We won’t know how good Texas baseball is until it can play defense

Texas baseball is capable of better play.

Texas’ baseball team epitomized the phrase “off the rails” on Sunday. The team couldn’t field the baseball.

David Pierce’s ball club can’t even defend their performance against the Vanderbilt Commodores, much less a routine ground ball.

Presently, the Longhorns are a bad baseball team. What holds the team back isn’t so much the struggling bullpen or lack of scoring, though those are concerns presently. The greatest issue is the team is abysmal at fielding.

The Texas defense allowed eight unearned runs early to effectively knock the team out of the game. The weekend’s struggles had at least one former Longhorn great frustrated. Certainly, any other Texas baseball alum likely felt the same way.

Many are coming to the defense of Texas head coach David Pierce, whose efforts have brought the Longhorns to Omaha the last two seasons. Even so, that Texas baseball would fall to its present state is concerning, in light of the trajectory of Jim Schlossnagle’s Texas A&M program.

Failing to add enough proven upperclassmen through the portal is forgivable. There’s no shame in losing to the Vandy boys either. Nevertheless, getting beat with poor fundamentals is substandard for arguably college baseball’s top program all-time.

Texas needs to fix its fielding. Until it does, we’ll never know how good the team can be in 2023.

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