Relaxed DeLoach coming alive at the right time for No. 14 Aggie baseball

Expectations were sky-high heading into 2019 for Texas A&M center fielder Zach DeLoach. He was coming off a freshman season where he hit .264 with 18 extra-base hits as the primary leadoff hitter, and a summer in which he hit .323 using a wood bat in the Northwoods League.

In all, he notched almost 450 official at-bats as a freshman and seemed poised for even more production hitting in the middle of the A&M lineup as a sophomore. That did not happen to start the season, however, as DeLoach’s average sat below the Mendoza Line for the first two months of the season. 

“I was being rushed a little bit,” he said. “My mechanics weren’t as sound as I’d like them to be. I was trying to do too much and putting unnecessary pressure on myself. I just wasn’t in the state of mind I want to be and I wasn’t relaxed.”

He was removed from the starting lineup for a time as Ty Condel and Jonathan Ducoff got more opportunities in the outfield, and DeLoach found himself on the bench after playing in all 62 of the Aggies’ games last year. 

“It was humbling,” DeLoach said. “That’s how baseball works. If you’re going to be a starter here, you have to go out and prove it every day. It made me realize I needed to work harder and try to work my way back into the lineup.”

DeLoach started taking extra batting practice nearly every day, any time he could – before games, after morning workouts, and on off days. However, it was a mental adjustment more than a physical one that has sparked his recent success.

“Your swing isn’t the problem, it’s your head,” assistant coach Justin Seely told DeLoach. “And if you can fix your head and be the Zach DeLoach that we recruited you to be, then you will be okay and you will hit like you know how to hit.”

That diligence allowed him to return to the starting lineup in the LSU, and since then he has been one of the Aggies’ best hitters. In the last 10 games, DeLoach is hitting a whopping .411 (14-for-34) with two home runs and 12 runs scored.

“He’s been as consistently good as anybody in our lineup the last three or four weeks,” said hitting coach Will Bolt.

With his recent hot hitting, the Lewisville native has also moved toward the top of the order. After hitting ninth for much of the season, he found success in the two-hole and then went 2-for-3 with three runs scored in the No. 3 spot Tuesday against Sam Houston State.

“I haven’t really felt that much different,” DeLoach said. “If anything, I just feel more relaxed at the plate. I think the mentality of being aggressive, swinging at the first good pitch you see, and building off that has helped me. 

“With my success I’ve been able to move myself up into the order, and I like the two-hole a lot. You see a lot more good pitches and you’re going to get more pitches to hit. I’ve been seeing the ball well lately and I’ve been making a lot of good hard contact, which is pretty much all I can ask for.”

DeLoach’s emergence has been a welcome sight to an offense that has had its ups and downs this year. He will likely hit third in the near future as the Aggies try to build on their offensive outburst against Sam Houston State – which came with Braden Shewmake leading off, Bryce Blaum hitting second, followed by DeLoach. 

“Finding the right place to put guys in the lineup has been a bit of an issue,” Bolt said. “Zach’s been going good, and right now we’re just trying to find the right combination of guys that are going to give us the best chance to win.”

Whether he’s hitting second or third, a hot-hitting DeLoach makes the Aggies a more dynamic offense, which they will try to carry over into this weekend’s crucial series against No. 6 Mississippi State. The series opener is Thursday, with first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m.

“We need him to be the Zach DeLoach we all know he can be,” Shewmake concluded. “If he can do that, then our offense is just going to be that much better.”