AT THIS TIME LAST YEAR, pundits and fans shared similar questions about the Texas baseball team’s overall health and long-term talent. People also wondered about Augie Garrido, college baseball’s winningest coach of all time, but who also had struggled producing dominant teams in 2012 and 2013. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]
The Longhorns’ 2014 campaign answered most of those inquiries. The direction of the program was emphatically corrected by a season that included victories against Rice and Texas A&M in the NCAA regional, and then Houston in the NCAA super-regional to earn an astonishing 34th trip to the College World Series.
There, on one of collegiate sports’ biggest stage, Texas finished third.
And even as the Longhorns had done so much already to restore pride to the program, they knew they could’ve done more.
“Texas has a big tradition,” sophomore catcher Tres Barrera said. “It has always been a winning program, and our main goal last year was to get it back to where it needed to be, and we did that. Yet, we didn’t win it all, and that left a bitter taste in all of our mouths. We brought that mindset and that killer instinct into this offseason. We worked hard and we want to win the championship.”
Without a doubt the 2015 edition of the Texas baseball team is amped to return to Omaha, and it has the talent to play with the best teams in the nation. Ranked sixth, seventh and 10th in three separate preseason polls, the Longhorns will open the season with a lineup that includes seven of eight positional starters that went 46-21 in 2014.
Eight pitchers return from a staff that had a 2.25 ERA (good enough for fourth nationally), including Friday night starter Parker French (7-5, 2.41 ERA in 2014) and postseason hero Chad Hollingsworth (4-0, 1.15 ERA).
“The pieces that you need to put together to have a high-quality team are there,” Garrido said. “In the fall, our guys demonstrated a very high level of respect for not only developing as players, but also an amount of respect for each other, and that will go a long way in determining our ultimate success.”
Garrido, who will begin his 46th year of coaching college baseball and his 19th campaign in the Texas dugout, understands more than anyone the need for the team to jell and accept that the road to success is fraught with pitfalls. “I can’t tell you where this team is going to go until they experience the difficulties of a season,” Garrido said. “It doesn’t matter which individuals you have if you don’t have teamwork.”
“We’re going to play guys who either haven’t experienced constant struggles on the baseball diamond, or who haven’t ever played behind someone and sat the bench for an amount of time,” Garrido added. “We have to see how guys respond to that. It requires a lot of mental toughness.”
STRENGTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIELD
Texas defines its success with its defensive prowess and has the gloves and overall range to be outstanding in that aspect again in 2015.
As with all great baseball teams, the Longhorns are strong in the middle of the field thanks to the double-play combination of junior shortstop C.J Hinojosa and senior second baseman Brooks Marlow. Barrera and sophomore centerfielder Zane Gurwitz, who moves back to his natural outfield position after playing at third base last season, round out the group.
Hinojosa and Marlow helped Texas record 71 double plays in 2014, which ranked second nationally. Marlow was involved in 56 of those plays and Hinojosa 49.
Marlow, who was named to the 2014 Rawlings Division I Gold Glove Team when he fielded at a .991 clip last season while committing just three errors in 326 chances, has had a hand in 109 double plays in his career, sixth most in school history.
In addition to his excellent defense, Marlow finished second on the team in runs scored in 2014, and was third on the team in OBP (.383) and home runs (3) while hitting primarily in the leadoff spot.
Hinojosa may be the Longhorns’ most indispensable everyday player. He hit .298 overall, ended last season on a nine-game hit streak and an 11-game on-base streak and was the only Texas player to record a hit in all five CWS games.
The hulking Barrera was solid beyond his youth behind the plate in 2014 while hitting five home runs and driving in 35 runs. Baseball America named him a second team freshman All-American, and he went on to win the College Home Run Derby at TD Ameritrade Park (site of the College World Series) with 41 home runs.
Gurwitz (.284 avg. & 10 2B) has great speed and possesses the range and the moxie in centerfield to man Disch-Falk Field’s most expansive and demanding outfield position.
Filling out the outfield is returning starters junior Ben Johnson in left field (.405 slugging percentage and 21 stolen bases) and senior Collin Shaw (.355 OBP and 12 stolen bases) in right. Shaw had an impressive NCAA tournament, where he hit .324. He fielded at a .991 clip on the year with four outfield assists and several tremendous diving catches.
A pair of talented newcomers will man the corner infield spots. Redshirt freshman Bret Boswell, who missed the 2014 season with a wrist injury, will start the season at third base while true freshman Travis Jones gets the nod at first base.
At the plate, freshman catcher/designated hitter Michael Cantu will look to contribute to a lineup and make a pronounced early mark. He was ranked as the top backstop in the state of Texas as a senior while hitting .352 for his high school career with 14 home runs and 109 RBIs.
“Team unity goes a long way in this sport,” Barrera said. “People say that baseball might be an individual sport, but if you want to be a championship team, you have to jell together and play as a team. It’s a team sport when it comes down to it, especially in big games. We’re mentally tough, nothing fazes us and we know that each and every one of us has each other’s back.”
PITCHING RICH
French, who elected to return to the 40 Acres this season despite being drafted in the 19th round of this past year’s Major League Baseball draft, possesses a bulldog mentality but lacks overpowering velocity on the mound.
“Parker provides the leadership,” Garrido said. “We’re fortunate to have someone like that on the pitching staff. He could’ve signed a professional contract and moved on, but he didn’t. It’s a strong statement about his commitment to the program and the kind of commitment everybody should be willing to for the good of the program.”
French will pitch to his strengths and let the Texas defense go to work to help him. That makes him perfect for coach Skip Johnson’s mantra of pitching to contact and could also propel French to a role as the Longhorns’ closer.
Hollingsworth is back in the groove from an offseason injury and should be one of the team’s most reliable pitchers, whether he’s in the Saturday or Sunday role in a weekend series. The third starter spot could be grabbed by sophomore lefthander Josh Sawyer, who Johnson said might have been the Longhorns’ biggest surprise coming out of fall workouts. Expect Garrido and Johnson to instill Sawyer in the Saturday role to establish a righty-lefty-righty trio for the season’s weekend series.
Texas also will send sophomore righthander Kacy Clemens to the mound in regularity. Clemens, the son of former Longhorns’ All-American pitcher Roger Clemens, played first base for Texas last year while recovering from a shoulder injury. He has a quality arm and will only get better with more work. Fans should look for him to fill the midweek starter role when the season gets into full swing.
Freshman Kyle Johnston, who has been clocked in the 95-mph range, will get a hard early look at being Texas’ closer. Preceding him to the mound in situational relief will be junior lefthanders Travis Duke and Ty Culbreth.
Then there’s sophomore righthander Andy McGuire and freshman righthanders Tyler Schimpf and Connor Mayes, all of whom will look to have lasting impacts on the pitching corps.
The Texas staff was supposed to include Morgan Cooper, but the sophomore righthander will miss the 2015 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. Cooper is on schedule to be in full health by the beginning of the 2016 season.
TEXAS FACES A ROUGH ROAD
Texas finished last season third in RPI, played the third most-difficult schedule in the country and was fifth in iterative schedule strength according to BoydsWorld.com.
This year’s slate appears just as challenging, with the Longhorns playing 24 games against teams that reached the NCAA tournament last season.
Of those 24 games, 20 games will be contested on the road, including a four-game nonconference series at Rice (Feb. 13-15) and at Stanford (March 5-8). Additionally, Texas will play 13 games against teams that won NCAA regional championships last year, with a three-game series scheduled vs. conference foes Oklahoma State (April 3-5), TCU (April 24-26) and Texas Tech (May 1-3), as well as the four-game set at Stanford.
The second half of the schedule will see Texas play 16 of its final 27 regular season games vs. NCAA tournament teams, starting with a three-game nonconference series at Nebraska (March 27-29). Other games versus 2014 postseason teams are at Oklahoma State (April 3-5), at home versus Sam Houston State (April 14) and at Kansas (April 17-19).
Texas closes Big 12 play in demanding fashion, facing a pair of 2014 CWS participants in TCU and Texas Tech. The Longhorns conclude the regular season with a conference series at Baylor (May 16-17) with the Big 12 tournament set for May 20-24 at ONEOK in Tulsa, Okla.
“It’s important to respond to whatever start we get off to,” Garrido said. “Sometimes when you win, you stop working. The key to this whole thing is getting better every day. You’ve heard every coach say that. Can we make sure that they work to get better every day? Losing is a part of that. In the losing, what appears to be a failure isn’t a failure if you learn from it. But it’s harder to do because people get emotional. They aren’t mentally tough enough to take the losing … they see it as a failure. Hopefully we don’t have that kind of player.”
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