Oklahoma freshman pitchers Cord Rager, Xander Mercurius and Nick Wesloski made a bit of Men’s College World Series history to help the Sooners roll to the championship series.
Rager, Mercurius and Wesloski started Oklahoma’s three wins in Bracket Two play, making the Sooners just the second team since 1999 to start three freshman pitchers in a single MCWS.
“We’re not afraid to put them out there,” Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson said. “That’s the biggest thing. Our players have confidence in them because they faced them in the fall, and they know how good they were.”
Rager, a lefty from Maypearl, Texas, has been in the Oklahoma starting rotation since the beginning of the season. His 15 starts are tied for most on the Sooner staff, and his 89 strikeouts are second-most on the team. Rager missed two weeks with an injury and returned to the mound in mid-April.
“He’s a tough kid,” Johnson said. “He’s got grit. He comes from a small town around Corsicana, Texas, where I coached in junior college. And he works extremely hard.”
Rager has allowed just three runs over 19 innings in three NCAA Tournament starts, including seven shutout innings Saturday in Oklahoma’s 9-0 win over Alabama to open bracket play. Against the Crimson Tide, Rager set a season-high with seven innings pitched and tied a season-best with eight strikeouts.
“I’m definitely not the pitcher I was (earlier in the season),” Rager said after beating Alabama. “And throughout SEC play you learn so much, and especially as a freshman, I’ve really just learned so much, especially going into the postseason.
“And now I’m kind of finding the good mixture and I’m able to keep guys off balance. And I’m not getting ambushed anymore, and always working on the process.”
Mercurius, a righty from Las Vegas, had made just three starts on the season before taking the mound against Georgia in a winner’s bracket game Monday. He allowed three runs over 7.1 innings while tallying a season-best nine strikeouts in Oklahoma’s 4-3 win.
“His fastball command has been there for a while, and our strength coach and our trainer, they helped him get better and better in our development program to tick his velocity up,” Johnson said. “He’s been up to 99 miles an hour this year.”
Mercurius has recorded 23 strikeouts while allowing nine runs in 17 innings in the NCAA Tournament.
“(Johnson’s) been great,” Mercurius said. “He’s been helping me every single day just becoming better, and that’s all I can do. That’s all I can hope or ask for.”
After recruiting Xander’s older brother LJ as a transfer from UNLV, Johnson watched Xander play in a tournament and saw a lot of a professional pitcher in his game.
“We went to the Area Code Games and saw Xander, and he reminded me a lot of the right-handed pitcher at Duke — (former MLB pitcher Marcus) Stroman,” Johnson said. “He reminded me a lot of Stroman. He had great stuff. A little bitty guy. Had a big arm. He wasn’t afraid of the moment.”
Johnson had planned for Wesloski, a righty from McKinney, Texas, to be a midweek starter at the beginning of the season, but an injury kept him out for a month and limited him to bullpen duty until play in the Atlanta Regional.
In his first collegiate start, he allowed five runs in seven innings in an elimination game where the Sooners beat The Citadel 15-5 to advance to the regional final. His longest outing before that start was 3.1 innings against Florida in early May.
Wesloski did not pitch in Oklahoma’s sweep of Kansas in the super regional round, so he went 17 days between outings when he took the mound Wednesday against Georgia in the Bracket Two championship game.
He allowed four hits and three runs over 5.2 innings to help the Sooners beat the Bulldogs 11-4 and advance to the championship series for the first time since 2022.
“I didn’t think the moment would bother him that much,” Johnson said. “He’s a perfectionist a little bit, so when you’re handling perfectionists and pitching, you gotta say, ‘Hey, it’s alright if you miss a target.’ And you just gotta pat him on the back and try to get him away from it and try to get them to focus on something else besides being perfect.”
Wesloski said seeing Rager and Mercurius have success in Omaha and throughout the season helped him have his own successes.
“I think those two have been the most inspirational, influential for me going throughout the season,” he said. “Starting off, I struggled a bit in my first three outings, but seeing the way that they dominate and the way they carry themselves — and I see them off the field, I live in the same dorm as them — those guys are just elite in everything they do.
“Being able to watch them go throughout their process on the mound has honestly made me a better pitcher, because they’re a freshman. They make me think I can do it too.”
While Rager, Mercurius and Wesloski are listed as freshmen on the roster, Johnson said their collective experience makes them older than their ages on the roster.
“We’re not afraid,” he said. “I don’t consider those guys freshmen anymore. They’ve been through the gauntlet of the season. Now it’s just kind of stay out of the way, make sure they understand what their routines are, take it one pitch at a time, (and) try not to get too emotional and throw it down the middle of the plate.”
