Staked to a two-run lead in the series opener against No. 15 Arizona before he could even toe the slab, McNeese State southpaw Bryan King fell behind the first Wildcat he faced 3-1. Mitchell Morimoto poked the next pitch for a single.
King uncorked a wild pitch in the middle of the next at-bat, which ended with another single. Runners at the corners and no out, King induced a double-play ball. Damage, nevertheless, was done.
“It’s monumental,” King said of protecting leads. “It’s something as a pitcher that you have to stay getting locked in. You have to fight getting comfortable because, once that happens, you think because you have a lead that you don’t have to be at your best. But you have to be better then and take them out of the game before they get any momentum.”
King, who will make an abbreviated start tonight against Louisiana-Monroe at Joe Miller Park, required 70 pitches to get through 31⁄3 innings, unable to protect the early lead his bats provided. No one could, really.
McNeese held a lead after two innings in each of the four games — three of which were courtesy of first-inning runs before Arizona could take a swing.
The Wildcats hardly needed to swing. McNeese’s pitching staff neglected to command much, gifting an already potent Wildcats offense 36 free bases — four wild pitches, eight hit by pitches and 24 walks — while squandering all four leads.
“Self-inflicted,” said Cowboys coach Justin Hill, whose team also committed seven errors on the weekend. “Whether we had won or not, the most important thing to me is how we played because that’s what’s going to give you the highest percentage chance to win. I’d like to see how it would have been if we had played cleaner … it would have been more enjoyable because the games would have been closer.”
Hill said King, the team’s opening-night starter who’s yet to pitch into the fifth inning across two starts, will throw no more than two innings. It’s akin to King’s normal, weekly side work or bullpen sessions that prepare him for weekend starts.
“The whole point of getting on the mound in a bullpen is to stay sharp and, the thing is, he hasn’t been sharp,” Hill said of King, who’s yielded nine hits and five walks in 7 1⁄3 innings. “I think getting back on the mound in a competitive situation will give him a better opportunity to be good than a good bullpen session. I think it’s more important to get back into the competitive environment rather than just going to throw the bullpen.”
The coaching staff has not planned specifically who will follow King, though Hill mentioned Grant Ashcraft would receive work and the game would dictate who else followed.
Ashcraft threw two clean innings last Tuesday, when McNeese shellacked ULM 32-4 in the Warhawks’ home opener, setting five program records and exploding for a 15-run fifth inning.
As most weekend starters do on midweek road trips, King stayed behind in Lake Charles while his team eviscerated the hapless opponents, pushing its record to 4-0 prior to the Arizona showdown.
“We’re going to come out and try to do it again,” King said. “Just because of our past game, it is just our attitude. We did just get swept and that’s kind of given us a vengeance and we’re coming after them.”
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