Longhorns In The Pros: Five Former Longhorns to Watch at MLB Spring Training
Major League Baseball is set to begin Spring Training. Here are five former Longhorns to watch at the league begins workouts for the 2021 season.
Spring Training will begin for Major League Baseball this coming week (some pitchers and catchers have already reported. Throughout the spring, we’ll keep you updated on how former Longhorns baseball players are doing in the pros. For now, here are a quintet of Longhorns to keep your eye on as Spring Training begins:
Brandon Belt: The San Francisco Giants first baseman would normally be a lock for the starting lineup. But, on Thursday, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi told reporters that due to surgery on Belt’s right heel in October, it’s unclear if Belt will be able to start on Opening Day, which is April 1.
That’s a hit for Belt, who is coming off a 2020 in which he set career highs in batting average (.309), on-base percentage (.425), and OPS (1.015). Zaidi said that recent free-agent acquisition Tommy La Stella, who plays second and third base, would get some work in Belt’s place.
Hoby Milner: Having just turned 30, Milner is still searching with a consistent role with a Major League team. He’ll try and carve out a place with Milwaukee after spending 2020 with the Los Angeles Angels and throwing in 19 games, with just 13.1 innings pitched and a 8.10 earned run average. He’s a long way off from what would be considered his best overall season, which came in his rookie year in 2017. Then, with Philadelphia, he had a 2.01 ERA in 37 appearances and 31 innings pitched.
Brandon Workman: The right-hander doesn’t have a contract yet, but expect him to find one before Spring Training ends. He had, perhaps, his worst season last year, going 1-4 with a 5.95 ERA in less than 20 innings pitched. But, in 2019, Workman went 10-1 for Boston with a 1.88 ERA and 104 strikeouts.
Bret Boswell: Boswell hasn’t played a day in the big leagues, but he is on the Colorado Rockies’ 40-man roster and he was turning heads in Spring Training before COVID-19 last year. The left-handed hitter projects as a utility player, if he can make the 25-man roster this year.
Travis Jones: The Kansas City Royals infielder has never played a game with the parent club (he was last in Double A Northwest Arkansas), but when training camp stopped when COVID-19 hit last March, Jones was in the Major League training camp. He’s not on the 40-man or the non-roster invitee list, but spring is for players who want to play their way into a job.
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Roach set to play in New Zealand
Former Texas Longhorns guard Kerwin Roach recently signed a contract with the Wellington Saints, which plays in the National Basketball League, the country’s premier league.
Roach is playing his second year of professional basketball. He traveled a circuitous route in his first season after leaving Texas. He went undrafted in 2019, was invited to NBA Summer League with the Charlotte Hornets, signed a deal with BC Körmend of the NB I/A and the FIBA Europe Cup, and, finally, ended up with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in the G League.
With the Vipers he played in 36 games, playing 16 minutes per game and scoring 6.9 points per game. His season high was 22 points against the South Bay Lakers.
Roach joins a Wellington team that went undefeated in the 2019 season and won the NBL for the 11th time in team history. The Saints skipped the 2020 season, which was suspended and then restarted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roach is one of two foreign imports to the team. The other is Jamaican center Romaro Gill, who is 7-foot-2 and is currently playing for the Salt Lake City Stars in the G League bubble. After that, Gill will go on to New Zealand. He will be the tallest player to ever play in that league.
Roach played four seasons at Texas, averaging 11.0 points per game and helped the Longhorns win the 2019 NIT postseason championship.
The Uncertainty of Bamba
CBSSports.com recently put together a series revisiting the 2018 NBA Draft, and writer Jasmyn Wimbush listed former Texas forward Mo Bamba as one of the draft’s top ‘uncertainties.’
Bamba was a lottery pick in 2018, going No. 6 overall to the Orlando Magic. His selection game after playing one season for Texas. At the time, it was acknowledged that Bamba was an unfinished product. But, going to a team selecting in the lottery, the assumption was that he would have time develop.
Well, entering his third season in Orlando, Bamba is buried on the bench. As Wimbush noted in her piece, the Magic’s best players are playing at his position. This season, the third-year player is on the floor just 6.6 minutes per game and he’s averaging 5.4 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, the worst numbers of his career in both categories. If there is an upside, it’s that his field goal percentage, to this point, is a career-best 62.9 percent.
It’s an unfortunate turn for Bamba, who showed plenty of promise entering the NBA, but just hasn’t gotten the opportunity behind starter Nikola Vucevic and backup Khem Birch.
At Texas, the 7-footer averaged 12.9 points and 10.5 rebounds per game. He earned three All-Big 12 awards at the end of the 2017-18 season — All-Big 12 Second Team, All-Newcomer Team and All-Defensive Team.
Matthew Postins is an award-winning sports journalist who covers Longhorns in the Pros for Longhorn Country on FanNation.com and SINow. He also writes for CowboyMaven and DallasBasketball.com, covers the Big 12 for HeartlandCollegeSports.com and is the Editor of the College Football America Yearbook. Have a story idea about a former Longhorn now in the professional ranks? Contact Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.