In his last start, Texas A&M Corpus Christi starter Aaron Hernandez lasted just two-thirds of an inning against the NAIA University of Houston Victoria Jaguars.
He was practically un-hittable against the defending Big 12 tournament champions.
Hernandez tossed 5.2 scoreless innings and added nine strikeouts to hand Texas a 5–0 home loss and drop the squad to four games below .500.
“We certainly will sit down and rethink this thing, for sure,” head coach Augie Garrido said. “It’s certainly causing us to question.”
The Longhorns ran into trouble starting with the first hitter of the game and were never able to recover. Freshman righthander Nolan Kingham walked the leadoff hitter, and one batter later, a bobble by junior third baseman Tres Barrera turned a potential double-play ball into just a one out fielder’s choice.
The next batter, Zacarias Hardy arched a blast well clear of the left field wall to give the Islanders a 2-0 lead and help push Kingham out of the game after just two-thirds of an inning.
“It seems like everything that can go wrong right now is going wrong,” junior first baseman Kacy Clemens said.
The Texas offense looked truly incompetent through all nine innings and showed no signs of ever being able to claw its way out of a deficit.
The Longhorns put the leadoff man on in the second and third innings and advanced him over to second with a sacrifice bunt. But in both innings, the Longhorn rallies self-destructed with two straight strikeouts, leaving the winningest coach in college baseball history at a loss for potential remedies.
“Its so stunning that you don’t know,” Garrido said. “I’m pretty speechless.”
Despite the offensive miscues, Texas stayed within two runs through the sixth inning. Clemens sparked a potential attack when he led off the frame with a walk. After a Tres Barrera single, the Longhorns looked primed to put two on and no out, but Clemens was hung out to dry trying to go first to third on a single.
“There was no sign involved,” Garrido said. “Those are the kind of things that happen when you’re trying to do too much and trying to make something happen that can’t happen.”
The Longhorns regrouped and loaded the bases with two outs, but sophomore catcher Michael Cantu chopped into an inning-ending groundout to maintain the 2-0 deficit.
In the ninth, a walk and a smattering of singles, including a pair that never left the infield, led to another trio of Islander runs that put the seal on the 5-0 loss.
“Everything’s been said,” Clemens said. “This is already way too many times to be sitting in the locker room thinking about what we need to do. We already know what we need to do.”
