After Texas Baseball head coach David Pierce named himself the pitching coach at the beginning of the season on top of the rest of his coaching duties, there was a buzz about how Texas’ arms would perform.
So far, Texas’ season has been headlined by poor pitching.
However, after a rocky three-week period on the mound, Texas returns to conference play with its pitching appearing to be trending in the right direction.
Texas has known who its Friday starter is since the beginning of the season, but it needs more than one lights-out pitcher to be able to make it back to the College World Series in Omaha, NE. Teams have learned that after redshirt junior Lebarron Johnson Jr., Texas has not had consistency out of the bullpen, and has used that to their advantage.
Through five games this season, Johnson is 3–2 but teams can take advantage of the fact that there is little consistency on the mound following Johnson. Back in Houston at the Astros Foundation College Classic, LSU understood this and ran up Johnson’s pitch count and forced Pierce to pull him after he threw 91 pitches in three innings.
Five pitchers followed Johnson and Texas lost 6-3, starting a trend of several bullpen collapses for the next two weeks.
On that following Sunday against Vanderbilt, redshirt sophomore Cody Howard kept the Commodores under control until the fifth inning. Following Howard’s exit in the fourth inning, Vanderbilt put up 11 unanswered runs and Texas fell 14-11.
After a bullpen collapse last Friday night against the Washington Huskies, Pierce held a meeting with all of his pitchers. The message was simple.
“Fastball command and understanding I can’t go to the bullpen and draw straws,” Pierce said. “We’ve got to get some roles and we’ve got to get some guys that want the baseball.”
Following the meeting with Pierce on Friday night, junior Ace Whitehead came into the game against Washington on Saturday in the third inning to replace the struggling Howard.
Whitehead pitched lights out for seven innings, giving up just one hit and striking out four batters on 69 pitches after Howard threw 52 pitches through two innings. Howard, the previous Saturday starter, gave up three hits for five earned runs for a 7.11 ERA.
Against Air Force, Texas used six pitchers in 10 innings on Tuesday night and the group stayed consistent. Air Force was able to string together some hits, but the bullpen stayed strong.
Early mid-week games allow for Pierce to experiment with his lineup and that has been important, for pitchers especially.
“We had a poor start on Saturday and great relief and (Whitehead) goes seven innings scoreless,” Pierce said. “(Max Grubbs) had a great start on Sunday and bullpen does its job so just becoming more consistent and more reliable is what we’re looking for.”
The trend of consistent pitching continued on Wednesday as Texas dominated, but there is still work to be done and Pierce is still not satisfied.
“You’re never just sitting here thinking okay, ‘We got it figured out’,” Pierce said.
The bullpen will be tested again this weekend against Big 12 opponent Baylor.
