The Sam Houston Bearkats aren’t a .500 team overall, much less in Conference USA, but midweek games aren’t the same as a weekend series, and the No. 4 Texas Longhorns found themselves down big early before recovering for a 15-14 win at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Tuesday ended by junior catcher Carson Tinney’s walk-off, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth.
An on 0-1 breaking ball without much bite, Tinney laced a laser beam over the wall behind the visitor’s bullpen to finalize a comeback for
the Horns that required overcoming multiple deficits against the nation’s No. 170 in the RPI.
The second home run of the game by Tinney was also the fourth by Texas, which also took advantage of 10 walks by Sam Houston to recover from a 3-0 margin after the first inning and an 8-2 margin after the third inning to avoid a bad loss.
As head coach Jim Schlossnagle tries to build up freshman right-hander Michael Winter for the postseason after a long absence due to illness, the power-armed Kansas product continued to struggle in his second career start. Two weeks ago, when Winter failed to record an out while allowing four earned runs on three hits against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Schlossnagle took the blame for pitching Winter on short rest in the wake of his return to the mound three days prior.
But Tuesday’s struggles were perhaps indicative of larger issues with Winter regaining his command — against the Bearkats, Winter retired the leadoff batter before hanging an 0-2 breaking ball that turned into a double into right center, walked the next batter on four pitches, hit a batter, threw a wild pitch, and gave up an infield single before his removal from the game.
When junior right-hander Hudson Hamilton came on, he compounded the issues with a throwing error on a pickoff attempt at third, but escaped the inning without further damage by striking out the next two batters.
But Hamilton got into trouble in the third inning, allowing consecutive one-out doubles, then an RBI single before loading the bases with a walk. Sam Houston made him pay when freshman catcher Wes Baker hit his first career grand slam, turning on a 1-1 fastball from Hamilton that was hardly a bad pitch, but caught too much of the plate.
The big swing by Lance Berkman’s nephew gave the Kats an 8-2 lead.
And despite the eventual comeback win by Texas, the rest of Max Weiner’s bullpen was unable to produce clean baseball until junior left-hander Kade Bing recorded the final two outs in the top of the ninth — senior right-hander Max Grubbs at least slowed the bleeding in allowing one run in 2.2 innings, redshirt senior right-hander Cody Howard was credited with two runs allowed when freshman right-hander Brett Crossland allowed a three-run home run after entering the game in the seventh, and freshman right-hander Brody Walls gave up a two-run home run in the ninth to blow a lead the Horns had earned in the eighth.
Fortunately for Texas, the bats did enough against a team with 6.12 ERA this season.
The Horns got two runs back in the second on RBI singles by redshirt senior third baseman Temo Becerra and junior second baseman Ethan Mendoza and another in the third on a solo shot by Tinney, an elevated fastball that was also hit on a line by the Notre Dame transfer with a launch angle of just 21 degrees, but with an exit velocity of 113 miles per hour.
The first big offensive inning for Texas came in the fifth when the Longhorns took advantage of a pitching change. Tinney drew a leadoff walk, freshman left fielder Anthony Pack Jr. singled, and two walks drove in a run before another change on the mound led to a sacrifice fly by Becerra before junior first baseman Casey Borba delivered a huge swing on a three-run home run, his first in almost a month.
To lead off the sixth, junior center fielder Aiden Robbins tied the game at 9-9 with his 18th home run of the season, getting low to launch a moonshot on a 1-2 breaking ball that had a 36-degree launch angle.
After Baker hit another home run in the seventh, the three-run bomb off of Crossland, the Horns responded in the eighth with an RBI single by Becerra that set up the dramatic, back-and-forth finish in the ninth.
Texas remains at the Disch for a big weekend matchup against No. 10 Mississippi State starting on Friday that features postseason implications as the third-place Horns face the fourth-place Bulldogs.
