BY GEORGE WATSON l AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

From Garrett Broshuis to Max Scherzer to Aaron Crow, Missouri has developed some of the most dominant college pitchers over the past five years, and 2009 right-hander Kyle Gibson is no exception.

What the Tigers have done after Gibson’s Friday night starts, though, have been some of the more creative moves devised in trying to win a three-game Big 12 Conference series.

And while it hasn’t always worked, it has kept Missouri (21-20, 8-10 in Big 12) in the hunt for a top-five seed in the Big 12 Tournament with three series remaining.

“I think it will be hard for us to win the league, but I think we can finish in the top four, and if we have a good week this week we could be in fourth place with the way this league is,” veteran Tigers head coach Tim Jamieson said. “It’s not anything against the three opponents we have remaining because everybody in this league is a good team. We’ve got three series left and two of them are at home against teams we have historically had success against. Everything is right out there for us.”

Missouri may have just turned the corner in time to make a late-season push. The Tigers, who started the year losing seven of their first eight games, are coming off a series win at Kansas State in which they won the first two games before getting clubbed in the third. In fact, Missouri has won the opener of four of its six Big 12 series so far, thanks mainly to Gibson.

The junior is 6-3 on the year with a 3.00 ERA, and he leads the conference with 90 strikeouts. Of his three losses, two have been by scores of 2-1, and his only bad outing of the season was when he gave up seven runs in just two innings in a 13-1 loss at Oklahoma State a month ago. He is 4-2 in league play with a 3.26 ERA.

“I think Kyle has pitched as well as Aaron did last year,” said Jamieson, who is in his 15th season at Missouri. “He just hasn’t gotten a whole lot of run support in those three losses. He’s been good. He’s a legitimate No. 1 starter.”

After that, though, the starting pitching has been an adventure, so much so that Jamieson has turned to the “Johnny Whole-staff” approach of throwing several pitchers one or two innings each to get nine solid innings on a Saturday, then turning to sophomore right-hander Nick Tepesch to close out things on Sunday.

But the results have been mixed in terms of wins and losses. The pitcher-by-committee tactic has yielded a 3-3 record in Big 12 play with wins against Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Kansas State but losses to Texas, Oklahoma and Baylor. Tepesch is just 1-3 in league action, and the Tigers have lost five of the six Big 12 games in which he’s pitched, beating only Oklahoma.

“We’ve got a deep staff of guys who can go out and attack for an inning,” Jamieson said. “But there’s not very many who can go more than one time through the lineup. (Tepesch) pitched better Sunday than he did against Baylor the week before and we played horribly behind him. He’s been hot and cold but he’s a very capable pitcher.”

Jamieson said the bigger problem for the Tigers has been offense. Missouri ranks last in the Big 12 with a .266 batting average and has scored the third-fewest runs despite playing the second-most games in the conference (41). Missouri also ranks ninth in hits (359) and home runs (21), and only Oklahoma and Baylor have struck out more than the Tigers’ 293 times.

The numbers get worse in Big 12 play. Missouri is hitting just .211 and averaging 3.6 runs per game. The Tigers have scored 10 runs or fewer in four of their six three-game conference series, although they tagged Kansas State for 20 this past weekend.

“We have a bunch of guys offensively who got off to a slow start and didn’t handle it particularly well,” Jamieson said. “We’ve been a little better and our lineup is getting better and swinging the bats better. We’re playing more as a team offensively. There’s no doubt that slow start affected our confidence and we had that issue to overcome. Finally, I think we’re starting to see the light.”

To comment on this story:
george.watson@lubbockonline.com uE06C 766-2166
jeff.walker@lubbockonline.com uE06C 766-8735