Horns Hold On To Beat Hawaii 4-3, Weekend Recap
by 40AS on Feb 27, 2011 8:49 PM CST
in Texas Longhorns Baseball
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PrintFor the second straight day Texas entered the late innings against Hawaii with a relatively large lead on the back of a brilliant performance by the starting pitcher. On Sunday it was Sam Stafford's effort (5.1 IP, 3 H, 10 Ks, 4 BBs, 94 pitches) that let the Horns to build a 4-0 lead going into the 8th inning. A Jordan Etier error followed by a Rainbow homer cut the lead to 4-2 after 8 and Hoby Milner gave up an RBI single before being replaced by Keifer Nuncio with the bases loaded and only one out in the 9th. Fortunately, Nuncio was able to grab a line drive and throw out the man at first to end the game and preserve a 4-3 win.
The niceness of this series win should not be underestimated as Texas could have just as easily swept the Rainbows or lost 2 of 3. The starting pitching showed just how elite it could be and Texas pounded out plenty of hits but had trouble pushing runs across at times. Three thoughts from the weekend in bullet format after the jump.
- Paul Montalbano does a nice job of getting on base, but his 1-15 this series is just brutal from the leadoff hitter. We really like Montalbano as a player and hope he succeeds hitting leadoff, but we'd expect to see Augie rejigger things if Monty can't do better. Jordan Etier got a hit on Sunday, his second of the season.
- This weekend made Augie's strategy of throwing eight pitchers on Tuesday seem very smart. Hoby Milner may be frontrunner for the team's closer, but beyond that Texas has a whole bunch of seemingly talented relievers with no defined roles. Similar to Chance Ruffin a year ago, Milner could pitch a lot of innings from the closer spot, but Texas is going to need a lot of solid relievers who can throw 1-2 innings a weekend. Take Stafford's day: mostly brilliant, struck out ten and didn't give up any runs, but his high strikeout and walk totals mean that he won't be as efficient as Jungmann or Green in killing innings. The development of arms in the bullpen is definitely something to watch and may be one of the most important storylines of the next few weeks.
- Texas hasn't hit a home run this season. Will they?
No midweek game this week as the Horns spend an extra day in Hawaii. Big series with a pretty good Stanford team in Austin next weekend. Texas stands at 5-3 and is 2-0 in series. They may drop in the polls a tad but there is nothing to be ashamed of with this start. Taking two of three next weekend would be a nice barometer for judging where Texas stands.
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Thanks for the write up 40
Do we know if homeruns are this far down across the board in the Big 12? Nationally? These new bats must be taking a lot more away than originally thought. OR… my worse fear is that we have no pop at all this year after setting a HR record last year.
The slow wave is our best weapon.
Offensive Rebound
I think it is safe to say that our offense can’t get much worse than it did in the Hawaii series. Our young hitters came back down to earth (or at least the solar system for Weiss) and our players that were struggling continued to struggle. The only exception to that might be Walla. I cannot remember what he did in the Maryland series but my memory of the Hawaii weekend is that he showed up to swing the bat. So things will get better eventually. The real questions are when and by how much?
To aid in that discussion, I’d like to toss out the theoretical exercise of “Who do you think would most help the team offense if they got hot at the plate?” I’ll reply to this post shortly with my own answer, but would really like to hear what everyone else thinks could be the one guy to jumpstart things for us this season.
Give me some more Tant
My vote for the guy that we need to get going is Tant Shepherd. He proved last year that he could hit consistently and hit with power, and was a key component to the middle of our lineup. The top of the lineup is doing a decent job of generating offense (thanks to the freshmen and Walla getting it going), but the bottom of the lineup is the same black-hole that it was the latter half of last year. With Tant hitting in the 8th spot right now, if he can get things going then that gives us someone to turn the lineup over back to the top and avoid our 3 or 4 automatic outs in a row.
Obviously that same logic could apply to Jordan Etier, but there’s no proof that Jordan would sustain a hotstreak and turn it into consistent production. I hope that he can and will, but Tant has proven that last year and he’s my vote for getting things going. He’s also my vote for hitting the first homerun for the Horns this season, but I’ll take it from anyone at this point.
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