Joe Lampe wasn’t sure he got it when the ball left his bat in the bottom of the eighth inning. With his team trailing by one with two outs and a runner on second, he thought initially his towering blast down the right field line would hook foul. A fortuitous right to left breeze kept the moonshot fair, and when it landed, Arizona State took a 9-8 lead that would prove to be the final score.
“I knew it had the distance, but it looked like it might hook foul,” Lampe said. “I was pretty fired up.”
Lampe’s blast, his ninth of the year, was the second two-run shot of the eighth inning. The Sun Devils trailed 8-5 after USC broke a 5-5 tie with a three-spot in the top of the inning. ASU led 5-0 early, but the potent bats of USC mounted a comeback with eight unanswered runs. Jacob Tobias followed a leadoff single from Ryan Campos with a monster shot to right to bring the Sun Devils back within one. With a one-run lead, Brock Peery notched his sixth save of the season to secure the sweep.
“You gotta hand it to SC; I thought they were dead in the water down 5-0,” Willie Bloomquist said. “It went from a really happy weekend to what I thought was gonna be a postgame chewing. But it’s pretty cool how we responded. I was very proud and emotional from the whole thing.”
Bloomquist often talks about how he still feels like he’s a player during emotionally charged games like this one. How did he react when Lampe’s home run ball left the yard?
“Lampe hits it out, and I’m going nuts, I’m going crazy,” Bloomquist said with a wide grin. “I had to call (McLain) over when I calmed down to make sure I gave (Brock Peery) enough time to get warm.”
Peery had a rough start to the season. He was a part of almost every late game meltdown authored by the Sun Devil bullpen. Just as much as he was responsible for the struggles, he can take credit for the bullpen’s midseason renaissance. Bloomquist had no hesitation in going to the sidewinding right-hander with the save on the line.
“I told (Peraza) that if we tied the game or took the lead, that Brock would be going in,” Bloomquist said. “Trust your stuff, go attack the zone, and let the deception play. Brock wants to finish every game that he’s in.”
USC’s starting pitcher Charlie Hurley had been one of the Pac-12’s hottest pitchers coming into Sunday’s game. His season ERA stood at a gaudy 1.85 through 44 innings pitched. For the first two innings on Saturday, he looked the part. ASU was scoreless through two with nothing but a couple of seeing-eye singles. In the third, the Hurley heat check struck midnight. Joe Lampe’s home run power surge from early in the season has leveled off over the last few weeks, but he nearly hit his ninth of the year to lead off the third. He ended up with a leadoff triple after the ball hit off the top third of the centerfield wall and ricocheted back towards the infield. Sean McLain wasted no time, driving him in with a first-pitch single. Conor Davis and Ryan Campos followed with RBI knocks of their own to give ASU the 3-0 early cushion.
In 27 career appearances, Hurley hadn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a single outing. By the time the third inning came to a close, ASU had hung that total on him in a single inning. With two more runs in the fourth, the Sun Devils five earned runs chased Hurley from the game. He entered the contest only having allowed nine all season.
“You’ve got McLain and me, then Ethan, Conor, and Campos,” Lampe said. “It’s a mess for pitchers right now.”
Adam Tulloch started for ASU and turned in his best start in over a month. Although he only went 4.1 innings, he tossed four shutout frames to start the game and only allowed two runs on the day. Will Levine had been reliable out of the bullpen for over a month after initially struggling out of the gate. He never truly had it on Saturday, as he and Blake Pivaroff struggled to consistently find the zone as USC put together the large comeback. The bullpen was taxed last weekend without length from any starter, which Bloomquist believes may have contributed to today’s poor showing.
“It’s frustrating to see guys give away free bases,” Bloomquist said. “But when I sit back and think about it, they’ve been giving us a lot of innings. I’m continuing to learn; I know I’m going to make some mistakes.”
Arizona State has flirted with getting truly hot several times this season, but a tough patch of losses has always kept them from truly hitting their stride. Saturday’s late game collapse had all the makings of one of those losses until it didn’t. Seeing this team fight back late in a game is nothing new; seeing it lead to sustained success is what the group badly needs.
“I think the timing of how we’re playing right now is perfect,” Lampe said. “We as an offense are starting to take some pressure off of our pitchers, and they can trust their stuff. I think our offense is good enough to pick us up any day.”
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