West Virginia baseball will play in their second elimination game in as many days when they face Kentucky on Sunday, with first pitch set for 12 p.m.
West Virginia beat Ball State in the loser’s bracket 13-5, while Kentucky fell to Indiana 5-3 in the winner’s bracket game.
West Virginia has multiple options to start the game, with it figuring to be either Carson Estridge or Robby Porco. Porco was the Sunday starter for the majority of the year for WVU, but ran into trouble early in his last appearance against Texas Tech on May 14, and did not even record an out.
Estridge last pitched game one of the Texas series and has been more reliable than Porco as of late for WVU. Although he struggled against the Longhorns, Estridge had previously been solid in midweek starts for the Mountaineers.
Another route WVU could go is with Grant Siegel or Gavin Van Kempen.
“Next question please,” West Virginia head coach Randy Mazey joked when asked about who is pitching Sunday. “We’ll talk about that and see who the options are. That’s the reason we started a lot of different guys in those midweek games this year, to give a lot of different guys experienced because we knew this day was coming where somebody was going to have to get a start and you didn’t want it to be their first start.”
As for the Wildcats, they used Zack Lee as their starter on Saturday, and he threw 106 pitches, putting him out of contention to pitch tomorrow. On Friday, the Wildcats used two pitchers in Travis Smith — who started 12 games this year — and he threw 76 pitches. The Wildcats then used Mason Moore, who threw 50 pitches. It is likely Moore will be available, but in a limited role.
Kentucky also used Darren Williams on Saturday, throwing one inning, but it took him 27 pitches to do so. Williams has not pitched on back-to-back days this season.
An option for Kentucky is Tyler Bosma. Bosma has not pitched since May 13, and has started 13 games on the year. Bosma has a 5.61 ERA, and has struck out 35 in 51.1 innings. Logan Martin or Austin Strickland also have a lot of experience pitching multiple innings and both have started games this year.
First pitch for the contest is set for 12 p.m., with the winner facing Indiana on Sunday night.
Updated Bracket:
