The Sam Houston Bearcats aren’t .500 overall, let alone in the American League, but the midweek game wasn’t the same as the weekend series, and the fourth-ranked Texas Longhorns found themselves falling behind early before rolling to a 15-14 win Tuesday at UFCU Disch-Falk Field, capped by junior catcher Carson Tinney’s two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth.
Tinney went 0-1 on a breaking ball without much bite, laser beaming through the wall behind the visitors’ bullpen to ultimately help the Horns complete a comeback that required overcoming multiple deficits against RPI, which ranked No. 170 nationally.
Tinney’s second home run of the game was also Texas’ fourth, and Texas also relied on Sam Houston’s 10 walks to tie the game 3-0 after the first inning and avoid a disastrous defeat with an 8-2 score after the third inning.
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As manager Jim Schlossnager tried to work on freshman right-hander Michael Winter, who was out for an extended postseason due to illness, the powerhouse product from Kansas State continued to struggle in just his second career start. When Winter allowed four runs on three hits and went scoreless two weeks ago against Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Schlossnager took on the responsibility of taking a short break after Winter returned to the mound three days earlier.
But Tuesday’s struggles may be indicative of a bigger problem with Winter regaining command — against the Bearcarts, Winter retired the leadoff hitter, then hoisted an 0-2 breaking ball to right-center, turned the ball into a double, walked the next batter on four pitches, hit the batter, threw a wild pitch and gave up an infield single before being ejected from the game.
The problem was compounded when junior right-hander Hudson Hamilton entered the game with a throwing error on his third catch attempt, but escaped the inning by striking out the next two batters without further damage.
But Hamilton ran into trouble in the third inning, giving up back-to-back one-out doubles and then an RBI single before loading the bases. Sam Houston made him pay, and freshman catcher Wes Baker hit a 1-1 fastball off Hamilton for his first career grand slam, which wasn’t a bad pitch but caught too many at the plate.
A big swing from Lance Berkman’s nephew gave the Cats an 8-2 lead.
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Although Texas eventually came back to win, the rest of Max Weiner’s bullpen couldn’t hit a clean baseball until junior left-hander Cad Bean struck out the final two outs in the top of the ninth inning — senior right-hander Max Grubbs slowed the bleeding by allowing at least one run in 2.2 innings, and redshirt senior right-hander Cody Howard was credited with allowing two runs when he allowed a three-run homer to freshman right-hander Brett Crossland. Entering the game in the seventh inning, freshman right-hander Brody Walls gave up a two-run homer in the ninth to blow the lead the Horns had won in the eighth.
Fortunately for Texas, the Bats have had enough this season against a team with a 6.12 ERA.
Redshirt senior third baseman Temo Becerra and junior second baseman Ethan Mendoza scored two runs on an RBI single in the second inning and two runs in the third on a single by Tinney, a high fastball also hit by a Notre Dame transfer that had a launch angle of just 21 degrees but an exit velocity of 113 mph.
Texas’ first big offensive run came in the fifth inning when the Longhorns took advantage of a pitching change. Tinney led off with a single by freshman left fielder Anthony Parker Jr. to load the bases twice before another change on the mound led to a sacrifice fly from Becerra and then junior first baseman Casey Borba hit a three-run home run, his first in nearly a month.
At the beginning of the sixth inning, junior center fielder Aiden Robbins hit his 18th home run of the season, hitting a 1-2 breaking ball from the low post with a 36-degree launch angle to tie the score at 9-9.
After Baker hit another home run in the seventh, a three-run bomb from Crosland, the Horns responded with Becerra’s RBI single in the eighth, setting the stage for a dramatic back-and-forth end to the ninth.
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Texas begins a big weekend matchup against 10th-ranked Mississippi State on Friday at Dish Stadium, a game that will have playoff implications as the third-ranked Horns take on the fourth-ranked Bulldogs.