Power outage hasn’t slowed UT Arlington

By Sam Morton

Special to the Star-Telegram

When the UT Arlington baseball schedule gets finalized every season, the Mavericks usually have a few weekends at home and a few weekends on the road. It’s a give-and-take process when agreeing with other schools on who’s home and away each season.

But it sure isn’t often that the Mavericks play 11 of their first 12 games without stepping foot on a bus.

After two home weekend series, UTA now hosts Illinois and Houston Baptist in this weekend’s UTA/Hilton Invitational at Clay Gould Ballpark.

Illinois brings to town Jordan and Justin Parr, twin brothers who have a plus-.900 OPS with eight stolen bases between them. Justin Parr is hitting .516, while Jordan Parr is hitting .345 with a home run and five steals.

Houston Baptist doesn’t have the same punch in its lineup as UTA and Illinois, but it is minimizing its lack of firepower by holding opposing hitters to a .255 batting average.

“They’re both off to very good starts. Illinois has some good wins and [Illinois coach] Dan [Hartleb] does a really good job with them,” UTA coach Darin Thomas said. “And Houston Baptist is getting better every year.”

The Mavericks have won five of their last six against Houston Baptist, but they got blown out 15-1 in their last meeting in 2012. They’re 4-3 all-time against Illinois.

Power outage

There hasn’t been a single home run in any of UTA’s first seven games.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Darin Thomas said. We’ve had 550 or so at-bats without a ball leaving the park.”

But Thomas doesn’t think Clay Gould Ballpark’s tendency to be a pitcher’s park or bat regulations installed two years that give bats less of a trampoline effect when they connect with the ball as the reason.

“A lot of it has to do with pitchers throwing strikes,” he said. “Pitchers tend to get out ahead of hitters early on in the season. We’re still hitting .305 as a team, we just haven’t hit one out of the yard yet.”

Big start

After watching a 4-0 loss in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader against Northeastern, Darin Thomas turned to Brad Vachon for the second game.

Vachon delivered exactly what the Mavericks needed, pitching seven shutout innings of two-hit baseball to secure UTA’s second straight series win of the season. The Cisco JC transfer only faced five hitters over the minimum while striking out five to improve to 2-0 on the season.

“He’s a 3-4 pitch guy that gets ahead early in the count,” Thomas said. He’s sitting around 87-89 mph, but he’s got a lot of movement.”

Vachon hasn’t given up a run yet this season in 12 innings of work.

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