As the No. 2 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, Texas baseball won the right to ride its home crowd at UFCU Disch-Falk Field to the College World Series. Instead, Longhorns fans said their good-byes to The Disch on regional weekend after Kimble Schuessler swung and missed at an offering from UTSA pitcher Robert Orloski to seal Texas’ upset defeat. 

That’s a sight coach Jim Schlossnagle wants to see less often in 2026. Of the 16 teams in the SEC, only Ole Miss struck out more last year than the Longhorns, who whiffed 556 times in 58 games. Schlossnagle and hitting coach Troy Tulowitzki are looking to trim that number by 100 strikeouts in 2026. 

“We were a team that, we’d hit some homers, but man, by the end of the year, we didn’t put a whole lot of pressure on the other team,” Schlossnagle said Wednesday. “And when you’re not putting the ball in play, you’re not hitting homers, you don’t steal a lot of bases and we don’t bunt that much, then it’s a pretty easy team to play defense against.” 

In 2025, the Longhorns fielded three regular starters who struck out more than 25% of the time. All of them have moved on. Will Gasparino and Tommy Farmer IV transferred out while Rylan Galvan was selected in the MLB draft. The transfers that Texas brought in, including All-ACC catcher Carson Tinney from Notre Dame, are being met with a hitting philosophy that emphasizes putting the ball in play. 

“A big part of my game that I’ve had to cut down on is my swing-and-miss,” Tinney said. “I needed to find a way to make more contact. Tulo talks to us about it, calls it being more ‘hitterish’ — being more of a hitter rather than a swinger. Think of a pitcher who’s a thrower. He throws 100 mph, but he can’t command the ball. You’ve got to be a pitcher if you want to get on the mound. That’s the main thing.” 

Tinney, who’s coming off a 17-homer season, didn’t strike out a ton at Notre Dame last year; his 19.5% strikeout rate would have been the fourth-best on last year’s Texas team. Still, he feels like taking the next step in his game requires lowering that number. 

The Texas coaching staff’s desire to field a lineup that makes more contact is evident in the offseason additions. Seton Hall outfielder Aiden Robbins, who’s expected to start in center field, whiffed in just 12.5% of his 2025 plate appearances. Stanford transfer Temo Becerra— a player in competition to start at third base — struck out 12.7% of the time. 

Not long ago, baseball’s brain trust emphasized hitting home runs at any cost, with hitters willing to add more strikeouts to their game if it meant leaving the yard more frequently. Even last season, Schlossnagle often said that he didn’t want his hitters to fear striking out because he sought to make them comfortable hitting in two-strike counts. Deeper counts typically lead to more walks. 

But this year’s crop of Texas hitters is using different vocabulary — including shortstop Adrian Rodriguez, who’s back hitting from both sides of the plate after a hand injury last season forced him to bat exclusively from the left side. 

“I think we’ll bring a lot of presence,” Rodriguez said when asked about Texas’ offensive identity. “We’re a group with a lot of hard, tough outs at the plate.”