TCU Baseball: What Did We Learn

Welcome back to another "What Did We Learn" baseball edition. This week will be unlike the normal ones as it will also be a quick preview for the weekend series as the TCU Horned Frogs take on the Fresno State Bulldogs.

In a season where the Horned Frogs are looking to rebound after a disappointing 2024 season, they look at the results of the 2023 season, where the journey ended in Omaha, for inspiration. Where is a better place to look than the two players who impacted that season the most: Kole Klecker and Anthony Silva.

In 2023, Klecker led the team in innings pitched with 96.2 and had an ERA of 37.2, finishing with ten wins. As a freshman, Klecker found himself in the "Ace" role for Kirk Saarloos and was expected to deliver big starts, which he did. After a disappointing season in 2024, where he was moved to the bullpen, Klecker started the 2025 season sidelined with an oblique injury.

He made his first appearance of the 2025 season in an 11-1 victory over Air Force, where the right-hander with one inning pitched with a strikeout. While the sample size isn't large, the analytics showed his fastball had over 20 inches of vertical break, which is excellent for a primary fastball thrower. Klecker's kryptonite has been allowing home runs. He gave up 17 in 2023, and 11 in 2024 is less than half the innings, leading the team in both years.

This weekend is a great weekend to let him get some more innings as Fresno State comes into the weekend, hitting .266 on the season while averaging 5.3 runs per game. They don't have any power hitters as Bobby Blandford paces the team with two home runs this season, so he won't have to worry about the long ball as much this weekend.

If Klecker can succeed with a fastball, producing more swing and misses, he can rebound to his 2023 year, which the Frogs could use this season.

Anthony Silva has been a defensive guru for the Horned Frogs the past two seasons, including making headlines with a diving grab up the middle in Omaha during the 2023 run. Silva was an elite-level shortstop on the field and at the plate, finishing the season with a .330 batting average and 50 RBIs.

In 2024, his batting average dropped over 60 points, finishing at .268 with only 33 RBIs on the season. His 2025 season started the same way, sporting an average below .200 on the season before the series against Southern Miss, a series Silva found himself benched for the first time in his TCU career.

Since then, Silva has been 7-11 at the plate with a home run and has the highest batting average on the season with a .314. Saarloos was asked about his thoughts on Silva's performance at the plate. He credited it to how the Junior handled himself after getting benched that Friday night. "he never pouted about it, nor did he stop caring for his team, and because of that, baseball has been rewarding him." This is true. Silva never had a bad game where he looked lost in every at-bat; he was a product of bad luck, and baseball was baseball.

Silva has the tools he always has, and this weekend's matchup against the Bulldogs will also be a good test for him. The Bulldogs have a 5.15 team ERA and are still trying to navigate a bullpen that, outside of JT Guerrero, has not been great this season. Jack Anker, their Friday night starter, is the only qualified pitcher with under a three ERA on the season, and the other two weekend starters, Aidan Cremaros and Hayden Crews, have over a six ERA.

This is the weekend to see even more growth from two of the program's cornerstones as they navigate what they mean to the 2025 season and for the rest of the team to rally around them as they wrap up their last non-conference series.