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THE RUNDOWN
WACO, Texas -- Baylor baseball earned a 4-3 win over No. 10 TCU on Friday night at Baylor Ballpark to open a three-game series. The Bears (21-25, 7-12) bounced back three times to take down the Horned Frogs (33-13, 11-8).

Trailing 1-0 after the first inning, Baylor took its first lead in the third inning. T.J. Raguse reached first after a fielder's choice and moved to second on a two-out single by Matt Menard. Then Kameron Esthay delivered a two-run triple for a 2-1 lead.

TCU tied the game in the fourth, but the Bears responded in the bottom half. Aaron Dodson and Justin Arrington led off the inning with singles, and after a sacrifice bunt by Josh Bissonette and strikeout, a wild pitch scored Dodson for a 3-2 lead.

The Horned Frogs countered right away with a run in the fifth inning. However, BU once again had an answer in the seventh. Steven McLean led off with a double and scored on a Raguse single.

From there, BU starter Drew Tolson finished the sixth and seventh innings scoreless while Joe Heineman and Troy Montemayor put up zeroes in the eighth and ninth innings, respectfully.

Tolson (5-3) earned the win, giving up three runs (two earned) on eight hits and five walks with three strikeouts in seven innings. Montemayor picked up his 11th save in a perfect ninth with one strikeout. TCU reliever Preston Guillory (2-2) took the loss, allowing one run on two hits in 0.2 innings.

NOTES
*Baylor leads the all-time series against TCU 141-119 overall and 73-44 in Waco but the Bears have lost all three all-time Big 12 series to TCU, including a sweep in Fort Worth last season. BU has won two straight in the series.

*Baylor is 1-1 on its current four-game home stand.

*Baylor is 400-181 all-time at Baylor Ballpark and 15-15 under Steve Rodriguez.

*Baylor has won three of its 10 three-game series in 2016 and 24 of 54 since 2012.

*Baylor is 196-290-1 all-time against opponents ranked by Baseball America, 31-38 since 2011 and 2-2 in 2016 -- the Bears are 89-147 all-time against top 10 teams and 1-0 this year.

*Kameron Esthay has a career-high 11-game hitting streak as he posted his fourth multi-RBI game of the season.

*Matt Menard has a career-high-tying 10-game on-base streak.

*Steven McLean has a four-game hitting streak.

*Justin Arrington has a five-game hitting streak.

*Richard Cunningham has a career-high-tying four-game hitting streak.

*Aaron Dodson notched his 10th multi-hit game of the season.

*Drew Tolson picked up his career-high fifth win of the season.

*Troy Montemayor gathered his 11th save in his 12th try of the season and of his career -- he's the ninth player in BU history with 10 or more saves in a season (first since Josh Michalec set the single-season BU and Big 12 records with 21 saves in 2014) and he ranks tied for fifth on BU's single-season saves list and 10th on BU's career saves list.

STAT OF THE GAME
3 -- The amount of times Baylor successfully responded to being down or tied in the game.

QUOTE OF THE GAME
"I thought our pitching did a phenomenal job of keeping us where we were against a great offensive team, but it was also great to get some timely hits in some key situations. It is really nice to get the first game under your belt, and the next two are really big for us." -- Head Coach Steve Rodriguez

WHAT'S NEXT
Baylor continues its three-game Big 12 weekend series against TCU at Baylor Ballpark with a 3:05 p.m. CT game on FOX Sports Southwest Saturday and 1:05 p.m. game on FOX Sports Plus Sunday. The pitching matchups feature BU LHP Daniel Castano (3-4, 4.54 ERA) vs. TCU RHP Mitchell Traver (0-0, 0.00 ERA) Saturday and Sunday's pitchers have yet to be announced.

Despite a string of rough outings that saw him give up 21 runs in 15 innings, Steve Rodriguez had a good feeling about Drew Tolson going into Friday's series opener against TCU.

Looking more like the pitcher than won four of his first five decisions, the junior right-hander held a powerful TCU attack to just two earned runs in seven innings as the Bears knocked off the 10th-ranked Horned Frogs, 4-3, before a Baylor Ballpark crowd of 3,336.

"I had a good feeling about him the whole time, just because it looked like he was getting tired right before finals," Rodriguez said of Tolson, whose ERA had ballooned to 5.65. "You could tell he was a little off-kilter at the very beginning, and then all of a sudden he found a little groove and was able to throw some pitches for strikes. . . . He got us where we needed to be so our bullpen could do their job."

Joe Heineman stranded a pair of two-out baserunners in the eighth when he got Austin Wade on a foul pop-up to third. And then in the ninth, the Bears' only 1-2-3 inning of the game, sophomore closer Troy Montemayor got Luken Baker looking for the final out to pick up his Big 12-best 11th save.

"I think it was big for me, big for my confidence," Tolson said. "The past few weekends, I'd been out of my groove, out of my zone. So being able to come back tonight and get back in that zone was really big for me."

After first pitches thrown by "Fixer Upper" stars Chip and Joanna Gaines and their four children, TCU (33-13, 11-8) got on board in the first when they loaded the bases on a pair of walks and a single by Cam Warner. Josh Watson drove in a run with a sac fly to center, but Tolson limited the damage by getting Elliott Barzilli on a grounder to third.

The Bears (21-25, 7-12) had little going until a leadoff double by 9-hole hitter Richard Cunningham in the third. When Cunningham was thrown out at home on a tapper back to the mound, TCU starter Brian Howard had a chance to get out of the inning unscathed. But Kameron Esthay delivered a two-out, two-run triple into the right-field corner.

"Coach came in the dugout saying, `We've been through the lineup. We need to show them what we can do. Be ready to hit,''' Esthay said. "So, I was ready to hit, obviously. . . . I think it was a mental change, our side, and he was also leaving some more stuff over the plate."

In a back-and-forth game, TCU answered with a run in the fourth on Connor Wanhanen's two-out RBI double. And then when the Bears regained the lead with back-to-back singles by Aaron Dodson and Justin Arrington and a wild pitch, the Frogs tied it again when Warner led off the fifth with a single and came around on two wild pitches and a throwing error by catcher Matt Menard.

Esthay kept it tied when he ran down a scorching liner by Evan Skoug down the left-field line that likely would have been at least a double.

"One of the biggest plays of the game was (Esthay) laying out for that ball in left field," Rodriguez said. "He struck out three times tonight, but he didn't take those at-bats to defense. And if he did, he just took his frustration out on that ball, which was great. . . . That was a huge momentum-changer. That ball drops, you get a guy on second base and the whole thing shifts. And it's hard to get momentum back in a game like this."

Tolson (5-3) continued to wiggle out of trouble, ending his night with a 1-6-3 inning-ending double play in the seventh when TCU had the go-ahead run in scoring position.

Steven McLean opened the bottom half of the seventh with a hustling double to the gap in right-center and came around to score the winning run when T.J. Raguse lined an RBI single to center off reliever Preston Guillory (2-2).

"They had been coming at me early with a lot of fastballs, so I was really just trying to get a fastball over the plate to hit," Raguse said. "The first pitch, I got a changeup and was a little out front. And then the next pitch, I got the fastball and I was ready for it and didn't miss it this time."

With the win, coupled with Kansas State's 4-1 loss to Kansas, the Bears moved up to seventh in the Big 12 standings. They will go for just their second Big 12 series win in Saturday's 3:05 p.m. game, when junior lefty Daniel Castano (3-4, 4.54) gets the start against TCU's Mitchell Traver.

"It's good to get the first win under our belt," Rodriguez said. "Now, the next two are really big for us."