TCU coach Kirk Saarloos goes in-depth on bizarre sequence that led to overturned balk call

The top of the fifth inning was a wild one between TCU and Oral Roberts in an elimination game at the College World Series. Horned Frogs coach Kirk Saarloos just happened to be on the broadcast with ESPN as everything unfolded.

With TCU outfielder Elijah Nunez on third and Horned Frogs third baseman Brayden Taylor at the plate, home plate umpire Angel Campos called a balk on Oral Roberts pitcher Joshua Caravalho, allowing a run to score and giving TCU a 3-0 lead.

Saarloos immediately guessed correctly that Oral Roberts coach Ryan Folmar wasn’t going to like the call.

“I’m not sure,” Saarloos said of what Caravalho did wrong. “I don’t think Ryan’s going to be too happy about this one. I wouldn’t be.”

After a discussion it was ruled that Caravalho didn’t commit a balk. The other three umpires, outside of Campos, saw Caravalho step off the mound before throwing to third. The call was reviewed and eventually the balk was overturned. Saarloos spoke with the umpires for an explanation, before relaying what he was told to ESPN.

“So Angel called the balk from behind home plate. The other three umpires had said he stepped off. So all I asked was ‘All three of them had it?’ He said ‘yes.’ So all I asked is was this a reviewable play? And he said, ‘Let me go check,'” Saarloos said. “I asked him, ‘Can you guys look at it? Because I don’t think I need to challenge this. I think y’all need to look at it.’ And he did. My big thing is getting the call right.”

Eventually it was decided that Caravalho didn’t commit a balk. However, everything still worked out just fine for TCU. Because Caravalho threw to third base but lobbed it over and didn’t make a true pickoff attempt, he was called for a pitch-clock violation. That led to a walk, because it was a 3-1 count. TCU went on to score four runs in the inning and held a 6-0 lead heading to the bottom of the fifth.

“I think they got that right all the way around,” Saarloos said.

While Caravalho didn’t commit a balk in the fifth inning, he did earlier in the game, allowing a TCU run to score. In the fourth inning, he didn’t declare that he was going from the wind up with a runner on third before beginning his motion.

“I actually kind of saw it coming, if you really want me to be honest, because [umpires] Billy [Van Raaphorst] and Angel [Campos] kind of before the inning started, kind of went out to the mound and were talking to their right-hander in terms of his delivery,” Saarloos said. “So obviously there was something that they said, something that they talked to him a little bit about. So that’s one of the things, you know, with all these different rules in terms of you can’t take two steps forward. We had a guy that was kind of teeter-tottered on that line, too in terms of that left foot has to go sideways or backwards to start your delivery. I’m not sure what happened on the first one.”