After feeling out period, pitching coach Sean Kelly settling in with Arizona baseball

“Obviously, results wise it’s been challenging,” Kenny said. “But just from a going about our business standpoint, it’s been great.”

With a batting order that regularly includes five freshmen, pitching is what Arizona will need to lean on to finish the season strong. The performances have been much better of late, with returning starters Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey starting to live up to their preseason expectations.

Bailey was named Big 12 Pitcher of the Week and NCBWA Pitcher of the Week after striking out 15 batters over six 1-hit innings Saturday against Kansas State. That was a day after Kramkowski allowed one run over 7.1 innings.

“He has been the same guy, his process has stayed the same,” Kenny said of Kramkowski, who is 1-4 with a 4.91 ERA in 10 starts. “He has had some bad luck behind him at times, and he doesn’t point fingers. He just keeps going. And I feel like, the last, what, maybe five weeks, it has really gotten better. I think there’s been more swing and miss. There’s been more weak contact.”

Arizona lost both of those games, though, Saturday’s loss particularly deflating as the bullpen allowed 11 runs in the 7th and 8th to produce a mercy-rule defeat. The three relievers who were responsible for that implosion had combined to allow one run over 6.2 innings against ASU five days earlier, an indication that baseball “ is the best and worst sport ever,” Kenny said.

“I was frustrated, just like they were, because I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said. “And I think what we landed on is we’re not going to make a big deal about this. We need to pay attention to why. So we’re going to chalk it up to a bad outing. Got to make sure that it wasn’t a preparation issue. And if you can look yourself in the mirror and say that it wasn’t, then we’re gonna go right back to work and not worry about it. So that’s kind of how we went about it.”

As long as the starting pitching continues on its pace, some bad relief outings can be weathered. That starts with Kramkowski, who as the Friday man (Thursday this week) sets the table for a weekend.

That can make for a pressure-filled environment, but the junior right-hander has been trying to minimize the stress.

“I think just making it more simple, like not trying to do too much, trying to be someone that I’m not, and just trusting my stuff, throwing it at the zone, and just letting guys hit it if they can, he said. “Baseball is hard, so just trusting that they’re not going to hit it is really has done it for me, just trusting that I’m not gonna walk guys, minimizing that, and then let them hit it if they can.”wsk

Kramkowski, Arizona’s top draft prospect for 2026, has walked only 10 batters in 55 innings and seven of those came in his first three starts when he admits he was trying to be “too perfect.” His 69.7 percent strike rate is 11th-best in Division I among pitchers who have thrown at least 500 pitches, but being around the zone that much does mean quite a bit of contact.

Leaning more on his stuff and less on opponent tendencies has helped fix that. He hasn’t allowed a home run in his last three starts, with opponents hitting .268 in that span compared to .311 for the season.

“Definitely knowing that stuff helps, you can just pound guys with certain pitches, and that’s always going to help, just abuse that stuff when you have the numbers to back it up,” Kramkowski said. “But at the end of the day, it always goes back to what you do best.”

On the job for four months now, Kenny said the feeling out period between he and his staff is over. He’s now offering his insight more than at the outset, when he was more concerned with building trust.

“I finally had said, I’m all done; I’ve now been hired permanently and the substitute teacher stuff is all over,” he said. “We’re going to start doing things the way I wanted to do. And I feel like we’re in a good place with that stuff now. And when I feel strongly about something, I tell them, but I also want them to to give me feedback too, because they’re a good group that way.”

Kramkowski admits he and many teammates were in a “weird headspace” after the unexpected coaching change.

“But once he got here and we’ve trusted everything he’s done, it’s been fun playing for him,” Kramkowski said. “He’s been a great coach for us. It’s literally just taking time to understand his pitch calling and him getting to know us as well, because that’s not an easy thing to do. You can’t just run in here and understand 19 guys’ mechanics the day you step in here. So there’s definitely a learning curve on both sides, but it’s gone smoothly.”