Analysis: Baseball drops conference series with the Bears
By Turner Dawson | MAROON WEEKLY
The Texas A&M baseball team played four games last week and came away with a five hundred record as they beat UTSA at home and then beat Baylor at home before dropping two games to the Bears back in Waco. It was an up and down week for the Aggies.
On Friday, the Aggies played host to the Baylor Bears. The Aggies sent their ace Barrett Loux to the mound and got an adequate performance. Loux went 6 and 1/3 innings, giving up two runs on four hits with six strikeouts and three walks. Loux continues to have a few issues with control. When he is throwing strikes he is virtually unhittable.
John Stilson came in and pitched the remaining 2 and 2/3 innings and gave up one run on two hits with four strikeouts. Amazingly that’s a poor performance by his standards as his ERA has now climbed over 1 to 1.12. Stilson has been a stud out of the bullpen this year.
Brodie Greene got his second home run in as many games as he went 1 for 5 with two RBI’s and a run scored. Kenny Jackson added another RBI as he finished 1 for 2 with 2 walks. In the end the Aggies pulled out a tight one, 4-3.
The Aggies then traveled to Waco to play Baylor on Saturday and Sunday and the results weren’t quite as nice. Ross Stripling got the start and lasted just 4 and 1/3 innings, giving up two earned runs on six hits with three walks and three strikeouts. Estevan Uriegas then came in and gave up three runs over 1 and 1/3 innings. It was a rough day for Aggie pitchers. The Aggies sent six pitchers to the mound in this game and all six performed poorly.
On the flip side, Logan Verrett for the Bears pitched a complete game, giving up just one run on four hits, striking out 13 Aggie batters. Brodie Greene, Kenny Jackson, Kevin Gonzalez and Tyler Naquin all had one hit apiece. No other Aggie batter got a base hit or really did anything. It was all around an ugly game.
Then on Sunday, the Aggies gave the start to freshman Michael Wacha who actually performed quite well. He went six innings, giving up just one run on four hits with three strikeouts. John Stilson then came in and pitched two innings, giving up one run on three hits and striking out three. You can’t ask for much more from your pitching staff than to allow two runs or less.
But once again the Aggie batters got dominated as they managed just five hits in this game. Matt Juengel and Scott Arthur were each responsible for two of them with Caleb Shofner adding one. Brandon Wood was 0 for 5 in this game which made him 0 for 13 for this week as the leadoff hitter. It’s really difficult to get things going offensively when you’re leadoff hitter doesn’t get a single hit all week. He was batting over the .300 at the beginning of the week and finished the week at .224.
This week the Aggies travel to Austin to take on the third-ranked Texas Longhorns on Friday night and play the last two games of the series in College Station on Saturday and Sunday. Both of those games will be televised, with the Saturday game being featured on Fox Sports Net and the Sunday game on FOX College Sports. Due to the high-demand of tickets, Student tickets to the Texas game were put on a non-seniority based ticket pull that started Monday.
The Aggies are sitting in third place in the Big 12 standings right now and a few wins this week could be huge although they will be tough to come by against some top notch competition this week. We should get a glimpse at how good this team really is this week.