The Morning Stake: Baseball Wins Against Abilene Christian; Corey Taylor Named to Reliever Watch List

In this Morning’s Stake: the baseball team wins big; Corey Taylor is named to a watch-list; Cara Custer is named the Big 12 pitcher of the week and more.

Photo via Charles Henry @ Flickr.

Baseball Throttles ACU. This game was close for the first six innings, essentially a 1 run game either way, and then, Texas Tech opened up a can in the 7th inning, 8 runs (including 3 ACU errors), leading to a 10-2 win over Abilene Christian (recap and box score). Ty Damron was terrific as the starter, going 6.2 innings, allowing 4 hits and 2 runs (neither earned), while walking 1 and striking out 6. He didn’t get the win, but Matt Custred pitched a third of an inning and did get the win. Stephen Smith had a home run and was 2 for 5 on the day. Tyler Neslony was 2 for 3 with a walk and an RBI, Eric Gutierrez was 1 for 3, scoring 2 runs, and walking 2 and Tanner Gardner was 1 for 4 with 2 RBI.

And here we go. Texas Tech will host Oklahoma State this weekend in a huge series. Oklahoma State is 10-5 and sits at the top of the Big 12 standings tied with Oklahoma, while Texas Tech is 9-6 and 2 games ahead of TCU who is 7-6.

Taylor Named to Midseason Stoppper of the Year Watch List. Congrats to pitcher Corey Taylor who has been added to the National Collegiate Baseball Writers’ Association Midseason Stopper of the Year Watch List. No big deal here, as Taylor leads the country with a 0.36 ERA, is 3-0 and has 28 strikeouts to 11 walks.

Custer Named Big 12 Pitcher of the Week. Seems like there’s a Texas Tech athlete winning these things every other day, this time it is pitcher Cara Custer who was named the Big 12 Pitcher of the Week:

Custer went 2-0 with a 1.66 earned-run average against the Cowgirls, leading the Red Raiders to their third three-game sweep of a Big 12 opponent in school history and their first series win over Oklahoma State in Stillwater since 2007.

Clark is Pretty Good. Trent Clark could very well never actually play baseball for Texas Tech as he’s very likely to be one of the first 20 or so players drafted in the MLB Draft.