Off the bat of Hunter Bishop, the ball just kept floating. High into the overcast Phoenix, sky, right up the gut of Phoenix Municipal Stadium, landing 420 feet from home plate and bringing home four Sun Devil runs.
Just as it disappeared from sight, so to, it seemed, did Arizona State’s destiny and questions.
The Devils’ power could even outmatch the nation’s top team. They could compete and beat the best. Their postseason spot would be all but a lock. There would be no home sweep at the hands of No. 1 UCLA (37-8, 16-5 Pac-12).
And then.
Ah-ha. The caveat has haunted ASU for three years. From bloopers to miscues to baffling losses, it stood pat. It sums up the Devils in 2019, from their torrid start onward to a regression back to the mean.
‘And then’ made its way to Muni again Sunday. It hushed and flummoxed the maroon and gold spectators for hours yet didn’t kill ASU (33-12, 14-10 Pac-12) in its 8-7 win over the nation’s top-ranked squad.
“I think the best part of this is we played a relatively poor baseball game on the mound and defensively,” ASU coach Tracy Smith said. “All that said, this group still found, (in) arguably one of the worst games we played, found a way to win against the No. 1 team in the country.”
The euphoric first-inning grand slam -- ASU’s first lead of the series -- was met by silence. Six innings, two hits, one run. UCLA’s hypnotic pitching staff, which has the lowest ERA in the country, rolled out arm after arm, spellbinding pitches and stifling an ASU offense that doesn’t get fooled often.
An early-inning four-spot felt like 10. But leads don’t always feel like such with the Devils. Even up four, there was a sense of foreboding around the stadium.
When it comes to pitching, Smith’s biggest gripe is location. Is a guy attacking hitters? Is he letting his defense work? Is he scared to throw strikes? In a game last month at UNLV, he yanked reliever Chaz Montoya after one four-pitch walk. He didn’t need to see anymore. Montoya wasn’t competing.
Unlike most Sundays with a scare bullpen, Smith had his full arsenal available for the finale. That’s one of the perks of an 18-3 loss the day prior. With no set Sunday starter after the injury and ongoing comeback of RJ Dabovich, Smith rolled out a ‘bullpen day’.
Sam Romero, Brady Corrigan, Erik Tolman, Blake Burzell and Dabovich all got action, none seeing more than three innings. The quintet allowed eight walks and contributed to the Devils four errors -- hard blemish after hard blemish to the ‘free base’ tracker marked up by the ASU coaches each game.
The most egregious came in the sixth. Burzell fielded a bunt down the third-base line. He initially looked to third, ignoring the calls of, ‘One! One!’ from catcher Sam Ferri. No dice. Next, he turned his body and abided by Ferri’s request. It sailed wide, helping plate three Bruin runs that inning.
“After that happened, I just got freaking pissed off and I’m like, ‘I’m not letting none of these guys score again,” Burzell said.
They didn’t. But ASU was suddenly down a pair.
“It would be a lot better if you hold the lead,” Smith said of getting up early. “If we want to be where we have to be, those are the steps we have to take. That stuff is going to happen but it’s happening too much right now.”
Sunday morning, with the 18-3 loss still sitting unsteadily in his stomach, Smith, at the suggestion of ASU’s ‘mental coach’ Scott Pelton, approached his team offering a message of resetting. Smith admitted for the first time this year, he felt like his team “quit” in Saturday’s blowout loss.
It was a squad looking in the mirror asking itself the deep questions about reflection and projection.
“We kind of revisited who we are and who we want to be and how we want to be perceived,” Smith said. “We just said, ‘Hey man, let’s not commit to the result, let’s not worry about the result. Let’s check ourselves at the end of the day to see if we played hard all the way through.”
Down a pair, ASU had the top of its order coming up in the eighth. But even when Spencer Torkelson clobbered his 16th home run to almost the exact spot Bishop hit his, it still felt like UCLA’s bullpen of Kyle Mora and Holden Powell would shut it down.
Then Alika Williams beat out a weak grounder. And Bishop walked. There was hope for the Devils. Three batters later, Carter Aldrete, who came off the bench for the first time this season, pinch hit for Myles Denson, roping the third pitch he saw into right field. The winning run touched home. ASU shut down its ‘and then’ moment.
And for a sliding team with a formidable schedule still on the table, Sunday halts the talk that the Sun Devils could falter to epic proportions and miss the tournament.
“Every game matters from here on out,” Aldrete said. “We’re trying to do our best to host, even if it’s in the cards, even if it’s not we want to win as many baseball games as we can. As Skip says, the next game is the most important.
“We have Arizona on Tuesday and that’s a must win. Then we go to Nebraska and those are must-win games too. These games matter because we eventually want to get to Omaha and every game in the postseason matters so that’s how we’re going to treat these last 10 games.”
