Confidence Boost

There are a lot of reasons why the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College Scorpion baseball squad has molded itself into a playoff team.

Arguably the most important aspect of the Scorpions' transformation has been its starting pitching which now has something it didn't have early on in the season.

Confidence.

UTB-TSC's ace Julian Moya, Tony Lerma and Zach Moya make up the rotation that has helped the Scorpions climb out of a huge early season hole into the Red River Atlantic Conference Tournament at Scorpion Field on Tuesday.

"I feel like it has to do a lot with confidence and for me I felt like I didn't have any confidence in the beginning of the season," the Scorpions' ace said. "I'm pretty sure every other pitcher on this pitching staff has that now. It's coming at a good time."

Moya, along with the rest of the Scorpion arms, dealt with some stiff competition right from the start including three NAIA ranked teams and a University of Houston-Victoria ball club that has lost only a handful of games all season.

Once the team was past its most daunting part of the schedule everything began to turn around for the Scorpions especially as Moya started to groove midway through the season.

After starting off 0-4, the exuberant sophomore pitcher won five of his next six games and dropped his earned run average to a solid 3.96. Moya finished 8-6 and also ended the regular season with a 1.41 WHIP (walks, hits, innings-pitched) along with No. 2 starter Lerma's 1.58 WHIP alleviating extra men on base for the opposition.

"Once Julian started to get it going we all just rallied behind him (to turn the season around)," Scorpion outfielder Jacob Yousif said.

Not putting runners on base on a regular basis led to a severe drop in ERA as the team started with an 11.08 ERA in its first 16 games to a 5.11 ERA during its 17-game home stretch. In that span of 17 games at Scorpion Field the offense came alive as well which Moya said was a contributing factor in the pitching improvement.

"We got tired of walking people," Moya said. "That was our main concern and we walked a lot of people in the beginning and that's changed a lot since then. I feel that it has to do a lot with the offense we have because we are going to score a lot of runs and you feel relaxed on the mound which makes you last longer in games."

Lerma (6-5, 5.50 ERA) was an integral part in the Scorpions 180-degree turn in the season and it all started when the Scorpion hurler won the first game of the season against UHV.

"Winning that first game," Lerma said. "Then after we won that first game we saw what we had to do and from there we just took it home."

Freshman Zach Moya (3-5 , 9.73 ERA) in the back end of the rotation has struggled throughout the year but has shown flashes of excellence and Scorpions baseball coach Joel Barta said. "If the first year pitcher can emulate the other starters he'll be a much more consistent pitcher."

"You never know what you're going to get with a freshman whether is six hits and six walks or six innings and two hits," he added.

Now, with the postseason just a day away Barta is going to need his pitching staff to continue on its track as it faces NAIA ranked No.19 Texas Wesleyan in the opening round of the RRAC Tournament at Scorpion Field.

"It's going to come down to being efficient in the strike zone," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's Major League Baseball or Little League. If you get ahead of hitters and you don't walk people you're going to be successful."