West Virginia avoids trap, prepares for what's next
Manager Randy Mazey informed his West Virginia baseball team prior to the second of three meetings with the Marshall that it had all the makings of a classic trap game.
To further elaborate that point, Mazey even asked players on his team to define what a trap was and while three tried and were unsuccessful, finally somebody hit it.
And the definition eventually provided was to try to catch somebody by surprise when they’re not expecting it.
“That’s what this game was all about. A potential trap because we beat them pretty bad in Charleston, we thought it was going to be easy,” he said. “We’ve got Oklahoma coming up, they’re in first place and guys look ahead. We came off an emotional weekend with Ohio State so all that lines up.”
Turns out the players got the message loud and clear as the Mountaineers rolled to a 15-0 win over the Thundering Herd inside Kendrick Family Ballpark. West Virginia had five home runs and eight extra base hits, while six pitchers combined to spin a six-hit shutout with 13 strikeouts.
And the skipper takes some credit for guiding his team on the right path.
“Since you talk about it ahead of time they don’t catch you off guard and they don’t trap you. Most coaches just talk about trap games after the fact, but you can avoid them if you let the guys know there’s the potential for that if you don’t come out to play but we really came out to play today,” Mazey said.
It was quite the bounce back after a disappointing weekend series where the Mountaineers dropped two of three to Ohio State including a 26-11 loss in the series finale. It’s the ebbs and flows of baseball and now over the past two games West Virginia is even in the category of run differential.
“You’re going to play games like we did on Sunday and be on the losing end but sometimes you’re going to be on the winning end. Over the course of a long season those things happen,” Mazey said.
That hasn’t been made easy this season due to all of the ins and outs with the lineup this season as the Mountaineers are still waiting on the returns of infielder JJ Wetherholt and Logan Sauve. But when the offense is producing like this, it creates some interesting problems down the line.
“When we get the whole team together somebody has to go from the field to the dugout,” he said. “They’re making that decision pretty tough on me.”
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