It’s time to press panic button for Texas baseball pitching staff
In the last few weeks, No. 8 ranked Texas baseball and head coach David Pierce are going through a pretty big slide. And one of the main reasons for that slide seems to be the struggles of the pitching staff that seemingly came out of nowhere in early-to-mid March.
The latest struggles that caught up with Pierce and the Longhorns largely to the fault of the pitching staff came in a loss to the in-state rival Texas A&M Aggies on March 29. Texas’ bats were solid once again on March 29 in a loss to the Aggies, giving nine runs in support of the staff.
Yet, Texas’ pitching staff gave up a dozen earned runs in a 12-9 loss to Texas A&M. This is obviously not something the Longhorns can continue to do if they want to find sustainable success in the Big 12 this season. That will really be the case come the postseason.
Moreover, this isn’t the first time we saw the Longhorns pitching staff struggle in the last few weeks in giving up a lofty number of earned runs. Texas is starting to make a habit out of giving up a lofty number of earned runs since early-to-mid March. And that is causing the losses to rack up much faster than they were in the first few weeks of the season.
Since March 9, Texas has given up at least six earned runs in losing efforts on five occasions. Texas has registered a record of 8-6 during that span dating back to March 9. And the only other loss in there was one of the two games where the Longhorns let up five earned runs.
Tanner Witt and Andre Duplantier II tell the tale of the struggles of Texas baseball pitching of late
The fact of the matter here is that Texas has a pretty consistently dominant offense. But the pitching staff is wavering too often in big games to give the offense much of a chance. All the Texas pitching staff really needs to do, even against solid major conference competition, is hold the opposition to no more than five earned runs. Texas will win nearly all of their games if the pitching staff can pull off such a feat.
That may sound too simple, but Texas has more than enough talent in the pitching staff.
There are two Texas pitchers that help tell the story of where the staff is at right now. First is the fact that Texas is missing star 6-foot-6 sophomore right-hander Tanner Witt. As a starting pitcher with an MLB-caliber arm and an undefeated record in his collegiate career to date, Witt was an extremely valuable piece of this rotation.
Earlier this season, though, Witt suffered an injury that requires Tommy John Surgery, likely leading him to miss the rest of the 2022 campaign.
Witt getting knocked out for the season had a bigger impact on this pitching staff than originally anticipated. Texas is having a very tough time finding another starter that can fill his shoes in the rotation at this point of the season.
One pitcher that Texas expected to rise to the occasion this season, especially with Witt out for the season, is the 6-foot-2 sophomore right-hander Andre Duplantier II. But Duplantier is ice cold of late on the mound for the Longhorns.
In his last four appearances this season dating back to March 8, Duplantier has allowed 13 earned runs in not even seven full innings of work on the mound. Duplantier’s struggles have essentially gotten him yanked from the starting rotation in the last couple of weeks.
And it’s easy to see why Pierce is struggling to find trust with him in any role with this pitching staff. He hasn’t done much better coming out of the bullpen.
The path forward for the Longhorns’ pitching staff has to be one that relies heavily on the core part of the starting rotation with smarter usage in terms of matchups coming out of the bullpen. Explore some other options here, potentially such as underutilized relievers like Sam Walbridge and Marcus Oliveraz, who are still without any earned runs on the season so far.
If Texas can even work the matchups a little bit better out of the bullpen and get more consistent results from the starting rotation, the pitching staff could start to see a turnaround in the early stages of Big 12 play. It won’t be easy to get this staff back on track right away, but it can come over time to help this team overcome losing Witt for the season.
Yet, this is a worrying sign of things to come for the Longhorns’ pitching staff in the meantime. The results from this staff are going downhill fast, and there likely won’t be any easy fixes to patch the struggles on the mound of late.
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Following the loss to the Aggies on March 29, the Longhorns are sitting on a record of 19-8 (1-2 Big 12). Texas has now lost three of the last four games heading into the weekend series opener against the Oklahoma Sooners at Globe Life in Arlington, TX, on April 1.