Ranked #11 by Baseball America, the TCU Horned Frogs travelled to Los Angeles to face the #8 Cal State Fullerton Titans this weekend. After an impressive 5-2 victory behind the arm of Steven Maxwell on Friday night, the second game of the series was postponed by rain, setting up a Sunday double header to determine the series winner.

Matt Purke took the mound for game 2, but struggled to find the strike zone in 2.2 innings and was pulled trailing 2-1 with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 3rd. Purke's talent is undoubtable, but he will have to develop improved command of the strike zone as he develops throughout this season. Discussing Purke's performance with David, he made a good point that Purke's performance so far seems similar to Winkler last season. He struggled somewhat to start the season, and also early in games, before finding his rhythm as the season progressed. I have faith that Purke will continue to develop as he adds more innings to his resume. Steven Maxwell and Kyle Winkler are performing at a very high level, and I think Purke will join and potentially exceed them once he gets a bit more experience at this level.

One thing Purke needs to work on is balks. He has balked twice now in key situations, and I think he just needs to be coached further on pitching from the stretch. The balk in the 3rd cancelled a flyout and helped fuel CSF's big inning. Purke again showed frustration on the mound after the call, which he clearly disagreed with. He'll need to learn how to control that frustration going forward. That very well could have been the difference in a very close 6-4 game.

After the loss in the early game, there was some doubt as to whether or not the 3rd game would be completed prior to a 4:15 PST deadline for TCU to catch a flight back to Fort Worth. The early game took about 3.5 hours, leaving only about 2 hours for the rubber match. Luckily, TCU's flight was delayed an hour, allowing the game to be played in full. Kyle Winker took the mound at 2:00 PST and was absolutely dealing. He pitched 6 innings, allowing zero earned runs on 4 hits(1 run scored in the 2nd on an error), and striking out 4. Winkler's performance matched that of Maxwell on Friday night and fueled the Frogs to a 8-1 victory.

It was a very close matchup until the 6th, when TCU scored 5 runs to break the game open. 4 of those runs came with 2 outs in the inning, an impressive combination of clutch RBI hitting by Featherson, VonTungeln, Schultz and Holaday. Featherston added RBI in the 7th and 9th innings to seal the game behind impressive relief pitching by Merck and Marshall for a 8-1 final score.

There were almost too many impressive performances to name during this successful weekend series, but I have to single out Jason Coats. Coats was 8 for 14 on the series and scored 7 of the Frogs 17 runs on the weekend. Maxwell and Winkler obviously had impressive performances, but Merck and Marshall have also been outstanding so far this season coming out of the bullpen. Overall, this was an impressive weekend performance from the entire team and we should see the Frogs rise in all of the polls this week after taking 2 of 3 on the road from #8 CSF.