Ashton Larson was a member of LSU’s national championship team a year ago. He and Texas need to win four straight games at the College World Series after dropping Saturday’s opener to Georgia.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
OMAHA, Neb. — Ashton Larson grew up as a first baseman.
The transfer from LSU played only six innings at the position in two seasons at Baton Rouge and came to Texas as an outfielder last offseason. But when shortstop Adrian Rodriguez underwent a surgical procedure on his left hand at midseason and Jim Schlossnagle had to shift Temo Becerra from third to shortstop and Casey Borba from first to third, first base suddenly had a vacancy.
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And Larson got the call even though he didn’t even own a first base glove at the time.
Schlossnagle said Larson fielded ground balls well in an audition and made the move permanent even when Rodriguez returned to play but Becerra moved from third to second after Ethan Mendoza’s shoulder injury. The move stuck.
When: 1 p.m. Monday
Where: Charles Schwab Field; Omaha, Neb.
TV: ESPN
Larson joked Sunday afternoon that he was asked by ESPN to come up with an old video of him as a youngster in Overland Park, Kan. His parents found a vintage tape from his very first game.
“I was actually playing first base,” Larson said Sunday. “When you’re little, if you’re good with hand-eye coordination and you catch the ball and stuff, you played first base. So I definitely had some experience.”
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Similarly, Larson idolized some of the premier MLB first basemen like Freddie Freeman and Bryce Harper, who like Larson are left-handed batters.
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound junior remembered he actually had a throwback net propped up in his family living room and, as a 5-year-old, would constantly throw into the net while watching baseball.
And the name of his youth team back then?
“The Angry Birds,” he said, laughing.
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Larson and his teammates are some angry Longhorns — or at least resolute ones — after dropping their College World Series opener 7-1 to Georgia. They know they have to regroup quickly and rebound in Monday’s 1 p.m. elimination game at Charles Schwab Field against Alabama if they plan to extend their stay here in the Midwest. To reach the championship series, they must win four straight games.
Texas (45-14) will start senior right-hander Ruger Riojas on the mound against 6-4 Alabama lefty Zane Adams from Porter, and Riojas can draw on the experience of a strong start versus the Crimson Tide when the Longhorns took two of three in Austin.
Riojas struck out 11 in a 3-1 win on a day when he allowed just three hits and one run in a five-inning stint and he and his fellow pitchers combined to strike out a school-record 19 batters. Texas pitchers struck out a program-record 49 Tide batters in that series.
Adams, too, pitched well in that game against Riojas, throwing six shutout innings. He sports an 8-4 record and 3.96 ERA with 98 strikeouts in 88 ⅔ innings this season. Then-Texas A&M head coach Schlossnagle even recruited the 2023 Texas High School Pitcher of the Year — the state’s top southpaw and a top-10 Texas recruit — who chose the Crimson Tide.
The season will rest on Riojas’ shoulders.
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“It gives me a little bit of confidence, but this is a brand new season that we’re playing in this week,” Riojas said. “I can’t go in there thinking that I’m comfortable, based on what I did in the regular season. We’re playing for our lives. I can’t just think that they’re free-swinging, so I just give them easy stuff to hit.”
Riojas has bounced back from a series of injuries that have given him arm, shoulder and elbow pain. A bout with tendinitis shelved him briefly and limited him to one batter on Senior Day, but he said that’s all behind him.
“It definitely took a toll on the mental side,” he said. “It hurt during the season. I can’t lie, but I’m over it now. Well rested up.”
Larson was hitless Saturday but had six hits in 17 at-bats with two RBIs in this postseason previously. He will do what he can to reverse the Longhorns’ fortunes after they collectively struck out 15 times and collected just four hits, two apiece from Rodriguez and Mendoza, against Joey Volchko and what Schlossnagle called “big-league stuff.”
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Mendoza visibly grimaced after his second single with his right arm hanging limply on his way to first base, but Schlossnagle said Mendoza practiced Sunday and should be ready to play against Alabama.
While Larson didn’t have an at-bat for LSU when the Tigers won last year’s CWS, he did receive his championship ring last fall. He hasn’t worn it or even shown it off in the ultimate show-and-tell to his new Texas teammates, but his time in the LSU dugout was valuable for his new place.
“My family’s got it,” Larson said of the jewelry. “But this year has been about being here with this team and chasing a national championship with this team. We have full trust in Ruger. Ruger’s the man, an elite competitor.”
Riojas brings a calm, yet intense individual who yearns for big moments like these. After all, he began the year as Texas’ Opening Day starter and worked as its Friday night starter for every SEC series until the Alabama series when Dylan Volantis assumed the No. 1 role.
Schlossnagle likens him to “a kind of hippie, and that plays well.”
Riojas wears the label well and was even sporting a new — well, old — 2005 College World Series T-shirt he found at a vintage store two blocks from the team hotel on South 10th Street. The reminder that that was the year of the Longhorns’ most recent national championship in this town wasn’t lost on him.
“It was like, I have to grab this,” Riojas said.
There’s more to grab for this Texas team, which isn’t quite ready for the season to end and plans to go after Monday’s game like, well, a bunch of Angry Birds.