Bohls: Three straight losses later, Texas has lots of questions about its pitching staff

It could have been worse.

Then again, probably not.

A Texas baseball club that entered its weekend series with Oklahoma as the nation’s No. 14 team and one of the 16 projected national seeds that will host regionals met with disaster.

The last-place Big 12 team from Norman crushed the Longhorns, sweeping all three games of the series for the first time since 1998. The epic failure included 9-6 and 6-4 victories for OU in a doubleheader Saturday to drop front-running Texas into a tie for fourth place in the league and insert the Sooners into the thick of the race.

And it left David Pierce visibly frustrated and livid. He didn’t try to hide it.

“It was one of the worst days of my tenure here at the University of Texas,” the seventh-year Longhorns head coach said. “Not because it was against the University of Oklahoma. We were embarrassing. Embarrassingly bad.”

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It begins and ends with pitching

The majority of the blame rested with a pitching staff that walked 20 batters and hit three more in the series. Of those base runners, 12 scored.

With the exception of Lucas Gordon’s customary brilliance Friday and exemplary relief from soft thrower Chase Lummus and Lebarron Johnson with his devastating split-fingered fastball — “LBJ looked almost unhittable” in his five innings — the pitching was abysmal. On a day when Taylor Jungmann's No. 26 jersey was retired as one of the greatest Texas pitchers ever, no less.

“That ain’t Texas baseball,” said first-year pitching coach Woody Williams, shaking his head in disgust. “That ain’t even junior college baseball. We’ve been telling them this stuff till we’re blue in the face.”

They’re liable to get bluer if they don’t get this fixed soon.

Texas lost Friday on a bases-loaded walk. It lost Saturday’s opener on a whole bunch of walks. Eight, to be exact. Plus a hit batter. And it lost the finale when four of OU’s six runs reached by a walk. Again, eight Sooners walked. And one was plunked.

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Furthermore, OU scored eight runs in the first three innings of Saturday’s first game and five of its six runs in the first two innings of the nightcap. Texas was fighting uphill from the start and never held the lead at any point in the doubleheader. Snails get more momentum.

The situation got so dire that Pierce even pinch-hit in the ninth for Eric Kennedy, the heart and soul of this team, who admittedly was scuffling at 1-for-12 in the series with a bunt single. In between Dylan Campbell’s single and Peyton Powell’s walk, Pierce subbed in light-hitting Jalin Flores (.150), who struck out looking.

Pierce said he was looking for someone, anyone to put a charge into the team.

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That ploy didn’t work. But Texas still had a chance to tie with the pair of runners in scoring position only to see Garret Guillemette ground out to third for the game’s final out.

“That’s a reflection of me and my coaching staff,” Pierce said as an overview. “There’s going to be some changes and adjustments mentally and physically.  We got outcoached, and we got outplayed.”

Pierce was so upset with his pitching that he didn’t even call on Charlie Hurley, one of the mainstays all season. He didn’t throw a pitch in the series.

Asked why, Pierce said, “He isn’t hurt. He hasn’t been throwing strikes. And when he starts throwing strikes, he’ll get to pitch again.”

At this point, it’s clear Pierce has serious misgivings about his team’s postseason chances if they can’t correct its pitching shortcomings.

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The third game was especially critical because Texas (8-7 in the Big 12) now has to go on the road for two of its last three series. It travels to TCU and Kansas for back-to-back series before finishing at home against league-leading West Virginia.

“Right now we’ve settled into the middle of the pack,” Pierce said. “But if we’re not careful, we’ll settle into the bottom of the pack."

Quite frankly, Pierce doesn’t know where his next dependable starter is coming from, other than his ace. Consider that of Texas’ main three pitchers — Gordon, Travis Sthele and Hurley — who have combined to make 13 conference starts, only Gordon has a winning record at 2-0. The other two are a collective 1-2.

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The strong right-hander, who is only 13 months removed from Tommy John surgery, has been throwing in practice and is expected to start Game 3 against the Horned Frogs next weekend. Even if he can throw only 25 to 30 pitches, he’s exactly the spark that could ignite this team, but expectations should be dampened.

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Even the clutch hitting that has carried Texas this far didn’t show up Saturday, despite 11 hits overall.

The Horns just couldn’t ever put together crooked numbers. They scored 11 runs in the series, but more than one run in any inning only once. Texas plated three in the sixth inning of the middle game on the strength of Campbell’s two-run homer.

“It’s a little surprising because we have been clicking on all cylinders,” Campbell said. “Sometimes the hitting is good and the pitching is bad. On Friday our pitching was outstanding, but we didn’t come through on the offensive side. But we still are in a good spot.”

That may be debatable. This is a flawed Texas team (27-15) that has relied on solid pitching and stellar defense but desperately needs to host a regional because it hasn’t shown it’s elite yet. It probably needs to win the league to host.

The Longhorns had dropped only four home games in 25 contests at UFCU Disch-Falk Field this season. They lost three in two days to OU.

“Hey, college baseball is a tough business,” OU head coach Skip Johnson said.

Doesn’t he know it. Pierce sure does. He has to be wondering if he and Williams can patch together a tattered staff beyond their reliable ace, who pitched seven shutout innings in Texas’ 2-1 loss to OU on Friday. This is the first time in memory that a Texas team was this uncertain about its Nos. 2 and 3 starting pitchers this close to May.

On Saturday, anyone not named Lummus or Johnson was ineffective. The soft-throwing Lummus completely had OU in knots, retiring 12 straight Sooners during one stretch and allowing just a single run in five innings of relief.

That said, he couldn’t undo the damage of those who preceded him.

It was a long weekend for Texas baseball

Sthele, especially, has fallen on hard times. The sophomore right-hander didn’t get an out in the second inning, walking the bases loaded to abort his start.

Zane Morehouse, who began the year as the Game 2 starter and then emerged as the closer, fared no better. He came in and allowed all three of those runners to score on a wild pitch, a passed ball and a single.

The finale of the series wasn’t much better.

Kobe Minchey, the midseason gem from Jarrell who has dazzled in midweek games, apparently was still fatigued from his 64-pitch outing Wednesday. The freshman right-hander stuck around for just nine batters. He was rocked for four runs, walked three, uncorked a wild pitch and hit a batter.

But it all can change on a dime.

OU was so good late last season, it won the Big 12 Tournament, went on a tear and eventually reached the College World Series finals before losing to Ole Miss. This year hadn’t been so good until this past weekend. The Sooners came in with a 4-8 league record but got well in a hurry.

“Our entire starting rotation got drafted last year. Our closer got drafted,” said Johnson, who served as the late Augie Garrido’s pitching coach for a decade. “We needed this. We’ve got 30 new guys this year.”

Pierce has 19 of his own. Ten are freshmen, and nine are transfers. Seemingly, one or two can throw a strike because as the coach said, “If I’ve got to go to position players to pitch, we’ll figure it out.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas baseball team swept by Oklahoma as pitching staff struggles