40 Acres Sports

Brandon Workman celebrates after throwing the 27th no-hitter in Texas history. (TexasSports.com)

Brandon Workman’s no-hitter on Sunday put an exclamation mark on Texas baseball’s second weekend sweep in a row to start the season. The Longhorn starting pitching was dominant again, all four starters went at least six innings and none of them gave up more than two runs.

Closer [tag]Austin Wood[/tag] backed up the starters with excellent work of his own.

Texas won Friday 9-2, took the double header 6-2 (in seven innings) and 1-0, before the 9-0 victory on Sunday afternoon. The sweep makes the Longhorns 9-0 on the young season.

While the pitching was phenomenal, the play in the field wasn’t far behind. Texas struggled with errors last season and many thought the new field turf would take getting used to, but so far so good on the adjustment. Texas committed only one error coming into the series with [tag]Penn State[/tag]. It is easy to point at the pitching as the difference in the series with Penn State, but the errors had a lot to do with the dominance. Texas only committed two errors in the windy four game series while the Nittany Lions committed four in Friday’s game alone.

Offensively Texas didn’t have to do much but were opportunistic at the plate. Penn State errors due to the wind allowed the Longhorn hitters to turn small innings into big ones. Texas used two big 7th innings in the series to blow out Penn State.

Texas will not rely on power, but this team is better than the last few years at moving people over and being smart on the base paths. More than a few times Longhorn hitters gained an extra base on a throw or passed ball that lesser teams would have passed on.
Texas coach [tag]Augie Garrido[/tag] stresses pitching, defense, and execution at the plate and on the base paths and so far this squad has done nothing but impress in all of those areas. Texas plays on the road for the first time this season on Tuesday against Texas State before heading to California for a weekend series with [tag]Stanford[/tag].

The Stanford series will give the Longhorn pitchers their first chance to make an impression against big time hitters, but it will also give the Texas lineup a chance to show the lack of power has been more to do with the size of their ballpark than with their lack of power.

If Texas can take the series with Stanford and the pitching continues to excel the Longhorns will emerge as one of the early favorites to reach Omaha.

Connor Rowe slides back into the newly FieldTurfed first base during the season opener.

With [tag]Augie Garrido[/tag] watching from home the 2009 Texas Longhorn baseball team got the season going on the right foot sweeping four games against Illinois-Chicago. This year’s version of Texas baseball looked to be a throwback to the 2002-2005 Longhorns. Texas won 6-1 Friday, took the double header Saturday 3-1 and 10-1 (in seven innings), and 1-0 on Sunday.

Texas’ pitching staff showed off all weekend combining for a 0.79 ERA and striking out 24. Texas has four capable starters in [tag]Chance Ruffin[/tag], [tag]Taylor Jungmann[/tag], [tag]Cole Green[/tag], and [tag]Brandon Workman[/tag]. All four of them went at least six innings and none of them gave up more than one run. And the best part is all of them are not yet draft eligible.

It wasn’t just the starters that were on display in the opening series. Newly appointed closer senior [tag]Austin Wood[/tag] was nearly perfect in his two appearances, both of which were for two innings to finish off games. Wood gave up only one hit and walked one batter.

Defensively the Longhorns were stellar. For the weekend Texas committed one error. Last year’s ball club struggled defensively all last season. Garrido teams usually defend well and this year’s team looks to fit the mold early. The new surface provides truer bounces and speed so look for the defense to be much improved, especially in the infield.

Offensively Texas did enough. The Longhorns won’t have the pop they did with [tag]Kyle Russell[/tag] in the lineup, but Texas will make contact and stay on the base paths. The Longhorns only registered six extra base hits in the series, but did a good job of getting runners on with one and two outs and using the sacrifice bunt to produce runs. Some fans might not like it, but it works. And it will work even better on the new and slow motion playing surface.

Overall it was just one weekend, and in baseball fortunes can change quickly, but Garrido has shown his recipe for success in the past: pitching, defense, sacrifice bunts. This team showed all three this weekend in the sweep over a pretty good ball club. Mentally Texas has been lacking after the run early in the decade. Changing that mentality will decide if this team has a trip to Omaha in their future.

It got scary with two outs in the bottom of the night but yesterday’s starter [tag]Chance Ruffin[/tag] came in and got the final out for the 4-3 victory over St. John’s. [tag]Austin Wood[/tag] threw a fantastic 8 2/3rds innings but gave up two runs and put two more runners on before being relieved. After an intentional walk Ruffin got the final out on a bases loaded fielder’s choice.

Texas now must win two in a row against [tag]Rice[/tag] to move onto the Super Regional. Texas will start left-hander [tag]Riley Boening[/tag] against the Owls tonight at 6pm. You can listen to the game online at 1300 the Zone or watch live streaming video at riceowls.cstv.com.