For the first time in more than six years, the No. 4 Texas Longhorns are winners over the UTSA Roadrunners after a thrilling 11-8 victory at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Tuesday thanks to a go-ahead grand slam by junior Carson Tinney in the eighth inning.
The 17th home run of the season for the Notre Dame transfer was one of his biggest, both in when it happened and how far it flew as Tinney took a 97 mile-per-hour fastball from UTSA standout Connor Kelley and turned it around with vengeance, launching the baseball 483 feet at 115 mph off Tinney’s big barrel.
Down 8-7 entering the eighth, the Horns took advantage of an early mistake by the Roadrunners when reliever Sam Simmons misplayed a leadoff pop up near the plate by junior first baseman Casey Borba on a 3-2 count. Another long at bat by freshman center fielder Maddox Monsour yielded a full-count walk before freshman catcher Presley Courville laid down a sacrifice bunt to put runners on first and second for junior right fielder Aiden Robbins, who drew a five-pitch walk from Kelley, setting up Tinney’s prodigious clout.
Did a lack of warmup time impact Kelley?
The UTSA reliever took his time walking onto the field before a meeting on the mound left only a minute on the warmup clock. Oops.
Call it cosmic justice in a game that featured eight different pitchers for the Roadrunners, who were able to hold the Longhorns scoreless during five innings in the middle of the game after a fast start by both teams left the game tied at 7-7 after three innings.
Texas jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first, chasing the UTSA starter after five batters and one out, scoring the game’s first one on a bases-loaded walk drawn by junior second baseman Ethan Mendoza. After a pitching change, junior left fielder Ashton Larson hit a sacrifice fly and Borba came up with a two-run single.
The Horns added three more runs in the third when Larson took advantage of a walk and a throwing error to produce an RBI groundout and Monsour hit his first collegiate home run, sitting on a high breaking ball and smashing it 434 feet for a two-run shot.
The three-run frame came in response to UTSA’s biggest inning of the game when the Roadrunners scored six runs. As Texas starter Max Grubbs entered his third inning of work, he’d only allowed a solo home run, but Patt Hallmark’s team made Grubbs and redshirt junior left-hander Ethan Walker pay for leaving balls up in the zone.
After two one-out singles by the Roadrunners, a throwing error on Mendoza when he tripped fielding a grounder and then threw the ball away allowed the first run of the inning to score. Two more runs came in on a single by the UTSA catcher, ending the evening for Grubbs.
Walker got ahead against the first batter he faced before giving up a single and a first-pitch, three-run home run to pinch hitter Garrett Gruell.
But despite that big inning, the Roadrunners only scored one more run thanks to freshman right-hander Brody Walls, who set his career high with five strikeouts and tied his career high with 3.2 innings pitched, allowing one run on one hit with one walk and one hit by pitch. With a fastball that reached 96, Walls was able to keep UTSA’s hot-hitting lineup in check with his sharp-breaking, high-spin slider.
So even though the Horns haven’t been able to find a fourth starter with the postseason looming, the outing by Walls was extremely promising in suggesting what he can provide Texas in the coming weeks.
And junior right-hander Thomas Burns bounced back from his poor outing in Saturday’s loss to Mississippi State by landing his off-speed pitches on the way to his fourth save thanks to a 1-2-3 inning that required just nine pitches.
Texas travels to Knoxville to face Tennessee this weekend.
