Texas Tech baseball: Red Raiders get the season started with a win

Hero of the day: Clayton Beeter

In 2019, the most pitches Clayton Beeter threw in a game was 51, which came against Kansas in just 1.1 innings of work.  That day, he gave up three runs (two earned) while walking three hitters and allowing two hits while throwing a wild pitch as his worst stretch of the season continued.  It was the third time in four outings that he had allowed two earned runs.

Topping that pitch total by 17 on Friday, he didn’t have to work nearly as hard.  Walking only one Huskie and giving up two hits, he was efficient as he averaged just 11.3 pitches per inning.

That’s a sign he was attacking the zone.  Trusting in his fastball to get ahead in counts, he worked at almost a lightning-quick pace, which his teammates had to appreciate on such a blustery day.

He was then able to use a nice changeup and an effective curveball to finish off at-bats on his way to six Ks.  Though his curveball rode a little higher in the zone than would be considered ideal, the fact that he was able to get three pitches over for strikes was important.

Typically, relievers make their living on only two quality pitches because they almost never face the same hitter twice.  Thus, batters don’t have a chance to get used to seeing their offspeed offerings over the course of a game.

But starters have to possess a larger repertoire of pitches to keep the opposing bats off balance as they go through the order multiple times.  That was what Beeter was able to do as he faced 21 hitters.

Could we be seeing the emergence of a new weekend rotation starter in Beeter?  If so, the Red Raiders will be even better on the mound than we expected them to be as no one saw one of last year’s top relievers joining the rotation and proving to be yet another very good starter for Tadlock to run out.