UTSA Baseball Extends Winning Streak to Ten Games After Series Sweep

The Roadrunners completed their ten game homestand under similar circumstances to how it began. A close opening series that they had to rally back to win. A double header that featured run-rule wins. An early Sunday morning first pitch that completed the series sweep. The latest UTSA Roadrunner “Win Sunday” extended the current winning streak to ten games. 

The ten-game winning streak matches the longest in Coach Hallmark’s tenure. His squad last accomplished the feat in 2023. That streak came to an end on the road at UTRGV. A Tuesday game. The Roadrunners will look to extend their streak to eleven games again on the road, and again on a Tuesday, this time in College Station. More on that in a bit. 

With half of this weekend’s games not being broadcast, I am going to take a slightly broader approach in this week’s recap. We’ll still use the now familiar, full-count approach but I won’t get quite into the weeds this week. 

FASTBALLS

Comeback wins…

The Roadrunners fell behind early Friday night. Albeit, only a two run deficit thanks to another solid start by Junior Zach Royse. They would tie and take the lead thanks to a two-run and one-run sixth and seventh, respectively. 

It appeared though for a moment the win streak would end at six, as the Penguins tied the game and had bases loaded in the top of the ninth against Robert Orloski and UTSA. Orloski was solid in relief. He only allowed one run and struck out eight in four innings of work. Some bounces and hard hits had him in a predicament. 

Orloski composed himself and got soft contact on a chopper that he fielded himself and successfully started a 1-2-3 double play to get out of the inning. I don’t know if Orloski gets out of that jam a year ago. 

The Roadrunners would complete the series opening win and extend the streak after James Taussig’s walk-off single in the bottom half. It was quite the way for Taussig to return to the lineup after being out for the past seven games with an injury. 

We’ve seen Coach Hallmark’s squads find ways to win games. This squad full of young and fresh faces has already done that a few times in this early season. Something that will hopefully pay dividends come late May. 

Strikeouts = Streaks… 

Forty five. That is how many strikeouts the UTSA pitching staff logged this weekend. In thirty-two innings of work (because of two run-rule wins) 46% of the outs recorded in the four-game series resulted in strikeouts. In most interviews with Coach Hallmark, if pitching comes up, he’ll mention trying to throw strikes. Obviously, it’s not that easy. What it does do though is instill confidence in a pitching staff with new faces, a big turnover, and some veterans have had struggled at times. 

As far as individual outings, Orloski, Royse, Owens, and Myles all recorded more than six strikeouts. Every pitcher that made an appearance this weekend except one recorded strikeouts. If UTSA can continue this command at the plate, things could work out very nicely. 

150 wins and “Almost” 150 runs. 

Okay, I admit, I’m using hyperbole. The Roadrunners did not almost score 150 runs this weekend. But Coach Hallmark did reach his 150^th win at the helm for UTSA. He still has a long way to go to surpass Sherman Corbett but he is now just under seventy wins from moving into #2 all time. A feat he could reach as early as 2026. Congrats Coach Hallmark! 

Now, it may not have been 150 runs, but it was a lot. Forty six to be exact. One more run than strikeouts by the pitching staff. Making up those forty six runs included the already mentioned two run-rule wins, and an offensive slugfest that UTSA came out on top, 16-13. 

Across the winning streak they have outscored their opponents 96-29. It’s been quite the turnaround for a squad that started the season 1-3 and were shutout twice in four games. 

BALLS

Double digit strikeouts…

It seems nit-picky considering that they won 13-1, however in game one of the double-header UTSA struck out ten times at the plate. In Friday’s opener, they struck out eight times. They did clean it up over the rest of the weekend, combing for only five strikeouts the final two games. 

One thing that Youngstown State struggled with was clean defense. They made eleven errors in four games. The reason I mention that is because a portion of UTSA’s runs came from those errors. Either directly or extending innings. 

Better teams won’t provide as many opportunities by way of errors. That number of strikeouts across a weekend series could hurt against more defensively sound teams. 

Ducks on the pond…

In low scoring games you have to capitalize when the opportunities are there. In UTSA’s 4-3 series opening win, they left twelve runners on base. That was twice as many as Youngstown State and the Penguins scored one run less than them. 

Now, three of those LOB were still on the bases when the game ended on Taussig’s walk-off. So, the final numbers are skewed slightly. And UTSA did plenty of two out hitting across the weekend. 

It is something though that UTSA has already struggled with at some points this season. While a lot of that is just part of the game of baseball, in a four game sweep, that’s the part to work on in this recap. 

THE PAY OFF PITCH

For the third year in a row, UTSA will travel to College Station to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. In 2023, UTSA stormed in to defeat Texas A&M 5-1. Last season, UTSA capitalized on some spotty Aggie defense to an early lead only to slowly give it up and lose on a walk-off home run. The 6-5 loss was highlighted by A&M catcher Jackson Appel’s three run walk-off home run. 

The Aggies would go on to not lose to a Texas school last season and finish national runner-ups. 

In sort of a rubber match midweek game, there are some interesting story lines. Texas A&M opened as unanimous pre-season #1, only to struggle out of the gates. The Aggies will be 6-4 going into Tuesday’s game. They had dropped four consecutive games, before run-ruling Rice Sunday evening 14-4 to get back on track. 

They also have a new head coach. Michael Earley, initially left with former Head Coach Jim Schlossnagle to the University of Texas only to be offered the head coaching job in College Station a few weeks later. Current and former players spoke very highly of Earley in requesting him to be given the job. 

The Aggies also saw several players from last year’s squad get drafted. The highest of those picks Stanford transfer Brayden Montgomery. Montgomery was on the Stanford squad that lost to UTSA at the Bird Bath in 2022. 

On the field, the biggest thing to watch for will be how each team fares. Will UTSA be able to extend their winning streak to eleven? Will A&M continue their early season woes? It is highly likely and expected that they will not be the #1 team in the country on Tuesday. I would still expect them to hold a top ten ranking. 

I will also be curious to see if Coach Hallmark and Andrew Stucky can coach/play on Tuesday. Stucky was tossed Saturday evening for apparently taking too long to head to first base after a home run. This prompted Coach Hallmark to be tossed as well. Talk about a game to unfortunately not have broadcasted. I shared my thoughts on home run celebrations Sunday morning on X.com. 

As always, a win would be wonderful. It would certainly help UTSA’s RPI. At the same time, Baseball is Baseball. You can’t win them all, and against a team – despite their slow start – like Texas A&M, I want to see UTSA continue to do what they have been doing the last ten games. 

I’ll be on the mic for the Pitch Count Recap, win or lose. 

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