Texas Baseball Takes on Texas A&M One More Time

The baseball gods laid down the red carpet for Texas A&M on Sunday and the Aggies took advantage. How else to explain a 6-0 comeback over Rice thanks to poor bullpen management, a pair of bad hop errors in extra innings and a wild pitch? How else to explain scoring two of their three runs on Texas on a throwing error, a bad hop "error" ruled a single and a balk? Hell, the Ags were lucky to be facing Lukas Schiraldi instead of Dillon Peters or Nathan Thornhill.

This isn't to sound whiny. Good luck plays a huge role in winning or losing. It has been a deciding factor in Texas baseball championships and is nothing to apologize for. The Aggies took advantage of Texas and Rice mistakes time and again on Sunday.

Texas needed to play a clean game to overcome a magnificent performance by A&M pitcher Taylor Stubblefield. They didn't and the Aggies benefited. Throw in Abram and I switching up open thread posting duties and the Horns were practically doomed from the start. But we've changed things up, it's going to be different this time around.

Let's play another!

Texas and Texas A&M will play one more tonight at 6 PM. The Aggies could throw Friday starter Daniel Mengden again as he only threw 53 pitches against Texas. The Horns crushed Mengden, but he seems a guy like that always rebounds the second time around to pitch much better. It's worth noting that Texas is 6-1 on the season after winning the first game of a series and dropping the second.

Should Texas advance it can thank Travis Duke. Duke threw four innings of relief on Sunday, keeping Texas in the game and preventing the Horns from having to waste any other arms in a loss. Thanks to Duke, Texas can now trot out Morgan Cooper (25 pitches this weekend), a totally fresh Chad Hollingsworth, a reasonably fresh John Curtiss (43 pitches on Saturday). I wouldn't rule out seeing Parker French (83 pitches on Saturday) or Nathan Thornhill for an inning (threw over 100 on Friday) today either.

If the Texas bats can regain some of their mojo and the Texas defense plays a clean game then the Horns should be able to beat the Aggies. A&M thrives on opponent's mistakes, so if Texas doesn't make any then they should be golden.

Here's hoping!

First pitch is at 6 PM. I believe the game is on ESPN2 and the LHN or streaming on ESPN3. This'll be your open thread. Hook 'em!