No. 14 Texas A&M drops series finale to New Mexico State, 4-1
Game #15: New Mexico State 4, No. 14 Texas A&M 1
Records: Texas A&M (9-6, 0-0), New Mexico State (8-7, 0-0)
WP: Saul Soto (2-0)
LP: Myles Patton (2-1)
Box Score
Two steps forward, one step back.
That's the feeling of No. 14 Texas A&M's weekend as the Maroon & White suffered a 4-1 loss on Sunday and failed to complete the sweep of New Mexico State at Blue Bell Park.
Under chilly conditions with a stiff north wind, A&M failed to continue its offensive success from earlier in the series and scored just one run on four hits.
"We didn't really do anything to kick the ball around to beat ourselves like we have in the past," A&M head coach Michael Earley said. "It's hard to really point to any one aspect except, to me, balls not falling. It's easy when you don't have that many hits to shine light on some at-bats, but collectively, as a whole, we hit the ball really hard. It's tough either way."
True, a number of hard-hit balls were hit right at defenders, but the overall offensive output is not too dissimilar from earlier losses this season.
After Terrence Kiel II's fourth-inning single, NMSU starter Matthew Yarc and reliever Saul Soto combined to retire 15 consecutive hitters until Wyatt Henseler dumped a double into left with one out in the ninth.
"They're were filling up the strike zone," Earley said. "I thought we hit balls hard, I really do. I thought we had good at-bats collectively, maybe chased some here and there, but I thought we hit the ball well."
A&M was a combined 14-for-31 (.452) with runners in scoring position on Friday and Saturday, but in the finale, the home nine came up empty in just two such chances.
Indeed, A&M accounted for just five total base runners on the four hits and Jace LaViolette's third-inning walk.
"We played clean baseball, and I thought we found some barrels, which we hadn't been doing in the past," Earley said. "That's a positive."
For a fourth consecutive game, A&M played clean defensively.
For the 11th time out of a dozen chances, A&M received a solid starting pitching performance from its weekend rotation.
The biggest difference was just general unluckiness.
"You just got to keep at it and try to show them like, 'Hey, 'you're hitting it hard,'" Earley said. "They know it, but the hard part is don't try to make changes when you're hitting balls hard and just continue at it."
The unluckiest individual might've been left-handed starter Myles Patton.
He allowed just two runs on two hits across 6.2 innings.
"Sticking to the process, one pitch at a time," Patton said. "The mindset is the biggest thing. That's really what I take away and what I remember from each game. ... We try to just pitch to our standard, and our standard is one pitch at a time, one inning at a time.
"Of course, you want to win games and get that run support, and that stuff will come around. We even showed it this weekend. That's obviously nice, but it's completely out of our control.
Steve Solorzano's fourth-inning homer was the only blemish against his otherwise perfect first six frames.
A walk to Jonatan Clough eventually scored the go-ahead run on Camden Kaufman’s sacrifice fly in the seventh.
"The biggest thing is the walk right there," Patton said. "If we don't walk that guy, probably no runs score there, and we're in a better position going into the later game, but it is what it is. Want to limit walks and fill up the zone as much as possible."
NMSU scored two more runs an inning late, one charged to Clayton Freshcorn and another to Brad Rudis, on Cough’s two-out single.
In a night-and-day difference to his last start, Patton received just one run of support — Kaeden Kent's sixth homer of the season in the third.
In stretching his extra-base hit streak to six games, Kent was A&M's only notable swing to beat Sunday's wind.
"They found some holes that we didn't find," Earley said. "I don't think we did anything to hurt ourselves besides not get more guys on base, but I don't think we did anything that was terrible at the plate at all. I just thought that they beat us."
And so A&M's modest three-game winning streak came to an end.
It leaves a feeling of taking a step back when larger strides forward are still needed.