24 hours after what head coach Willie Bloomquist described as an embarrassing, offensive performance, the Sun Devils (4-2) scrubbed their Thursday throwaway loss to Ohio State (3-3) with an emphatic 14-4 victory over those same Buckeyes on Friday night.
After being carved up by Landon Beidelschies last night and seeing Ohio State tee off on their bullpen, Arizona State refused to let what was an emasculating Thursday evening spill over into a Friday folly. Plating runs early, and often, the Sun Devil bats gave plenty of support for freshman starter Thomas Burns and left-handed reliever Matt Cornelius as the tandem held the Buckeye bats silent throughout the middle innings, allowing the entirety of the ASU lineup to zero in on building its sizeable winning margin after being shut down the night before.
“He (Beidelschies) was pretty good (yesterday), but I didn’t think our guys were focused in on what we could have done in a better job against him,” Bloomquist noted. “Rolling over today, we were a lot more focused on what we were trying to do.”
“We were ready to play and ready to hit up there,” Jacob Tobias added. “We knew we were going to get a lot of strikes out of that guy, unlike yesterday.”
Making his second start at the collegiate level, Thomas Burns came out of the gate instead freezing with the command on his fastball, as can be seen by Trey Lipsey’s leadoff home run, but made up for it with devastating breaking stuff. The array of left-handed Ohio State hitters (all nine starters) were befuddled by Burns’s unheralded arsenal of breaking balls.
“Breaking balls, changeups, got me out of a lot of jams,” Burns explained. “I think that’s what let me work from behind is having the offspeed stuff to come along with a lot of swing-and-misses. I enjoy facing lefties. All my stuff plays well. The changeup played really well against all the lefties today. Backdoor slider was really beneficial too.”
Those whiffs would be plentiful for the freshman, racking up eight of them in 4.1 innings pitched, as Burns limited the Buckeyes to just two runs.
“The great thing about him is when he does give up runs, doesn’t seem to be rattled,” Bloomquist noticed of his ace. “Just goes right back to work. He’s a very smart kid, and he sensed that they were on his fastball. So, he started pitching backwards on his own tonight. He’s able to drop his breaking stuff in for strikes and work ahead off of that when he needs to. He was throwing those guys backward and tying them in a knot.”
The ability to adjust to finesse rather than power on the mound isn’t one you see out of most freshmen, but as Bloomquist has reiterated plenty of times, there’s a reason he starts on Friday nights.
With Burns switching things up swiftly, ASU followed suit in flipping the script from their porous offensive night on Thursday. After going scoreless in the first, Isaiah Jackson would reignite the Sun Devil offense with a long ball in the bottom of the second, his fourth of the year. To follow up, Kien Vu would bring around Ethan Mendoza on an error before consecutive base hits from Brandon Compton and Ryan Campos staked Burns to a 4-1 lead by the end of the second, helping chase OSU starter Colin Purcell early.
With Burns having run up his pitch taunt to the nineties by the fifth, Matt Cornelius was the first arm out of the bullpen to protect what had become a 5-1 lead, thanks to an RBI single from Harris Williams, one of four knocks he would have on that night.
In succession to Burns’s big night, Cornelius was colossal with 2.1 innings of scoreless ball with five punchouts. Not expected to be much of a factor for the Sun Devils in the preseason, Cornelius’s showed both Friday and against Kansas State his knack for getting big outs, as he stranded two runners in scoring position in the fifth, before taking ASU into the seventh with ease.
“That’s a kid that has waited his turn and, once he’s gotten it, has made the most of the opportunities he’s had,” Bloomquist said of the junior lefty. “Big situations he’s come in, where the game’s still in limbo, and he goes out there and does his job. The moment hasn’t been too big for him. He just goes and competes.”
For Cornelius, it’s just another day at the office.
“Going up there and doing my job as best as I can day in and day out,” he said.
Held silent offensively, Ohio State bore the wrath of an aggressive ASU offense, as the Sun Devils jumped on the Buckeye bullpen for eight runs in their final three turns at-bat. While Jackson and Tobias will take the home run highlights of the night, perhaps the biggest contributor came in designated hitter Brandon Compton. Having come off the bench on Tuesday and Thursday for matchup preference, Compton returned to the starting lineup with a vengeance, going 3-5 to drive in three runs out of the two-hole. With such a loaded group of capable bats, Compton, like others, was chomping at the bit to earn his spot in the order, and took advantage of that chance.
“When we’re aggressive, good things happen,” Compton noted. “When you get in the game, just go up there and hit.”
With everyone ready to hit, the Sun Devils offensive attack went in stride.
“Hundred times better,” Tobias said of the collective offensive performance. “A lot more trusting the way we play the game than expecting it to happen. Putting action out there and not letting them come to us. It was really cool to see us go out like that. Really proud of everybody.”
Such a simple approach would serve as the successful one for ASU, as they ran up the score to even the series. Having gone down in the opener Thursday, not only would Friday have been necessary in order to win the set, but also to wash away Thursday’s shortcomings and not let the wave crash into following games. This mindset has been adopted by ASU, and it’s one they plan on continuing throughout the season.
“We preach not losing two in a row,” Tobias emphasized. “Even though we don’t even want to lose one, we know that next game we have to come back focused and fix those things that we know went wrong. Feel like we’ve done a good job of that so far.”
“You could sense the aura that I was a little disappointed with yesterday and that they better come with it today,” Bloomquist continued. “Bounced back very well.”
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