Cowboy Baseball Falls Short, Faces Elimination Game Tonight

Saturday, May 25

Oklahoma City, OK

2:00 PM

Oklahoma State University

34-18

TCU

32-25

TCU

Oklahoma State

Cade Cabbiness

Photo by: Scott Weaver/Big 12 Conference

Cowboy Baseball Falls Short, Faces Elimination Game Tonight

May 25, 2019 | Cowboy Baseball

Box Score

Box Score (PDF)
Holliday postgame

OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma State's Cade Cabbiness belted a game-tying grand slam in the seventh inning, but the third-seeded Cowboys could not complete the comeback against No. 6-seed TCU as they dropped their first game of the Big 12 Baseball Championship, 13-6, to force an elimination game later tonight at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark.

The loss snapped the 11^th-ranked Cowboys' season-long five-game winning streak as they fell to 34-18; with the win, TCU improved to 31-25. The winner of tonight's game will advance to Sunday's Big 12 Championship title game at 1 p.m. against either West Virginia or Texas Tech.

Cabbiness and Colin Simpson each homered and had two hits against the Horned Frogs to lead the OSU offense.

One of seven pitchers used by OSU in the game, Ben Leeper took the loss on the mound to fall to 3-3 as he faced five batters in the eighth inning and allowed four runs on three hits.

Joe Lienhard made his seventh start of the season for the Cowboys, lasting 2 2/3 innings and allowing four runs on six hits, walking five and striking out one. Following a three-run first inning, Lienhard got out of the second when he induced an inning-ending double play, and after he recorded the first two outs of the third, C.J. Varela came on in relief to make his first appearance since April 16 in a win at home against Dallas Baptist.

The Horned Frogs jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first on RBI doubles from Johnny Rizer and Zach Humphreys and added a fourth run in the third on an RBI single to go up 4-0.

TCU struck again in the fourth on a two-run home run from Josh Watson off of Varela, making the score 6-0. Varela was pulled after 2/3 of an inning, handing the ball off to teammate Noah Sifrit, who made his first appearance since April 27 against Texas Tech.

Simpson got the Cowboys on the board in the bottom of the fourth with his third home run of the tournament and 15^th of the season, a solo shot to dead center that marked the fifth-straight game in which Simpson has homered. The blast was also the 46^th of his career, which moved him into 10^th on OSU's all-time list.

The Pokes scratched another run across in the sixth to cut the deficit to four when Trevor Boone delivered an RBI single that scored Christian Funk from second, although the inning was cut short when Simpson tried to advance to third on the play and was narrowly tagged out.

Mitchell Stone took the mound for the Cowboys in the seventh, replacing Sifrit, who tossed 2 2/3 innings of shutout ball in relief to help the Cowboys' comeback bid.

The Cowboys roared back to knot the score in the seventh inning, all started by back-to-back leadoff walks to Carson McCusker and Jake Taylor. Alix Garcia followed with a single to load the bases and set the table for Cabbiness, who smacked the first pitch he saw over the left-field wall for an opposite-field, game-tying grand slam — his sixth home run of the season.

The game did not remain tied long, however. Leeper entered in the eighth, and TCU immediately reclaimed the lead, capitalizing on a Cowboy defensive error in the outfield that turned a leadoff single into a runner on third. The next Horned Frog batter singled to drive in the go-ahead run, and the Frogs extended the lead to 9-6 with a two-strike, two-RBI double by Watson.

Another RBI single prompted a pitching change for the Pokes, but TCU pushed one more run across in the inning on a passed ball before tacking on two more insurance runs in the ninth.