With Alabama in town this weekend, the Texas baseball team will mix up its pitching rotation.
Following Tuesday’s 14-7 win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas coach Jim Schlossnagle announced that sophomore Dylan Volantis will start on Friday at UFCU Disch-Falk Field against Alabama. The Longhorns will then turn to Ruger Riojas on Saturday before Luke Harrison pitches in Sunday’s series finale. Over the first nine weekends of its season, UT has consistently gone with an order of Riojas, Harrison and then Volantis.
Texas (28-7, 9-5) is currently the No. 4 team in the D1Baseball poll. Alabama (27-11, 9-6) is ranked 11th.
Schlossnagle warned onlookers to not read too much into this game plan for the Alabama series. According to Schlossnagle, this isn’t an indictment of Riojas, who has won just one of his last five starts, or Harrison, who is coming off a career-worst performance at Texas A&M. Since Volantis lost out on a scheduled start last weekend when UT’s Sunday game in College Station was cancelled by inclement weather, he didn’t want the left-hander to wait 15 days between his last start on March 4 and this upcoming Sunday.
“There’s nothing more to read into that other than I don’t want Dylan sitting for two weeks,” Schlossnagle said. “We feel like those three guys are interchangeable, and so that’s what we’re going to roll with this weekend.”