{"id":751753,"date":"2026-07-14T18:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/751753\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T18:27:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:27:20","slug":"ethan-mendoza-goes-undrafted-returns-to-texas-longhorns-baseball-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/751753\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethan Mendoza goes undrafted, returns to Texas Longhorns baseball team"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday evening, veteran infielder Ethan\u00a0Mendoza announced that he will return to the Texas baseball<\/a> team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On his\u00a0Instagram account, Mendoza wrote “Lets run it back.” Mendoza was not picked over the 20 rounds of this past weekend’s MLB draft, and he has decided to rejoin the Longhorns instead of transferring or signing with a pro team\u00a0as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n

A Texas native, Mendoza spent his freshman year at Arizona State before leading the Longhorns during the 2025 season with his .333 batting average. The 5-foot-10, 200-pound Mendoza’s batting average dipped 55 points this past season, but his power numbers increased during a 10-homer, 50-RBI campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mendoza has also dealt with shoulder injuries during his two seasons at Texas. After starting at second base during UT’s first 47 games in 2026, Mendoza was only able to serve as a designated hitter over the season’s final seven weeks. He appeared to still be in pain during some postseason at-bats.<\/p>\n

“I’m having a blast,” Mendoza told reporters after a 14-2\u00a0win over Alabama<\/a> in a College World Series elimination game. “We’re winning, playing in the College World Series, doesn’t get much better than that. With me, I’m just trying to take care of myself, whatever I need to do.”<\/p>\n

If Mendoza is able to play the field again, the Longhorns seem set in its infield. Texas is\u00a0set to bring back shortstop Adrian Rodriguez and\u00a0first baseman Casey Borba<\/a>, and former Texas Tech infielder Linkin Garcia<\/a> was the first member of UT’s 2026 transfer class. The team did lose versatile infielder\u00a0Temo Becerra to graduation and signees Grady Emerson<\/a> and Beau Peterson were both drafted within the first five rounds of the 2026 MLB Draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday evening, veteran infielder Ethan\u00a0Mendoza announced that he will return to the Texas baseball team.\u00a0 On his\u00a0Instagram…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2289],"tags":[5,648,46450,1586,1694,2341,3794,20401],"class_list":["post-751753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-college-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-college-baseball","tag-ethan-mendoza","tag-mlb-draft","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-baseball","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-baseball"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116919746144688135","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}