Sooners drop midweek clash to Dallas Baptist

It’s a good news and a bad news situation for Sooners baseball. We’ll start with the bad. Oklahoma lost to Dallas Baptist (again) on Tuesday night, 6-0.

Okay. Now the good. Oklahoma won’t have to see the Patriots again this season unless it’s at some point during the postseason. Ultimately, that would be a good thing.

Ethan Mann opened the scoring with a second-inning blast to give Dallas Baptist a lead it would never look back on. Chayston Krauss added a two-run home run in the fifth inning to extend the lead to 3-0.

“The same way we won this weekend we got beat today,” said Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson. “They made some good plays. We got a ball up, they hit it. They got another ball up, they hit it. We couldn’t ever sustain a rally. We couldn’t get a leadoff hitter on. That’s a part of our offense. We’ve got to get leadoff hitters on.

“We’ve got to make productive outs. That’s what we’ve done all year. It’s just about picking each other up. It is always going to be about the baseball. Never going to be about the opponent.” 

A frustrating night for Oklahoma offensively on the heels of a four-game win streak and its first appearance of the year in all five major college baseball polls.

Oklahoma threatened in the home half of the third following a pair of two-out hits but ultimately stranded the runners in scoring position. Same could be said for the next inning after Jackson Nicklaus and Michael Snyder earned a pair of free bases. 

Jason Walk went 2-for-3 making the start in centerfield in place of the injured John Spikerman, nearly logging more than half of the Sooners five hits on the night.

Dallas Baptist tacked on three runs in the ninth for good measure. It was the first shutout loss since Oklahoma was blanked by Wichita State in 2022.   

SHIFTING FOCUS TO THE WEEKEND

Now Oklahoma heads into a weekend series playing host to West Virginia. The Big 12 run has been good. In fact, it’s been really good. Oklahoma heads into the weekend with an unblemished 6-0 record in conference play. 

But a lesson needs to have been learned following Tuesday night’s setback.

“It’s never easy to flush a loss. It’s not a loss it’s a learning opportunity for us. Like today what I told the team it’s just about playing baseball,” Johnson said. “Just about understanding the game one pitch at a time. It’s about understanding you’re playing against the ball. 

“It’s really the game of baseball itself. You’re never going to perfect the game of baseball. You just play the game one pitch at a time. You’re really playing against the ball itself. Whatever the ball tells you to do, that’s what you’re playing against. We’ve got to continue to grow in that area and be mentally tough to do that.” 

SPIKERMAN OUT INDEFINITELY 

And the Sooners will need to be mentally tough. On Tuesday? Oklahoma found out it will be without the services of John Spikerman for an extended period to remove the hamate bone in his hand. 

“He swung at a two-strike pitch (on Saturday night). A lot of right-handed throwers and left-handed hitters get it in their hand,” Johnson said. “It’s a hamate bone in there. It’s really a non-essential bone and it was floating (in his hand).

“They took it out. He had surgery today, which was really good. Our medical team did a great job by getting in here. He gets hurt on a Saturday, how many times do you turn around have surgery on a Tuesday? That’s really huge.” 

His timetable for return is expected to be four-to-six weeks, which sounds ugly. But there is an opportunity the speedy junior centerfielder could be available to pinch run in the coming weeks for the Sooners.