semifinal Friday, before losing 8-6 against Oklahoma.

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“I could not be more proud of my guys and how they competed, and not just today, all year and really the past two years,” Jayhawks head coach Dan Fitzgerald told reporters postgame. “I think if you look at where we’ve come and who we are, and really what we’ve done, it’s an awesome thing to look at in terms of just overall growth.”

Kansas’ offense is what made it formidable as the Big 12 tournament unfolded.

After losing 7-5 against No. 1-seed Oklahoma in its second game, No. 7-seed Kansas won 11-10 against No. 9-seed TCU to earn the chance to play the Sooners again. The Jayhawks held a 6-0 lead early in the semifinal rematch, before allowing eight runs in the eventual defeat.

Shaw, a left-handed junior, went five innings with one earned run against Kansas State and didn’t leave with a decision. Dutton, a right-handed senior, went five and one-third innings with four earned runs against Oklahoma and eventually got hit with the loss. Voegele, a right-handed freshman, went five innings with seven earned runs against TCU and didn’t leave with a decision either.

Kansas’ bullpen had its own highlights during the Big 12 tournament. For one there was Hunter Cranton, a redshirt senior right-handed pitcher, who earned the save in the Kansas State win and the victory in the TCU win. But it also faltered at times, including not being able to hold onto the lead redshirt junior right-handed pitcher J’Briell Easley — who went four and two-thirds innings with three earned runs — left the game with Friday in what became the team’s second loss against Oklahoma.

“What was going right for me is, I just think back to when coach (Fitzgerald) told me to trust the process,” said Easley, speaking to reporters postgame after collecting 11 strikeouts against the Sooners. “We’ve had our ups and downs all year. I was hurt. Came back this year. Coach (Fitzgerald) believed in me. (Scott) believed in me. Gave me the ball for that game, and I just — my teammates told me they’d carry me off the field if I needed to, so I just did what I had to do.”

There’s no telling if surviving that second matchup against Oklahoma would have led to a Big 12 tournament championship. Maybe Shaw starts again and enjoys another quality outing. Maybe Shaw struggles on the mound in the way some of his teammates did, or someone else starts and that individual struggles, and it would have been up to the bullpen to help take Kansas to the title.

Regardless, the chance was there for the Jayhawks (31-23) to represent the lower seeds in the Big 12 tournament and play for the championship. The chance was there, despite the strategy with their starting pitchers not playing out exactly as it could have, or as it certainly looked like it might earlier in the week. The fate of their season is out of their hands now, and they might not get a chance to play again for some time.

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Inside Kansas baseball’s Big 12 tournament pitching strategy