By Hunt Palmer
West Virginia should feel comfortable checking into its Baton Rouge hotel this week.
The Mountaineers have traveled as much as anyone in college baseball this season. And they’ve had success on the road. West Virginia has won 24 road games this year, the most in college baseball. When you add in the three neutral site wins, those 27 victories are more than the total amount of home games West Virginia has played in 2025.
To reach the College World Series, West Virginia is going to have to win two more road games in one of the most intimidating environments in the sport.
An extensive study of this West Virginia ball club has led me to a conclusion: The Mountaineers are solid, not scary.
The offense is not loaded with power bats. The lineup finished 11th of 14 Big 12 teams in home runs and slugging. The pitching staff doesn’t feature dominant arms.
They score runs by grinding out at bats and putting pressure on the base paths. They don’t allow a lot of runs or hits on the mound. And they’ve won a ton of games. This club was 13-0 after 13 games and 34-4 after 38 games. They swept Cincinnati, a regional team, but did get some breaks in the scheduling.
West Virginia won the Big 12, but it did not handle business against the teams that finished right below. Kansas, the Big 12 runners-up, swept West Virginia. TCU, who finished third, was not on the schedule. Arizona finished fourth, and the Wildcats won 3-of-4 versus the Mountaineers, and Arizona State finished fifth. The Sun Devils weren’t on the WVU schedule.
That poor strength of schedule, despite all the wins away from home, sent the Mountaineers traveling for regional play, but they got it done in three games at Clemson, knocking of Kentucky twice and host Clemson once.
Now The Box awaits.
STARTING STAFF
Griffin Kirn will get the baseball for West Virginia on Saturday afternoon.
The left-hander spent four years at Division II Quincy University and got his shot at the power conference level this season. He didn’t waste it.
Kirn is 5-3 with a 3.13 ERA at the top of the rotation.
What stands out about Kirn statistically is not the numbers as a whole but the consistency with which he’s pitched. He hasn’t had a terrible outing all year. Four earned runs are the most he’s allowed in a start all season, and he’s only done that twice in 16 starts. He’s allowed two earned runs or fewer in 10 of 19 starts.
Kirn is a southpaw who works exclusively from the stretch with a herky-jerky windup. It’s bouncy and deceptive with a high 3/4 arm slot. That allows his 91 mph fastball to play up a little bit because of its ride. He snuck that by Kentucky a good bit last week. None of the offspeed stuff looks overly sharp. His best sliders are sweepy with a lot of horizontal movement. It doesn’t fall off the table.
He avoids hard contact and works very deep into games. His last three starts have gone 127 pitches, 129 pitches and 118 pitches. His 118th against Kentucky last Friday was 92 mph.
Final pitch of the day for Kirn is a punchout!
Gutsy performance by the senior 👏 pic.twitter.com/NkWIjF7nTI
— WVU Baseball (@WVUBaseball) May 30, 2025
The home run ball was a problem early. He allowed two against Lipscomb, two more against Kennesaw State and three against Oklahoma State, but those games were all before March 16. Since then, he’s only allowed five in 70.2 innings.
The No. 2 starter is Jack Kartsonas. If AI was asked to make a West Virginia pitcher, Kartsonas would be the result. He’s 6-foot-4, 220 lbs., and he’s sporting a wicked horseshoe mustache. The burly right-hander was a reliever until mid-April, and he’s been rock solid as a No. 2 since.
He, too, works exclusively from the stretch, but his stuff looks more traditional than Kirn’s. It’s a 95 mph heater with some arm side run and a tight little slider to go with a changeup in the upper 80s.
Two more strikeouts for Kart in the fourth!
E4 | Mountaineers 3, Tigers 0 pic.twitter.com/0iudgzU8HK
— WVU Baseball (@WVUBaseball) May 31, 2025
Last week he faced Clemson in a pretty good environment and worked into the six with seven strikeouts and one walk. He allowed two earned runs.
Like LSU, West Virginia has not settled on a third starting option. Robby Porco got the call last week in the regional final and walked four in 1.1 innings.
Kirn and Kartsonas have done a very good job. They’ve got a tough job, matching Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson pitch-for-pitch, but it’s a good 1-2 punch for the Big 12 champs.
LONG LINEUP
The best feature of the West Virginia lineup is not star power, it’s depth. The Mountaineers finished near the top of the Big 12 in a lot of offensive categories—runs (3rd), hits (4th), doubles (3rd), on base percentage (4th), fewest strikeouts (4th), hit by pitches (3rd). That’s what they do well. Find holes, work counts, get on base and create runs.
They do not hit for much power. They were 11th in the Big 12 in home runs and slugging. Only Kyle West has double-digit homers on the year, and he’s got 10. The Mountaineers only hit one home run in the regional and only have two total in their last six games.
I took a look at the West Virginia lineup against Ben Cleaver, the left-handed Kentucky ace West Virginia saw last Friday, and it featured five left-handed hitters including what I would call three of the four best hitters (West, Sam White and Armani Guzman). That’s a pretty favorable matchup for Anderson. It also likely means that Cooper Williams, DJ Primeaux and Conner Ware may be called upon in a bigger spot this week.
As far as the matchup with Anderson and Eyanson, I’m not sure anyone really matches up well with those two. West Virginia thrives on walks and lumping hits together to create big innings.
Eyanson has only allowed 21 hits and seven walks in his last 35.2 innings pitched. Anderson has yielded 22 hits and 11 walks in his last 31.1 innings.
Eyanson’s WHIP is under 1.00 over that time, and Anderson’s is just a fraction over one. Teams have had a hard time stringing things together.
Where West Virginia does match up is their ability to put the bat on the ball. They don’t strike out a ton. That will be put to the test this weekend
‘EERS ERRORS
West Virginia did not play good defense in the regional.
They made five errors in the regional final and nine total over the weekend in Clemson. That was a little bit of an outlier as far as the quantity, but the Mountaineers did finish 11th in the Big 12 in fielding percentage at .969. That’s more than 10 points worse than LSU which has been an elite defensive team.
Prior to the regional, West Virginia hadn’t had a multi-error game since late April, but they have made at least one error in 41 of 58 games. Not great.
BURNING BULLPEN
West Virginia has asked a ton of its top bullpen arms, and that wear and tear has started to show itself.
Reese Bassinger has made a team-high 29 relief appearances and posted a team-best five saves. He gave up 13 hits and a walk in his last 3.2 innings of the regional on Saturday and Sunday. Bassinger is a funky right-hander with a ¾ arm slot. His fastball is 91 mph, and he sinks it.
Chase Meyer has the traditional mid-90s fastball and sharp slider, but he gave up 10 earned runs in his last eight Big 12 innings. He also walked two and hit two in 2.1 innings against Clemson late on Saturday.
The question in this series will likely be, how quickly can LSU chase Kirn and Kartsonas to get to a vulnerable bullpen?
SERIES SCHEDULE
- Saturday: 1:00 ESPN
- Sunday: 5:00 ESPN2
- Monday (if necessary): TBA
