“We’re not there yet.”
After a flawed 6-4 win over the UC-Davis Aggies on Saturday evening at UFCU Disch-Falk Field to secure a series victory in the opening weekend, head coach Jim Schlossnagle provided a typically sober assessment of his No. 3 Texas Longhorns two games into the season.
“There’s a core group of players I’m confident in — I’m confident in who they are as people and how they play together. I think it’s a good group of kids that are pulling all the same in the row,” Schlossnagle said
after the game. “But we’re a work in progress offensively, we have some meat of the order bats that, if we can keep them healthy, are going to do really well, I think, throughout the course of a long season, but we’ve got to get some other guys figured out and figure out what they can do.”
Without sophomore outfielder Jonah Williams available, freshman Maddox Monsour received the start in left field, the second starter in two games for the Longhorns, and was later replaced by junior Ashton Larson.
Both made mistakes.
In the first inning, Monsour wasn’t able to come up with a catch against the wall that was ruled a single, but was a play he should have made that allowed a run to score after a hit by pitch and a walk to start the game by redshirt senior left-hander Luke Harrison.
Monsour struck out in his only at bat before giving way to Larson, who did have an RBI double in the sixth inning that also included a base-running mistake with no outs when he was thrown out by the left fielder trying to stretch the hit into a triple.
“He’s a good hitter who has had some injuries who’s not a great runner and that play’s right in front of him,” Schlossnagle said. “I’d rather err on the side of aggression, but there’s a difference between aggression and reckless. I think he learned something there.”
Freshman right fielder Anthony Pack Jr. followed with a double to right center that would have scored Larson.
“In hindsight, you always say, okay, Pack got the hit that would have scored Larson. No one knows if Pack would have still got that hit with the run at second base, But he certainly can’t score if he’s not on the bases,” Schlossnagle said.
The Texas head coach was less upset about the decision by sophomore second baseman Ethan Mendoza to try to turn a single down the right-field line in the first inning into a double.
“I didn’t have a problem with Mendoza at all,” Schlossnagle said.
But there is a tradeoff between speed and power with Mendoza’s offseason weight gain hurting his speed while helping his power, which was on display in the fifth inning when Texas finally got on the board as the Arizona State transfer delivered perhaps the most prodigious clout of his baseball career with his second home run of the season, a two-run shot to center field that traveled 417 feet at 108 miles per hour off the bat.
That blast stood in contract to the early-season home runs that Mendoza hit early last season, which were mostly wind-aided out to right field.
Junior first baseman Casey Borba, who Schlossnagle believes is pressing in a 1-for-7 start to the season, nearly hit his own home run out to center field in the fifth inning after a double by sophomore shortstop Adrian Rodriguez and a single by junior center fielder Aiden Robbins, but he got just a little bit underneath it, and it turned into a sacrifice fly caught at the fence.
But the sacrifice did break the 2-2 tie, and the Longhorns were able to successfully execute a double steal when junior designated hitter Carson Tinney stole second and Robbins stole home.
“We did have the double steal that was a big play in the game and that was something that we talked about going into this series, and we executed perfectly. That was a big run for us,” Schlossnagle said.
Larson’s double and a single by Mendoza in the sixth inning capped the scoring for Texas, needed runs after junior right-hander Thomas Burns gave up two runs in the eighth inning when Schlossnagle went to the team’s putative closer earlier than expected. It was a rare decision by the Longhorns head coach, he said that he’s probably never brought in a closer in that situation unless it was a regional.
“I felt like the game was really in question right there and just wanted to kind of get the momentum on our side a little bit on the mound. He has gotten up and down in practice a couple times. In other words, he’s pitched in three innings, in parts of three innings, but certainly when he went back out there, he didn’t have the same stuff, but you don’t know till you try,” Schlossnagle said.
It wasn’t all on Burns, though — Rodriguez made his first significant mistake at shortstop in that inning, making a belly play by knocking the ball down, but then tried to throw the batter out at first base, an errant attempt that allowed a second run to score on the play.
“If you’re going to sling it over there, that’s fine, you’ve got to throw it low, especially on the turf. But you don’t want to coach that out of a young player, because he’s going to make great plays for us over the course of time,” Schlossnagle said.
Senior left-hander Cal Higgins, a Western Kentucky transfer, earned his first save at Texas by working around two hits and two walks in 1.2 innings thanks to three strikeouts, and junior right-hander Hudson Hamilton recorded the final out for the Longhorns to secure the win.
Texas closes out the series on Sunday with the first pitch at noon Central on SEC Network+.
