Texas Baseball Middle Order Has Been Impressive, Avoids Sweep

It was a very forgetful weekend for the No. 4 Texas Longhorns while visiting the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee.

Behind two outstanding starts from Tennessee Volunteers pitchers Tegan Kuhns and Evan Blanco, the Longhorns bats were silenced for the majority of the weekend, leading to their second series loss of the season.

Seemingly, the only positive to come out of the series was Texas’ middle of the order providing the only offense against the Volunteers, a group that was struggling two series ago.

Beccera Has His Most Productive Series of The Season

Texas Baseball — The Longhorns celebrate following a victory at the Bruce Bolt College Classic | Texas Athletics

When Temo Beccera was picked up in the portal last year after solid but not outstanding three years at Stanford, he has been impressive in his first season at Texas. Beccera is experiencing the best statistical season of his career at the plate

With postseason play looming in the foreground, Beccera and the middle of the order, consisting of Casey Borba and Adrian Rodriguez, are heating up and have been carrying the load for the past two conference series.

In his last 28 at-bats, Beccera has garnered 16 hits, four doubles, and one home run for the most productive stretch of his career. The redshirt senior infielder is also riding a multiple-hit six-game streak.

This comes at a perfect time for the Longhorns when the loaded top of the order has begun to slow down compared to their early and middle of the season performance.

In Texas’ 14-9 loss on Saturday, Beccera accounted for five of the nine runs scored, going 4-5 at the plate with a double, his first home run in two months, to drive in a career high 5 RBI against Tennessee.

Providing some extra cushion, Borba has been able to find himself after a long hitting dry spell that hampered his April performance. The Longhorns' infielder moved into the Texas top-10 all-time home run list, rocketing three home runs against Tennessee.

Borba fired his second multi-home run game of the season for 6 RBI, allowing the Longhorns to avoid their second series sweep of the season on Sunday.

Since battling back from injury, the switch-hitter Rodriguez has firmly settled on hitting from the left box going forward for comfort reasons. Hitting 3-4 and his second home run in the past six games in the Texas offensive explosion in the series finale, Rodriguez is getting closer to what the Longhorns need from him in the five-hole spot.

Texas has one more regular-season series remaining against Missouri, the worst team in the conference, before the SEC tournament and the start of postseason play.

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