Texas baseball has its aces. Now it needs the rest of the hand
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The Texas Longhorns are moving their best reliever into the rotation. Someone still has to do his old job.
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Dylan Volantis and Sam Cozart combined to strike out 12.95 hitters per nine innings last season. Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson, the two starters who carried LSU to the 2025 national title, combined for 13.16. Texas’ top two are in that neighborhood.
The gap is volume. Anderson and Eyanson threw 227 innings. Volantis and Cozart threw 147⅓, and most of Cozart’s came out of the bullpen. Holding that stuff through a second and third trip through the order is the part Texas still has to see from him.
That’s the question in the last piece of our 2027 Texas baseball preview. Jim Schlossnagle has two arms at the top that can match anybody’s. The harder call is which pitcher gets Sunday and which one stays available when a Friday or Saturday start ends early.
Texas made its 39th trip to Omaha in 2026, and Volantis, Ruger Riojas and Luke Harrison became the program’s first trio of 100-strikeout pitchers since 1988. Riojas and Harrison are gone. Cozart can take one of those starts. He can’t take his old relief innings with him.
By the numbersThe pitchers on this roster threw 247.2 of Texas’ 531.1 innings last season, 46.6 percent, and accounted for 331 of its 698 strikeouts, according to the team’s final 2026 statistics. That total includes two outs from Kaleb Rogers, who isn’t listed in the table below.
Weekend rotation
Departures: Ruger Riojas (Phillies, third round); Luke Harrison (Cardinals, eighth round)
Additions: Gavin King (Middle Tennessee transfer); freshmen Trey Rangel, James Jorgensen, and Cooper Webb
Returning: Dylan Volantis, Sam Cozart, Michael Winter
Volantis is the easiest call on the staff. He went 10-2 with a 2.08 ERA and 135 strikeouts in 95 innings and led the SEC in ERA, WHIP, FIP, opponent average, and strikeouts. A year earlier he was the closer, with 12 saves and a 1.94 ERA in 51 innings as a freshman. Texas has already watched one lights-out reliever take on a starter’s load and deliver.
Hitters batted .189 against Volantis last spring, and he finished second in the country in FIP and sixth in ERA. Friday is his. When he carries a game deep, the benefit ought to reach Sunday — fewer innings from the arms Texas may need twice in the series.
Cozart is walking the same path a year later, with the biggest step still in front of him. He went 6-0 with nine saves, a 1.72 ERA, and 77 strikeouts in 52.1 innings, and only three of his 23 appearances were starts. The NCBWA named him its Stopper of the Year and Freshman Pitcher of the Year. Among Division I pitchers with at least 50 innings, nobody had a lower WHIP (0.73) or opponent average (.140).
His last outing shows why the move is worth making and why replacing him won’t be simple. With Texas facing elimination against Georgia in Omaha, Cozart came in with the bases loaded and two outs in the sixth. He struck out Kolby Branch looking, then finished the game — 3.1 innings, three hits, one run, one walk and six strikeouts on 48 pitches. Texas lost 2-0. Cozart’s one run came on a sacrifice fly in the seventh, and he kept Texas a swing away until the final out.
Schlossnagle settled the role question in Omaha. Cozart is “certainly going to be a starting pitcher for us,” he said. Cozart’s fastball was up to 96 in BON’s February scouting report, with a cutter, a changeup and a curveball. He has the pitches for the job. The question is whether he can keep landing them after hitters have seen him once.
Then there’s the foot. Texas announced in July that Cozart had minor surgery on his right foot to address a previous injury, that it would limit his offseason work, and that he’s expected to be healthy for 2027. How that buildup goes is part of the Saturday question.
Sunday is open. Michael Winter has the stuff to claim it. BON’s scouting report in February had his fastball touching 95 with arm-side run, plus a cutter and a high-spin slider. But he walked eight in 13.2 innings and finished with a 5.93 ERA. He made only two starts as a freshman as he battled mononucleosis.
Gavin King is the only incoming transfer arm on the roster, and it’s easy to see why Texas wanted him. He struck out 59 in 42 innings at Middle Tennessee, 12.6 per nine. It’s just as easy to see where he needs to improve — 31 walks and 10 home runs behind a 6.00 ERA. He made three starts and saved five games. That doesn’t make him a starter by default. If he can get through the middle of an SEC order for two innings, that may help Texas more than asking him for five or six. The walks and home runs have to come down either way.
Trey Rangel brings a different kind of ceiling. Perfect Game ranked him No. 69 in the 2026 class and had him at 94-96 with a sweeping slider and a firm changeup at its 2025 National Showcase. Those are high school readings, not fall numbers at the Disch. James Jorgensen and Cooper Webb belong in the conversation, too. PG’s 2025 report on Webb had him in the low 90s touching 94 with two breaking balls and a changeup, which is a starter’s kit. Throwing strikes with a second pitch against college hitters will tell Texas more about the Sunday race than another mile an hour on the fastball.
Texas also lost two pitchers who had been committed to the program to the draft — left-hander Brody Bumila signed with the Rangers as a third-round pick (No. 89 overall), and right-hander Cooper Harris signed with the Nationals as a fourth-round pick (No. 106). That makes the freshmen who did arrive matter in both the rotation race and the bullpen.
The LSU comparison sets the ceiling, not an innings quota. Cozart doesn’t have to double his workload overnight. But if he leaves after four innings on Saturday, Texas still needs 15 outs before it can worry about Sunday. That’s why the next reliable multi-inning arm matters as much as the next name in the rotation.
MidweekDepartures: Max Grubbs (season-ending arm surgery); Cody Howard (Nationals, 13th round); Jason Flores (Georgia); Kade Bing (Houston)
Additions: King; freshmen Rangel, Jorgensen, Webb, Karson Reeder, Hayes Holton and Jack Smejkal
Returning: Hudson Hamilton, Winter, Brody Walls
The fourth-best starter isn’t automatically the Tuesday starter. If King or Winter can get six outs with a lead on Friday, Texas has to weigh that against the workload of a Tuesday start. A longer midweek outing can narrow how a pitcher is used later in the week. Those games count, too, but the job can’t be assigned without considering what it leaves for the weekend.
Hamilton brings experience. The senior struck out 18 in 13.2 innings last season, though six walks and a 5.93 ERA leave room to grow. Webb, Reeder, Smejkal and Holton all finished inside Perfect Game’s top 200 in the 2026 class. Midweek games are where Texas finds out which of those freshmen can land a second pitch, work through traffic, and finish an inning.
BullpenDepartures: Thomas Burns (Twins, eighth round); Haiden Leffew (Rays, free agent); Cal Higgins (Phillies, free agent); Grubbs; Connor McCreery (out of eligibility); Howard; Flores; Bing; Jadyn Furgason (Missouri); Grady Westphal (Kansas State); Cooper Rummel; Cozart (moving to the rotation)
Additions: King; the freshman class, including left-handers Phinn Beaird, Tucker Thompson, Bryce Krenek and Matthew Manis
Returning: Brett Crossland, Walls, Ethan Walker, Hamilton, Jack McKernan, Kaleb Rogers, Jack Paris
This is where the rebuild lives.
Burns struck out 43 and saved four games in 22.1 innings. Leffew held hitters to a .176 average. Higgins and Leffew both signed pro deals after the draft. Grubbs’ senior season ended with arm surgery, and he isn’t on the 2027 roster. McCreery is out of eligibility.
Take out Volantis and Cozart, and the returning pitchers combined for 100.1 innings and a 4.75 ERA, counting the innings Winter and Hamilton threw as starters. The 4.75 is a warning, not a verdict on every arm. Texas has to sort out who can enter with runners on, who is better starting a clean inning and who can come back later in the series. Those are different jobs, even when the roster calls all of them relievers.
Brett Crossland is the most natural early fit at closer. His 34 strikeouts in 23.1 innings make the case, and a 3.47 ERA is something to build on. The issue is the traffic he created himself: 12 walks and seven hit batters, 19 free baserunners in a small workload. The same February report had his fastball touching 97 with a curveball as his best breaking pitch. His strikeouts give Texas a way out of an inning without putting the ball in play. Command, not another tick on the fastball, is what would make him easier to trust with a lead.
Walls is a different puzzle. He allowed only 24 hits in 31.2 innings, but six left the yard. The .202 opponent average and 1.07 WHIP say he kept traffic down. The six homers explain why a low hit total didn’t keep the ERA down. His fastball-slider combination makes him another late-inning option, but there is a real difference between giving him a clean inning and asking him to protect somebody else’s runners. The hitter and the situation matter more than a pecking order set by ERA.
That matters more at home this year. Schlossnagle expects the renovated Disch to play more offensively with its new, faster turf, and the left-field wall is coming in by as much as 10 feet in spots.
Ethan Walker is the experienced lefty, with a 2.60 ERA and three walks in 17.1 innings. Jack McKernan offers a different look. He redshirted in 2026, and the February report had him at 92-94 with arm-side life, a sweeping slider and a changeup. The four freshman lefties give Texas more options behind them. Being left-handed gets them a look; it doesn’t establish that they can retire a good left-handed hitter with the game on the line.
Schlossnagle has explained why so much of this staff is young. “We don’t go into the portal that much for pitching because we believe in our high school players,” he said at his first preseason media availability, “and we believe in the guys that we can develop here.” And the fall exhibition against Houston at Dell Diamond never happened. That’s a bet on development, but the innings arrive on the schedule whether the freshmen are ready or not. The veterans have to keep Texas from turning every rough freshman outing into a full bullpen day.
What the past staffs tell usSchlossnagle has rebuilt this part of a roster before. His 2016 TCU team, with Kirk Saarloos coaching the pitchers, had to replace 48 starts, 406 innings and 15 saves and still made it to Omaha.
The 2024 Texas A&M staff is the closer comparison, because Max Weiner, who now works with Texas’ pitchers, coached that group. Ryan Prager made 19 starts and struck out 124. Chris Cortez struck out 102 in 64.2 innings, mostly in relief, starting only three of his 25 appearances. Evan Aschenbeck added 75.2 more innings, all out of the bullpen, with a 1.78 ERA and 10 saves. That team reached the national finals with real pitching after its starter left the game. A&M had a way to get more than three difficult outs without asking the next starter to provide them.
That’s the lesson for Texas. The Sunday winner shouldn’t simply be the best arm left after Volantis and Cozart. He should be the pitcher who can give Texas a useful start without leaving it short of answers the other two days. If that means keeping King in relief or letting a freshman grow into Sunday, Schlossnagle should be willing to live with the less impressive rotation on paper.
Early role projection
Volantis and Cozart give Texas a reason to think bigger than another good regular season.
Pocket aces are the best starting hand in Texas Hold’em. In Omaha, they deal you four cards.