Texas Longhorns Baseball – Peters’ Career High Nine Strikeouts lift Texas over Baylor
AUSTIN, Texas -- Behind Dillon Peters' dominant nine-strikeout pitching performance and a balanced offensive attack, the No. 8/9 Texas Longhorns baseball team clinched a series victory with a 6-3 win over Baylor Saturday night at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
Eight Longhorns had hits, including three from Madison Carterand two each from freshmen Kacy Clemens and Tres Barrera. Barrera also had two runs.
Peters' nine strikeouts were a career-high and the most by a Longhorn since Taylor Jungmann had 12 against Texas A&M on May 19, 2011. The junior went six-plus innings and gave up six hits and three runs, two of them earned. After allowing a run on three singles in the second, Peters cruised, recording two strikeouts in each of four straight innings from the third to the sixth.
Pitching coach Skip Johnson was impressed. "He had swing and miss stuff tonight, his breaking ball was really good. Baylor has a really good hitting team, their stats don't show it, but they squared up balls last night against Parker, and they squared up some balls every time they got in a leverage count tonight."
Peters picked up the win to improve to 4-2 on the year, while Baylor's Austin Stone took the loss after allowing four runs on eight hits in six innings. Texas, which improved to 25-7 overall and 5-3 in the Big 12, has won 10 of its last 11 games.
"We worked in the bullpen and made some adjustments over the last two weeks," said Peters "I had struggled the last couple weeks. We figured out to get some depth on my curveball and it was effective tonight. I threw it early and often, and when they started sitting on that I went back to the fastball. Overall, it was just a well called game."
The Longhorns, who are 13-1 when scoring in the first inning, got a run on the board in in the opening frame when Mark Payton drove in Brooks Marlowon a one-out single to left field.
After Baylor tied it up in the second, Texas took the lead for good in the fourth. With two outs and C.J Hinojosa on second, Clemens ripped an RBI double to the gap in left-center field to make it 2-1.
An inning later, Barrera led off with a double and scored on a sacrifice by Hinojosa, and three straight two out singles by Carter, Clemens and Zane Gurwitz scored another run to make it 4-1.
The Bears put together a rally in the seventh inning after Peters walked Darryn Sheppard and gave up a single to Adam Toth. Morgan Cooper came on in relief and retired the first batter he faced, but Logan Brown doubled down the right field line to score Sheppard and make it 4-2. Lawton Langford's RBI groundout cut Texas' lead to 4-3, but Cooper got the Longhorns out of the inning with a strikeout.
The Texas offense struck back immediately, scoring two runs in the seventh on a RBI single by Collin Shaw and sacrifice fly by Hinojosa to give the Longhorns their three-run advantage back.
"We are winning, that is all that matters" said Hinojosa "It is fun wining obviously, and you have got to do whatever you can to help the team win … I knew from the first at bat, when I came out swinging on the first pitch change up, which was a great pitch. I knew [from there] they were going to attack me with off speed, a lot of people do, so I was just waiting on something up in the zone to hit deep enough to score the runners."
Cooper pitched three innings for the Longhorns, allowing just two hits while striking out three to pick up his third save of the year.
Texas and Baylor conclude the series Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
(Source: University of Texas Athletics)
