After its offensive reawakening against Rice on March 2, Texas A&M baseball fell back to its old ways in a 7-4 loss to UTSA.

Pitching, which had been a struggle in the Maroon and White’s prior four-game skid, saw some improvement in sophomore right-handed pitcher Weston Moss’s first start of the season, bringing about a rapid 1-2-3 inning for the UTSA offense.

Batting had its fair share of struggles as well, until a revival of sorts took place in the final game of the Astros Foundation College Classic, when the Aggies recorded four homers en route to a 14-4 run-rule victory. This revival initially carried over into A&M’s next contest when its offense loaded the bases in the first inning.

The Aggies took their first lead of the game off the bat of senior outfielder Gavin Kash, who seemed to have shaken off his early-season jitters after hitting his first home run of the season on Sunday against Rice. The Sour Lake native’s first at-bat was a hard-hit ball that fell out of the first baseman’s glove, allowing junior shortstop Kaeden Kent to reach home plate unscathed with two outs. The following batter found himself victim to a strikeout, however, stranding the bases loaded.

Moss’s efficiency stood true in the second inning as well, though an error allowed an unearned runner to reach first base while a walk advanced the runner. The Montgomery Lake Creek product was unwavering in the face of adversity, dooming the Roadrunner advance with his second strikeout of the game.

Kent, already the A&M home run leader this season, was surely happy to extend his one-homer lead over junior center fielder Jace LaViolette to two, when he slammed a second-inning pitch 101 miles per hour, 413 feet into right field, barely missing foul territory.

The third-inning fiasco of a hit batter and dropped groundout seemed to sum up the recent A&M struggles perfectly in such a fast sequence. The Roadrunners managed to turn these events into a run for themselves, although the Aggies would not let the situation get out of hand, with the score standing at 2-1 going into the bottom of the third.

Moss found tougher sledding in the later innings, especially when his first pitch of the fourth inning hit junior OF Drew Detlefson, giving him a free pass. The righty’s night came to an end when he hit another batter, putting two on with one out. 

When junior RHP Grant Cunningham took the mound in Moss’s stead, a difficult situation reached its boiling point as a two-RBI single into center field stole the lead away from the Aggies. The Washington transfer allowed no further damage, but now A&M was charged with regaining control.

Young talent and experienced veterans have gone from a luxury to a necessity in light of several key injuries on the A&M roster. Freshman infielder Sawyer Farr was among those to step up, as was freshman OF Terrence Kiel II, whose efforts put runners on base to take back command of the game. Ultimately, it was an exercise in futility when a pair of outs stranded the lone runner left on base.

A second error fed into the narrative of defensive inconsistency for the Maroon and White, who faced runners on the corners with just one out. A rebound was necessary to calm the seas, but a fourth hit for the Roadrunners brought another run home instead. 

Pitching threatened to remain an Achilles’ heel for the Aggies when the bases were loaded and redshirt junior RHP Luke Jackson was slated for damage control. The bad hand the Lake Travis product was dealt haunted Cunningham from the dugout when a two-RBI double paired, with a third error, gave UTSA a 7-2 advantage. 

“We’re not taking care of what we need to,” coach Michael Earley said. “We still have time to make things right. But there comes a time where that time runs out. But not now, we got to make the adjustments.”

The offensive trend of scoring in the early innings and then going stagnant for A&M has been perhaps its greatest struggle. A lack of insurance runs outside the first couple of frames has plagued any fight against lackluster pitching from the bullpen. Up to the fifth inning, this fact stayed true as the bats went cold, apart from the first run through the batting order.

Routine plays for quick outs have grown to become Kryptonite, and the troubles have not been addressed through the early-season bouts. By the sixth inning, the error count overshadowed the number of hits for the Aggies, and their staggering total of 20 errors this season has come back to bite them time and time again.

The offense knocked in a run in the sixth, but the woes lingered as the Fightin’ Farmers had yet to score more than one run in an inning.

“I don’t hate what we did today, but I don’t like it,” Earley said. “I liked the confidence we built from Sunday, but obviously it wasn’t enough today.”

The relief pitching has yet to find its footing eleven games deep into the season, with each new arm fighting an old battle in conjunction with a new one. Freshman left-handed pitcher Caden McCoy had a much calmer outing with a clean seventh, though his predecessors’ performance had already possibly sealed the Aggies’ fate.

If a breakthrough was coming, the seventh inning looked to be the one to do it for the Maroon and White offense. Two outs and no one on became runners at the corners when Kash got a chance to drive in another run. With Farr back up to the plate, the Aggies aimed to generate some Olsen Magic, though no more runners made it home apart from Kiel.

With A&M hoping the eighth inning would be its time for redemption, McCoy kept that belief alive, holding the score at 7-4. A 1-2-3 inning laid those short-lived hopes to rest. He returned once again in the ninth alongside senior RHP Brad Rudis, buying the Aggies one final shot at claiming their first-midweek game.

But once again, the spark was simply not there, as a second-straight 1-2-3 ended A&M’s chances of a comeback.

“We’re going to click, we have to,” Earley said. “We have good players, and we’ve shown we can beat anybody. But we’ve also shown we can lose to anybody. We got to get things right.”

The Aggies face their second-midweek contest against Texas Southern at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6.