Bubble or Bust: Can Baylor Make a Last-Minute Run To The Postseason or Is It Too Late?

SicEm365’s Levi Caraway and Grayson Grundhoefer evaluate if Baylor baseball can make a last-minute postseason push.

Head coach Mitch Thompson’s squad currently sits at 67th in RPI, with the 20th SOS and holds a 25-23 (11-13) record with two remaining regular-season series on the ledger: UCF and Utah. Do the Bears find a way to make it to a regional for the first time since 2019?

Levi: No. In my opinion, those chances went out the window when the Bears punted their Saturday game against rival TCU into a doubleheader on Sunday. Although right-handed pitcher Zack Wallace put together an incredible outing in the first game of the doubleheader, Baylor saw a late 4-0 lead slip away and then got blown out in the finale to drop the series.

From that point forward, the Bears struggled to rebound from the demoralizing defeat and reeled off four straight losses, one to a lowly Sam Houston team and then were swept in Tempe by No. 25 Arizona State. In that week-and-a-half span, Baylor’s momentum crashed, and its RPI tanked from 32nd to 57th.

The Bears had one final push this past weekend with Texas Tech coming to town, and after taking the first two games of the series, they couldn’t hold on to secure the sweep. With the Red Raiders being so bad this year, a single home loss dropped Baylor nearly 10 spots in RPI, from 57th to 66th.

Then, on Tuesday night, the Bears had an opportunity to make up for lost ground with a Q1 road win over Texas State, but it never really felt like the game was of utmost importance to the coaching staff.

Currently, Baylor sits at 67th in RPI with these final six games to play in the regular season. The margin for error doesn’t exist, and I’m not even sure whether winning four or five of these next six games would put the Bears back onto the bubble heading into the Big 12 Tournament.

Ignoring that six-game losing streak from a few weeks ago, the frustrating thing is that had the Bears beat Texas Tech on Sunday and Texas State last night, they still would have put themselves very much within striking range of an at-large bid with an RPI somewhere in the 45-50 range.

Then again, with how the bullpen is pitching and how the lineup is hitting right now, outside of Travis Sanders and Tyce Armstrong, I’m not sure Baylor has the horses to make a legitimate run down the stretch. Winning these next two series feels like an incredibly tall task.

Grayson: I picked Baylor to sneak into a regional in the offseason, so I am going to just roll with it even though there aren’t a ton of reasons to do so. I am going to try to find some optimism here.

UCF is a very mediocre hitting team but a great pitching team. These games should be low scoring, and if the Bears’ pitching staff can put together a strong weekend, they can pull off the series win.

If they win that series, the tournament path is in front of them going into the Utah series. Win the series, and you are in. The Utes are one of the worst pitching teams in the league, but are a solid-hitting team. Basically, the complete opposite of UCF. It’s a situation where your bats have to come through, and if your staff pitches well, then you should be in good shape.

I think Baylor takes both series and sneaks into a regional for the first time since 2019. It’s right there!