Dude’s grabbing this blog with his (tender?) left arm and taking over things. On Thursday, Harrison was nominated for national pitcher of the year, which, given WVU’s lengthy history of not winning baseball awards and Musgrave’s Tommy John Surgery two seasons ago, would be like the biggest surprise since Highlander won the Academy Award for Best Movie Ever Made.

Not nearly as surprising? Randy Mazey’s cautious use of his ace this weekend. WVU opens tonight at Oklahoma State and while Musgrave has been WVU’s No. 1 and the superior foil to the opposition’s No. 1 in every Big 12 series this season, he won’t pitch tonight. He might not start at all this weekend because of what would and would not be at stake for the Mountaineers and for that 143-pitch thing that happened Saturday.

If all this weekend’s series means is conference tournament seeding, Musgrave could get an inning or two of touch-up work to get ready for the tournament, which starts Wednesday. Musgrave has pitched every seventh day this season, Mazey said. His start against TCU was pushed back a day because of rain and the OSU series starts a day earlier than normal.

“One day’s difference wouldn’t mean much but two days’ difference I think would, maybe not affect him this start, but may affect his next start in the conference tournament,” Mazey said. “We don’t want to expend his pitch count because next week is a short week also. We don’t want to give him back-to-back short weeks.”