Report: Texas volunteer assistant Troy Tulowitzki won’t return for 2023 season

Texas Longhorns head coach David Pierce will have to replace two assistants from his 2022 coaching staff after Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com reported on Sunday that volunteer assistant Troy Tulowitzki will not return for a fourth season on the Forty Acres.

While that doesn’t come as a particularly large surprise, it is more surprising that Tulowitzki, who grew up in Southern California and played college baseball at Long Beach State, removed himself from consideration for the USC head coaching job.

The Trojans fired Jason Gill in early June after three seasons that included mediocre play on the field and an off-field investigation by the school into his conduct. The failed hire of Gill from Loyola Marymount marked the fourth failed coaching hire by the historic program after winning 12 national titles, the most among any college baseball programs across all divisions. All 12 championships were won by the two head coaches who oversaw USC from 1951 to 2006. Since 2002, however, the Trojans haven’t even been to the College World Series, positioning USC rebuild as a significant task made more difficult by the poor facilities on campus.

Tulowitzki fit the profile of a future rising star as an assistant when he connected with Pierce in 2019 through former teammate and Texas legend Huston Street and convinced Pierce to hire him more than Pierce convinced Tulowitzki to coach on the Forty Acres.

Serving as an infield and hitting coach for the Longhorns, Tulowitzki played a large role in helping Texas become one of the best defensive teams in the country in 2021 as the Horns turned in their best offensive season in a decade. In 2022, Texas took the next step, leading the nation in fielding percentage and producing the best offensive in school history with a .318 batting average and a school-record 128 home runs, shattering the old school record.

And while it’s hard to parse an assistant coach’s impact from outside the program, broadcasters regularly passed on stories of Faltine following Tulowitzki around like a puppy or graduate transfer third baseman Skyler Messinger wanting to play for his childhood idol. More importantly, Tulowitzki’s impact was evident on the field as the entire infield played at a high level and multiple hitters even beyond first baseman Ivan Melendez experienced huge increases in their power production.

Now the next step for Tulowitzki is unclear as Pierce tries to replace his infield and hitting coach and his pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, Sean Allen, who was dismissed last week.