The Texas baseball team went 3-0 on the weekend at the Coral Gables Regional, beating Louisiana once and #9 overall seed Miami twice. Things couldn’t have fallen into place much better for the Longhorns: After a disappointing showing in Arlington, the offense rebounded, Lucas Gordon and Lebarron Johnson were incredible, and the bullpen truly dominated for the first time in months.
The opening game against Louisiana was fairly close, with the offense taking a few innings to get going; They were kept in the game by another great outing by Lucas Gordon as well as two run-saving catches by Eric Kennedy and Dylan Campbell. Mitchell Daly lit a spark with a game-tying homer and things went well from there. The most pleasing takeaway from the first game was Zane Morehouse’s two solid innings out of the bullpen to get the save. He (along with everybody else in the bullpen) has really had his struggles this season, so it was relieving to watch him come in and do well in a close game.
Game 2 against Miami was all about Lebarron Johnson. The righty went the distance, throwing 129 pitches and recording 8 strikeouts. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him back out for the 9th when he was already well over 100 pitches, but Pierce said he knew he was okay, so I guess he was okay. I’m a little worried about how he’ll do in his next start, but since we got the day 2 shift he gets an extra day of rest, so hopefully that helps. Dylan Campbell and Jack O’Dowd had big homers early, which ended up being huge because Miami brought in a reliever that shut the Horns down for the last 7 innings. Having only used 3 pitchers after two games was huge and I never would’ve figured it would go that way.
Miami fought off elimination against Louisiana, so the Horns had a rematch against the Hurricanes in game 3. Texas just needed to win one game out of two to win the regional. Tanner Witt made his 5th start of the season (still working on a comeback from Tommy John surgery) and things weren’t looking great when he was pulled after giving up a 3-run homer in the 2nd inning. Just when it seemed like Miami finally had some momentum, the Longhorns put up nine in the 3rd inning, capped off by a grand slam by Jalin Flores. Charlie Hurley came out of the pen and gave 4.1 innings of great relief pitching; He was probably left in just a bit too long, and ended up allowing another 3-run home run. That was the last gasp for Miami though, as Zane Morehouse once again came in and he threw a sparkling 2.1 scoreless innings with 7 strikeouts to close it out (that’s 7 strikeouts of 9 batters faced).
I want to shout out the bottom three guys in the order: Jalin Flores, Jack O’Dowd and Mitchell Daly. People pretty much look at those first six guys for our offense, but these three all made a significant impact on the outcome in Coral Gables. It was good to see the offense and the starting pitchers go out there and execute as well as they did against a couple really good teams on the road, but I can’t overstate how satisfying it was to have a couple guys come out of the bullpen and dominate like we haven’t seen pretty much all season. I never would’ve expected Pierce to only need five different pitchers the whole weekend. If they can keep Morehouse and Hurley on the right track and a couple other guys can be effective, I could honestly see this team making a deep Omaha run.
Next up, the Longhorns make their way out to California to play Stanford in the super regional round. There was a potential for this round to be played in Texas, but the Aggies lost two in a row to the Cardinal. This weekend will be another tough challenge for Texas; Stanford is another really good offensive team that the pitching staff is gonna have to go up against, and their pitching is better than Miami’s. If Lucas and Lebarron are good again, and the offense shows up, I think this team could win a best of three against pretty much anyone. If the bullpen stays hot, the Horns are gonna be a hard team to beat.
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