Thoughts: A&M leaves itself in a rough position

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BOX SCORE: LINK

* Tough loss for the Aggies, obviously, as they fall to the loser's bracket with a 5-3 loss to Missouri in round two of the Big 12 Tournament. A&M now has an extremely difficult road to climb even to get to Sunday's final. It all starts with an elimination game against Kansas Friday at 7 p.m. Win that and the Ags still have to find a way to beat Missouri twice on Saturday to advance to the championship game.

* The good news is that A&M has the starting pitching to at least give itself a chance to make a run through another 27 innings over the next two days … with Ross Stripling and Rafael Pineda left in the tank. The bad news is that A&M will have to use a ton of pitching in order to have a shot at taking home the trophy in defense of back-to-back tournament titles. And that might have more negative impact than positive heading into next week's regional.

But knowing this coaching staff, they are going to throw the kitchen sink at this deal do whatever it takes to try and win this weekend. A Rob Childress-coached team is not about to let up when a trophy is on the line. That's just how they operate and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's been a great recipe for success throughout the Childress era and easing up in an effort to rest up for next week is the opposite of what has defined Aggie Baseball over the past half-dozen seasons.

* I find myself sitting here dumbfounded as to why Missouri isn't an NCAA Tournament team. The Tigers are loaded with talent up and down the lineup, employ a combination of speed and power, play pretty darn good defense, have starters that can dominate a game when they're on and roll out a crop of relievers that a few CWS-bound teams would love to have.

Yet they came into this week with a lousy 27-26 record. Now they've gotten hot in OKC and they're absolutely rolling right now. It really makes no sense but they have found a way to flip the switch once again with their backs firmly against the wall in "win-or-go-home" time for the team wearing black and gold.

* The story to this game really was execution in the late innings. A&M could manage nothing against right-hander Jeff Emens, who came in for starter Blake Holovach with runners at first and second and one out in the sixth inning after the Aggies had stolen the momentum with a two-run single by Mitchell Nau to trim Mizzou's lead to 4-3.

But Emens slammed the door on the Aggie rally and squashed any momentum that they had built. He struck out Brandon Wood and Krey Bratsen to end the threat in the sixth and wound up facing just one over the minimum over the final 3.2 frames, with Scott Arthur representing A&M's only baserunner during that stretch due to an error on Tigers' shortstop Eric Garcia. No hits, no walks and a season-high six strikeouts for a right-hander that vary rarely relies on the strikeout to get hitters out.

Meanwhile, bullpen issues haunted the Aggies yet again, as major control issues from the typically volatile yet normally effective Kyle Martin led to a gimme run in the bottom of the eighth that made a two-run Tigers cushion feel like a ten-run advantage … especially with the way that Emens was pitching on the other side.

K-Mart came on after Michael Wacha grinded through seven innings without his absolute best stuff but a solid performance, nonetheless. The big, lanky, sidewinding and oftentimes submarine right-hander was more ineffective and erratic than he's been all season. He took the ball in the eighth and proceeded to walk Garcia and Blake Brown to open the frame.

Then he hit Ben Turner in the hip on the first pitch, loading the bases with no outs in a 4-3 game. At that point, his outing was over, and Jason Freeman and Estevan Uriegas had to come out in an effort to put out the fire. And they did a great job, holding Mizzou to just one run in the inning.

* Look … if the Aggies get knocked out of the postseason, it will happen in the eighth or ninth inning. That is clearly A&M's weak spot; it's hard to argue otherwise. Starting pitching … mostly phenomenal. Hitting … good more often than not and been pretty good of late. Certainly not tremendous but well above average and capable of winning you games. Defense … much improved from the start of the season and hasn't killed you in quite some time. Relief pitching … in and out, oftentimes volatile, lacking in true, quality depth, extremely inconsistent and without a true lockdown closer.

To be fair, the 'pen has been much, much improved of late. You don't rip off eight straight wins and 14 out of 16 without some consistency in the late innings. But when they lose a game, you can often look at the box score and point to bullpen woes as a factor in the loss.

Now, A&M was trailing in this one before even going to Martin. But I feel like the Martin freebies took the life out of the team. And with only three outs to work with and a red hot reliever riding high for Mizzou, it was far more difficult to come back from two runs down than just one. Even Tigers head coach Tim Jamieson said after the game that the game would probably have turned out differently had they not scored that insurance run in the ninth.

And the Aggies just gave it to them. Childress or anyone in that dugout — Martin included — would tell you that. I'm hopeful that Martin will get another opportunity to take the ball against KU and will be able to erase this effort from his memory bank. I don't want him to sit on this one for an entire week heading into regional action. We've seen Martin do amazing things for A&M this season and he's pretty special when he's on.

Let's hope we've seen the last of this Kyle Martin and that #32 will use this as motivation to step to the challenge when he's called upon from here on out. Because you and I both know who will be getting the call with the game on the line in the NCAA Tournament. He's got no choice but to put this one behind him and move forward with confidence.

* I'm mixed on the Michael Wacha start, as I'm sure many of you are. He started the game really crisp but he got hit harder and harder as the game wore on. I'm not really sure that fatigue was a factor, because his 102nd pitch — his last of the game — was 96 MPH and he looked great in the last couple of innings. But he did leave a few balls up and got hit hard quite a bit by a free-swinging team that can tattoo any and all mistakes when they're feeling good (which they certainly are right now). Wacha had trouble finishing off hitters after getting ahead in the count, but I really liked the way he battled through it and seemed to get better in the late innings.

In fact, sitting at 102 pitches through seven, I thought that he would most certainly get the ball in the eighth. Wacha has consistently gone 110-plus pitches and I thought Childress would allow him to finish this and see if A&M could manage a run in its last at bat. But I also understand that he gave you everything that he had and you don't want to overuse him prior to the big tournament starting next week.

Also, Martin and the entire bullpen are very well rested at this point. And nobody could have predicted that Martin would have the outing that he had in the eighth. So looking back and knowing how it turned out, it would be really easy to say that you wish Childress would have left Wacha in for the eighth, but I completely understand why he made the choice that he made.

* How about Mitchell Nau? The freshman delivered all three RBI for A&M on the night, including a clutch two-run single up the middle in the bottom of the fifth when the Aggies were in desperate need of momentum after getting down 4-1. He was really the lone bright spot for the Aggie offense in this one, along with Tyler Naquin's 2-for-4 effort.

But I like Mitchell a lot against lefties and I wouldn't be opposed to seeing him get some action against right-handers as long as A&M is fine with Matt Juengel playing third base. He's made the plays that have gone his way this week so he's certainly not hurting you over there at this point. And right now, Nau is a better option than Blake Allemand and I could see him platoon with Chance Bolcerek depending on a lefty/righty matchup. The other thing that I could see is Bolcerek taking more at bats away from Brandon Wood in left field.

* That's about it from Bricktown Ballpark tonight. Time to get after the Jayhawks Friday night at 7 p.m. and get back to Saturday having to beat Mizzou twice to get to the finals. With Ross Stripling on the mound for the Aggies, I certainly like their chances of getting it done in game three and turning things over to Rafael Pineda in the semifinals.