Down to No. 4 in this week’s D1 Baseball poll after two losses to the rival Texas A&M Aggies, the Texas Longhorns (27-7) are back at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Tuesday looking to continue to team’s two-game midweek winning streak with a matchup against the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders (16-20).
Ranked No. 178 in the RPI, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is finishing up a six-game road trip. Longtime head coach Scott Malone and his team have faced some common opponents with Texas, suffering midweek losses
to Texas A&M and UTSA, dropping a home conference series to Lamar, and winning a road conference series against UTRGV.
TAMU-CC only bats .260 as a team and doesn’t feature much power with second baseman Cade Sanchez leading the team with a .366 batting average. The team leader in home runs, right fielder Isaiah Afework, only has five on the season. The pitching staff for the Islanders does hold opponents to a .266 batting average, but has a 6.21 ERA and a 1.61 WHIP.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, Texas hasn’t officially announced the starter against TAMU-CC, but a social media post features freshman right-hander Michael Winter.
“I really want to get Michael Winter going,” Texas head coach Jim Schlossnagle said on Monday.
The 6’5, 240-pounder made his return to the mound during Saturday’s loss to Texas A&M after missing a month due to illness. The longest outing by Winter was his final appearance before getting sick, throwing 32 pitches and striking out three batters in 2.1 scoreless innings against USC Upstate. On the season, Winter is 1-0 in six appearances and has yet to allow a run in 7.2 innings, striking out nine.
Junior left-hander Kade Bing has also moved into the midweek pitching rotation over the last month, allowing one run over three innings in the win against Texas State and getting the start last week against Incarnate Word, allowing three runs, one earned, over 2.1 innings.
At the plate, junior center fielder Aiden Robbins enters the game swinging a hot bat with four home runs in eight plate appearances against the Aggies. With a team-leading 15 home runs this season, Robbins has exceeded his career production of 12 home runs over two seasons at Seton Hall. It’s a power surge that Schlossnagle and his staff anticipated when they signed Robbins out of the portal, as a focus on strength and nutrition combined with Troy Tulowitzki working with Robbins on pulling the ball without top spin has unlocked the tremendous power potential of the 6’2, 205-pounder.
First pitch is at 6:30 p.m. Central on SEC Network+. Texas leads the all-time series 26-6, but did suffer a disappointing 4-1 loss to TAMU-CC two years ago.
