Texas Baseball: Vandy dominates to complete winless weekend for Horns

A really rough start to the opening weekend of the 2023 season for head coach David Pierce and unranked Texas baseball got on Feb. 19. Texas started out its run in the College Baseball Showdown at the home of the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX, with two-straight one-run losses.

The positive that Pierce and the Longhorns could take out of that was the fact that they were very competitive with two solid SEC teams the No. 8 Arkansas Razorbacks and Mizzou Tigers. It took a walk-off win in the bottom of the ninth inning from Mizzou to top Texas by a score of 6-5 on Feb. 18.

And Texas almost battled back against Arkansas with a two-run bottom of the seventh in its season opener on Feb. 17. But Texas ultimately fell one run short of Arkansas in a 3-2 loss in the first game for each team in the College Baseball Showdown this weekend.

But Texas’ hopes of gathering its first win of the season in the College Baseball Showdown were gashed almost right away in a dominant showing from beginning to end by the No. 10 Vanderbilt Commodores on Feb. 19. A combination of self-inflicted wounds on defense and solid pitching from the Commodores stifled the Longhorns to round out the weekend in Arlington for Pierce’s squad.

David Pierce and Texas baseball finish off a winless weekend in Arlington with a double-digit loss to No. 10 Vanderbilt

A whopping five errors by Texas in this game took the responsibility for eight of the 12 runs that Vanderbilt scored. One of the craziest stats to come out of this game was the line for starting pitcher Travis Sthele. The redshirt sophomore right-hander pitched three innings with no earned runs. All eight runs that were scored on Sthele were unearned thanks to four early Texas errors.

According to Texassports.com, this was the most errors for Texas in a single game since it posted five against Mizzou in March 2020.

It’s hard not to think that this would’ve been a much more competitive game had Texas not shot itself in the foot so often with an abundance of errors early on against Vandy. Texas essentially had the game lost by the middle of the second, following Vandy’s eight-run outburst in the top half of that inning.

I know I’m stating the obvious when I say that Texas must avoid shooting itself in the foot the way it did against Vandy if it wants to have a shot at remaining competitive against top 10 teams.

Moreover, Texas fans should know that this tough showing in the College Baseball Showdown to open up the regular season isn’t worth panicking over. It was just two years ago that Pierce and the Longhorns went 0-3 to open up the regular season at the College Baseball Showdown.

Texas lost its first three games of the 2021 campaign by a whopping margin of 16 points combined. That’s actually four more runs than Texas lost by in the first three games of the 2023 campaign combined.

If we fast forward a few months in the 2021 season, Texas was able to cobble together a 50-win season that saw them come within one game of a College World Series title.

There is more good news in that Pierce and the Longhorns get to return home to the friendly confines of Disch-Falk Field in Austin for their next few games. Texas will have a really good opportunity to turn the page and get its first win of the 2023 regular season on Feb. 21 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at home.

And then, Texas will have a shot to get a winning mark on the season before it hosts the No. 1 ranked LSU Tigers at the Disch on Feb. 28 in a one-game midweek showdown.

Texas finishes up the weekend at the College Baseball Showdown with a record of 0-3 (0-0 Big 12) following the 12-2 loss to Vanderbilt on Feb. 19. Pierce and the Longhorns will get a day off before it opens up the home slate for the 2023 regular season at the Disch against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Feb. 21, with the first pitch time set for 5 p.m. CT.