Baseball: Houston College Classic Preview

Horns look to maintain momentum at Minute Maid

By Christian Corona

It seems like much longer than two weeks ago that Texas followed up two straight seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance by starting this one 0-2.

The Longhorns have since won five of their last six games. They outscored their opponent, 24-3, in the first three of those five victories, the other two requiring ninth-inning heroics.

Texas will try to keep its winning ways going when it travels to the Houston College Classic at Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, this weekend. It will face No. 10 Rice (6-3) on Friday night before going up against Houston (7-0) on Saturday afternoon and Sam Houston State (8-1), who defeated Rice this Tuesday, 3-1, on Sunday.
( See Also Texas survives Baylor’s comeback, earns 10th conference win)

Senior Mark Payton, who came back for his final year at Texas after being chosen in the 16th round of last year’s MLB Draft, is riding an 18-game hitting streak and is hitting a whopping[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] .571 this year with a .643 on-base percentage and eight RBIs in nine games this year. But the rest of the squad, without another player batting higher than .300, is hitting only a collective .206.

“I wanted to finish up my school and play with these guys one last time. A lot of people don’t realize how lucky we are to put on a Texas jersey. It’s a lot of kids’ dream,” Payton said. “We’re young and we’re going to keep on getting better. That’s the goal is to get better as the season goes on and peak at the right point. Right now we’re getting our timing and playing good baseball.”

Junior left-hander Dillon Peters gets the nod for Friday’s tilt against the Owls. Peters has posted a 1.29 ERA in his first two starts of the year but has gotten no-decisions in both of them. He’s lasted seven innings in both contests, surrendering only two earned runs along the way.

The man who usually starts on Friday evenings for the Longhorns, junior right-hander Parker French, will take the mound Saturday to face the undefeated Cougars. After a frustrating outing in Texas’ season opener when he allowed six runs, all unearned, and committed two of the Longhorns’ five errors in a 7-0 loss to Cal, French bounced back last Friday with a solid outing against Stanford. French picked up his first win of the year by holding the Cardinal to one run on four hits over six innings, striking out a career-high eight and walking only one.

Lukas Schiralidi, a junior college transfer and son of former Longhorns pitcher Calvin Schiraldi, will start for the Longhorns on Sunday. He was sharp in his Texas debut, limiting Cal to one run on five hits over seven innings to help the Longhorns win their first game of the year. But he was knocked around by Stanford in last Sunday’s 11-5 loss, giving up five runs, three of them on a bases-clearing triple, in just two-plus innings.

But Texas didn’t let the sting of that loss linger as it mustered up a ninth-inning comeback Tuesday night against UT-Pan American reminiscent of the one it used to beat Stanford on a walk-off wild pitch last Saturday. The Longhorns had pushed only one run across on two hits through the first eight innings but tied it in the ninth to send it to extra innings before Jacob Felts ripped a walk-off single up the middle in the 11th inning, giving Texas a 2-1 victory prompting a pie in the face during a postgame interview.

“We are responding,” Texas head coach Augie Garrido said. “They really have improved in every game they have played. I think it comes from the hard work they did in the fall. We didn’t work on ground balls. We didn’t work on hitting. We worked on attitude. We worked on teamwork. And it’s showing.”

The Longhorns are hoping it will continue to show in Houston this weekend.

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Question for the fans:How do you think the baseball team will do this weekend in Houston? Sound off below.