Texas baseball looks to stay hot tonight against a very capable UT-Pan American squad at UFCUDFF at 6 PM. The Longhorns are coming off a pair of very successful weekends away from the Disch which saw team's batting average rise 50 percentage points. Texas is still getting inconsistent work from the starting rotation, but consider that Texas won a series in which none of its starters threw six complete innings and only one pitched five complete. Indeed, the Horns are getting things done these days with offense and defense instead of relying on superhuman pitching.
The Broncos come to Austin at a respectable 11-5 but following an ugly four game sweep at the hands of New Mexico State (themselves a top 25 team according to Boyds World). UTPA has played a good schedule with a win over Texas A&M as their greatest accomplishment. Looking at the stat sheet, the Broncos have an impressive .326 team batting average but a pretty poor 4.91 team ERA.
As of this writing no pitching matchups have been announced, but the last two weekday games have featured a plethora of Texas regulars pitching. Look for a freshman parade on the mound. At the plate, Tim Maitland has been struggling of late and is down to hitting just .240 on the year. Don't look for any changes in center, however, as Augie has proven time and again to prefer stable defense there even if it comes at the expense of production at the plate. The DH position continues to be a sore spot and we continue to wonder when Taylor Stell will get a chance at regular at bats. The lanky freshman lacks experience, but if he can improve over the Lusson/Steinhaggen/Shaw trio then the Horns will have solved the DH problem with their fastest player.
First pitch is at 6 PM and you can catch all the action on the LHN.