Chip Hale isn’t one to regularly look at conference standings, but then Arizona dropped two of three last weekend at Texas Tech. That dropped the Wildcats to fifth in the Big 12, which if the regular season ended now would mean having to play a day earlier in the conference tournament rather than getting a bye into the quarterfinals
“We want to get ourselves back in that top four, and we have a tough schedule to do it,” Hale said Wednesday.
On paper, the remaining Big 12 slate is conducive to getting a top-4 seed. Arizona (31-13, 13-8) finishes up with series against Utah and Houston, who are a combined 12-29 in Big 12 play. But before that is a visit from TCU, one of the teams the Wildcats are chased in the standings.
The Horned Frogs (32-13, 14-7) are tied with ASU (30-16) for third with Kansas (36-10, 15-6) a game ahead in second while West Virginia (37-6, 16-3) is two games up on the field.
Arizona is 21-3 at Hi Corbett Field but TCU is 11-5 in true road games, including 5-4 in the Big 12 but it lost its last road two weeks ago series at UCF.
Neither team is currently projected to host a regional, but Arizona and TCU are both still in the conversation. Loser of this series may effectively be eliminated from that chance.
“It is a huge series,” UA closer Tony Pluta said. “They are a great team. I think we’re better. I think we’re better than everyone in this conference. If we can take this series right here, it’s gonna put us in a really good spot for the tournament. It’s paramount. This is the biggest series of the year.”
Rotation change
Sophomore right-hander Owen Kramkowski will start the series opener, the first change to Arizona’s weekend rotation this season. He will replace redshirt sophomore righty Collin McKinney, who will pitch Saturday night, while freshman righty Smith Bailey remains on Sunday.
Kramkowski has been Arizona’s most consistent starter, despite having the highest ERA (4.63), because he has gone longer in games and doesn’t give up free passes. In 58.1 innings he has issued eight walks and hit six batters, ranking 11th nationally in walks per nine innings (1.23) and 12th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.63).
In four April starts, Kramkowski was 4-0 with a 2.60 ERA, striking out 18 and walking three over 27.2 innings.
“He’s earned it,” Hale said of Kramkowski’s promotion. “You want your Friday night guy to be able to to log the most innings, and he’s done that and really won big games for us. So hopefully he sets the tone on Friday night for us. McKinney, it gives him another day, a full week of rest, and he’ll feel better.”
McKinney, who lasted only 2.2 innings in his last start, had a neck injury flare up at Texas Tech that impacted his forearm. He has only a 3.02 ERA and a .232 opposing batting average but has 28 walks and 11 HBP in 44.2 innings, only getting through five in three of 11 starts.
“We think he’s better,” Hale said. “His bullpen was outstanding this weekend, so let’s hope he can give us six or seven innings on Saturday.”
Summer substitute
Brendan Summerhill was diagnosed with a Grade 1 hamstring strain after getting hurt running out a ground ball Saturday at Texas Tech. That injury came in just his second game back after missing a month with a fractured right hand, and in his brief return he went 3 for 6 with a home run and four RBI including a 2-run double at Tech.
When he went down it looked like the air went out of Arizona in Lubbock, as it was leading 3-2 at the time but ended up getting outscored 20-5 the rest of the series.
“You could visibly see guys frustrated,” Hale said. “Coaches, myself included, extremely frustrated, because of what you saw (last week) against Arlington, the adrenaline that he gave the team. The RBIs he knocked in the first couple at-bats at Texas Tech. You know how important he is in the lineup. We’re going to have to win games without him, and when he comes back, he’s just going to be a bigger boost.”
Hale said the target is to get Summerhill back for the May 9-11 series with Utah, though his player has other ideas.
“He seems to think he’s going to play this weekend, but he’s going to have to prove it,” Hale said. “He’s going to have to be able to run. Obviously it would be great to put him in there and let him hit or pinch hit or something like that, but we can’t take a chance that he he blows it up worse, and then he can’t play in the conference tournament, at Houston, wherever it is or whenever it is. I mean, whether it’s DH or pinch hit, you know what happens when a guy hits a ground ball, he’s going to run as hard as again, then it’s gonna go bad. So we’ll make sure it’s 100 percent.”
In the meantime, the Wildcat who initially replaced him the first time Summerhill got hurt is ready to do so again.
Gunner Geile made his collegiate debut as a defensive replacement on March 23 at West Virginia and ended up getting his first career hit later that game. He made his first start March 26 against Seattle and has been in the starting lineup 14 times with 19 total appearances, hitting .241 with nine RBI overall and .268 in Big 12 play.
Not bad for someone who almost didn’t make the team.
“In the fall, we had to cut six guys, and he was unable to perform because he was injured all fall,” Hale said of Geile, the top position player from the 2024 recruiting class. “I didn’t feel comfortable when we started talking about putting him in that group of cutting people, because I wanted to see him play. We’d see him as a high schooler, obviously, and thought highly of him. He was kind of on the bubble, because we had to make those cuts to get the 40, and we had a lot of guys that played really well in the fall, but I didn’t feel comfortable even including him in that conversation.”
Geile, a Tucsonan who played with Mason White at Salpointe Catholic High School before finishing his prep career at IMG Academy in Florida, said the key to coming back from injury was to make the most of the opportunities he got in the preseason.
“You don’t want to try to do too much, because you don’t want to make up for what you’ve lost, or even think with that mindset, you just want to go out and do what you can,” he said. “During the preseason you have five to 10 scrimmages. So that’s at least 20 at-bats where you have good opportunity and you’re facing good arms.”
Size doesn’t matter
At 5-foot-9, Pluta doesn’t project an image of a shutdown reliever. But he’s been just that for Arizona, recording 10 saves in 11 tries this season, tops in the Big 12 and already good enough for a tie for 4th-most in school history, and he’s allowed runs in just two of 20 appearances.
Four of the five runs he’s given up came April 1 at Grand Canyon, the only time since March 2 he’s come into a game when Arizona wasn’t either leading or tied. It was also a game that Pluta, an aerospace engineering major, arrived to late after having to stay behind in Tucson to complete a test.
“I had my test, and then we got stuck in traffic,” he said. “There was a terrible accident that we had to get around., and we were in the car for four hours. So I was a little little tight, but I was still able to get my normal warm up in. It was during the game, so it wasn’t normal, but I was ready to go, and I just kind of fumbled it there.”
Since then Pluta has yielded four baserunners in 7.1 innings over his last six outings, all producing saves. He has a 1.93 ERA and 0.81 WHIP for the season, 0.84/0.88 in Big 12 play, with almost all of his appearances coming at the end of games.
“It’s heart-pounding,” Pluta said. “It’s kind of crazy, but at the same time, if you can just slow the game down, you just realize that it is a game. It’s not the most serious thing in the world, so that’s kind of how I like to look at it. But at the same time, it’s, it’s one of the most exhilarating experiences that I’ve ever experienced.”
Scouting TCU
The Horned Frogs have the best pitching staff in the Big 12 during conference play, with a 4.43 ERA and .235 opposing batting average. Friday night starter Tommy LaPour is 7-2 with a 2.14 ERA and has allowed eight earned runs in seven Big 12 starts.
Hale said he expects TCU to throw a lot of change-ups this weekend, the byproduct of head coach Kirk Saarloos being known for his change during a 7-year MLB career.
TCU is hitting .304 in Big 12 play, compared to .261 for Arizona, with freshman Sawyer Strosnider hitting .405 in conference games and sophomore Chase Brunson reaching base in 43 straight games before going 0 for 4 on Tuesday.
This is the third consecutive season Arizona and TCU have played, with the Horned Frogs winning 12-4 in the Fayetteville Regional in 2023 and 6-1 at home in a midweek game last season. TCU owns a 7-4 lead in the all-time series.
On TCU’s staff is former UA assistant Dave Lawn, who was with the Wildcats from 2016-23. He was Hale’s first pitching coach before Kevin Vance was hired last season.