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Rice Baseball 2024 Season Review: Bullpen

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The bullpen made improvements as the 2024 Rice baseball season progressed, turning into a dependable unit by season’s end.

It was a rocky start for the Rice baseball bullpen. It took a few weeks for the staff to figure out who they could trust in the most high-leverage moments and for the players put into those positions to feel comfortable in their own shoes. Once everything came together, though, this pitching staff really excelled, providing plenty of backing for the starting pitching and give the Owls a shot to win some ballgames. For the purposes of this discussion, we focused on players who through at least 20 innings this season.

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Rice Baseball squanders late lead, falling to ECU in AAC Tournament

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Rice Baseball started strong before everything went wrong in a disastrous 12-run eighth inning that sent the Owls from an upset bid to an elimination game.

Days removed from a disastrous one-inning start, perhaps his worst of the season, Rice baseball hurler JD McCracken delivered an incredible bounce-back performance. On an afternoon when his team desperately needed him to deliver, the Owls’ typical Saturday starter tossed six shutout innings, allowing just two hits, neither of which left the infield.

“They didn’t really get a chance to see him last time we faced them,” head coach Jose Cruz Jr. said of McCracken’s big day. “He had some really good bullpens after that and we thought he was the best matchup for them and he proved us right. He pitched great, man. He was very competitive, tough, on a really good hitting team and he held them down pretty ferociously.”

Thanks to McCracken, through seven innings, everything was going right for the underdogs. A Rice team that was outscored 29-11 in three games this past weekend in Greenville, to that point, played strong defense, committed zero errors, and executed just well enough on offense to spot them a 4-0 lead midway through the eighth inning. That’s when disaster struck.

Kyte McDonald lost a ball in the sun which resulted in a leadoff triple. ECU loaded the bases and proceeded to take the lead on three consecutive bloop singles, which landed just past the heads of the Owls’ infielders. There was a botched double play ball. Nothing was hit hard off ace reliever Davion Hickson, but ECU just kept coming. McDonald lost another ball in the sun a few batters later before the Pirates eventually broke the game open with a bases-loaded triple off Tom Vincent.

“I haven’t really been a part of anything quite like it,” Cruz said of the decisive eighth inning. “It just seemed like it was just one thing after another after another. A couple plays that we should have executed that probably would have changed the entire inning early on and we just didn’t get it done.”

Trailing 4-0, ECU had scored 12 unanswered runs, tattering the boxscore of the Owls’ best relief pitchers and ruining what began as a storybook afternoon for Rice baseball.

“Ultimately there’s 27 outs and we were just a little short there at the end.”

The 12-run eighth-inning implosion exacerbated what had been a 1-for-11 outing with runners in scoring position for Rice hitters with 11 runners left on base. An ineffective offensive day combined with a bad inning to end all bad innings sent the Owls to the loser’s bracket. The next time they play, tomorrow against UAB, their season will be on the line.

More: Parker Smith’s journey from hometown kid to Rice Baseball ace

Cruz will turn to Parker Smith to start that elimination game. “He’s been our ace the entire year, for a couple years, really. He’s going to be ready to go and I’m sure he’s going to be chomping at the bit to get out there,” Cruz said.

“It stinks at the moment, but we got to try and shake it off and be as prepared as possible for tomorrow.”

Up Next: vs 5-Seed UAB – Wednesday, May 22 at 12:00 p.m. CT

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Rice Baseball wins battle of the Owls over Florida Atlantic

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Rice Baseball took two of three from FAU in their final home series of the weekend, taking one step closer to a berth in the conference tournament.

FRIDAY | Rice 5 – FAU 4

Parker Smith and Davion Hickson combined to pitch nine innings of four-run ball in the series opener with Hickson taking over for Smith with two away in the sixth and going the rest of the way. Hickson’s lone blemish was a leadoff home run in the ninth which allowed FAU to tie the game 4-4.

Last Time Out: Rice Baseball splits season series with Lamar

With the threat of extra innings looming, Manny Garza, who had already delivered a go-ahead home run, led off with a single. Jacob Devenny got the runner to third with a double down the line. The tying run scored on the next play when Rank hit a high hopper to shortstop who tried unsuccessfully to turn two, allowing Rice to win the game in walk off fashion.

SATURDAY (AM) | FAU 6 – Rice 5

After trading a run apiece in the early innings, FAU jumped in front with three runs in the third, forcing Rice starter JD McCracken from the game early. Tyler Hamilton came through with 3.1 clutch innings out of the pen, striking out four without allowing a hit. He handed the ball to Jackson Blank, who was tagged for two more runs in the seventh.

Facing a five-run deficit, Rice did all they could to make things interesting in the final frame. The Owls loaded the bases for Pierce Gallo who launched a grand slam over the right field fence. Eric Correa doubled to get the tying run to second, but he was stranded there, leaving Rice just run short of a thrilling comeback.

SATURDAY (PM) | Rice 5 – FAU 4

Tucker Alch delivered a gem in the second half of Saturday’s doubleheader, throwing 5.1 innings of one-run ball, allowing four hits with four strikeouts. A two-out RBI single in the second inning was the lone blemish on his resume, but even that run came after he’d been staked to a 2-0 advantage. Those runs, both unearned, came courtesy of multiple FAU errors in the first inning and a sac fly from Jack Riedel.

More: Jose Cruz Jr. and the trajectory of Rice Baseball

Both sides traded zeroes for quite a while after those early runs to open the game until the bats woke up in the bottom of the sixth inning. Rice scored three in that frame. FAU answered with three of their own in their next two trips to the plate, setting up a pressure-packed ninth inning which ended with a strike ’em out, throw ’em out double play.

THREE FOR THE ROAD

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1. Manny Garza heating up

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ON DECK | vs Texas Southern (Tues), at ECU (Thr-Sat)

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Lamar avenges midweek loss, splits season series with Rice Baseball

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A week removed from beating Lamar on the road, Rice Baseball fell to the Cardinal at Reckling Park, evening the season series with the nearby foe.

Injuries and bullpen preservation for the upcoming weekend series against FAU left Rice baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. with some tough decisions in the Owls’ second midweek game in two days. He opted to hand the ball to Tucker Alch, who had recently cemented himself as the Sunday man for the club. He went two innings against Lamar, falling behind 2-0 when he left the mound and forcing the team into comeback mode once again.

Rice got one run back in the bottom of the second, cashing in on a home run from Jack Riedel, his team-leading 14th blast of the season. That one-run deficit would persist for two more innings before Lamar roughed up Karl Ralamb and Reed Gallant to the tune of five runs in the fifth inning before Tyler Hamilton came in to extinguish the threat.

Last Time Out: Texas A&M bats too much for Rice Baseball in midweek tilt

The damage had been done, though. Trailing 7-1 Rice was able to chip away in the later innings but never truly come close to threatening to take the lead. The loss evens the season series with Lamar. The Owls took the first game a week ago in Beaumont.

What it means | Waiting for the weekend

The decision to throw Alch on Wednesday tentatively points towards the potential of a new Sunday starter. Perhaps Davion Hickson is given a chance to stretch out in a starting role? Or could Alch still be available as the pitching staff treats this as more of a midweek bullpen appearance? Either option could be viable at this point.

Regardless of which way that decision goes, it’s worth noting who did not throw at all this week. Hickson wasn’t used against Texas A&M or Lamar. Tom Vincent didn’t throw either. The same is true for Jackson Blank and Garrett Stratton. This has all the markings of an intentional decision by the coaching staff to save their bullets for the games that matter the most.

Getting the series win against FAU this weekend remains the top priority. It’s pretty clear by the decisions the Owls made on the mound they weren’t pulling out all the stops to win these midweek contests and that strategy was probably the best option available to them at this present moment. Now they’ve got to prove themselves right and pitch well this weekend.

ON DECK | vs FAU (Fri-Sun)

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Rice Baseball salvages series finale against Charlotte

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Rice Baseball dropped a Friday doubleheader but rallied to salvage the series finale on Sunday against Charlotte, avoiding a sweep.

FRIDAY (AM) | Charlotte 5 – Rice 4

It took Parker Smith a while to settle in on the road against the Charlotte bats. He labored through the first and second innings, giving up three runs, no thanks to the defense behind him. By the third inning, he was in a groove, battling through 6.1 innings and surrendering five runs, only three of which were earned.

Last Time Out: Rice Baseball hangs on to beat Lamar

The suspect defensive showing — the Owls were officially saddled with two errors — wasn’t assuaged by offensive production. Rice scored one run apiece in the fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth innings, failing to convert in clutch situations and falling in a one-run game that could have gone quite differently.

FRIDAY (PM) | Charlotte 9 – Rice 3

Rice struck first in the second game of the Friday doubleheader, taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the third, grabbing two runs from a bases-loaded, no-out situation. That would prove to be a crucial missed opportunity to do more damage when Owls’ starter JD McCracken failed to make it through the fourth inning, ceding to Jackson Blank with Rice trailing 4-2 in the fourth.

Blank and Tyler Hamilton would wade through the remainder of the game, combing to allow 11 hits and five runs. The offense was done, though. Rice managed just one more run for the remainder of the contest, an RBI single from Ben Dukes in the seventh.

SUNDAY | Rice 8 – Charlotte 5

Things started off sour for Rice baseball in the series finale. Starter Tucker Alch was lifted in the second inning after allowing four runs. Being forced to bring in Davion Hickson that early certainly wasn’t the plan, but he delivered five dazzling, scoreless innings anyway, striking out 10 of the 19 batters he faced. That respite allowed the Rice bats to get rolling.

More: Jose Cruz Jr. and the trajectory of Rice Baseball

Rice scored three in the fourth, two in the fifth, two more in the sixth and another in the seventh. All but two of those eight runs came via the long ball, of which the Owls had three on the day. Staked to an 8-4 advantage Tom Vincent finished the final 2.1 innings, securing the win.

THREE FOR THE ROAD

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1. Stranded

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ON DECK | at Texas A&M (Tues), vs Lamar (Wed), vs FAU (Fri-Sun)

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