If you ask 100 athletes where and how they discover their learning moments, a majority will tell you it comes from the lessons of defeat. Just one weekend ago, Arizona State (7-6, 1-0 Pac-12) found out how far away it was from the upper echelon of college baseball, being swept by Texas A&M and TCU. While they didn’t take a victory home from that gauntlet, the valuable experience of seeing the best of the best up close helped create a winning recipe in their return to the valley.
With a gutsy performance from its pitching staff, supported by a big day at the plate from Brandon Compton, the Sun Devils eeked out a 5-4 victory over a game Oregon (9-4, 0-1) squad.
“We’re being battle-tested,” head coach Willie Bloomquist said. We’re facing good arms and good teams. There’s not going to be any brewing to the finish line with the teams that we’re playing. We’ve got to be ready to have a dogfight for 27 outs.”
Even through 5.2 innings of two-run ball, Thomas Burns’s performance on the mound would indeed be anything but a cakewalk. Still, despite a whopping nine walks, Burns was able to limit the damage through more than five innings against a deep Ducks lineup. Scattering two runs on three hits with eight strikeouts, Burns rode a tight slider to an extended outing of 118 pitches when all was said and done.
“Tommy’s a strong kid,” head coach Willie Bloomquist noted. “We ramped him up the right way to where he was capable of doing that. I think he faced two more hitters than I wanted him to based on the matchup. A couple of hitters started seeing the breaking ball flatten out a little bit, and I knew he was getting tired. Thought he could dig deep and get through that.”
With Burns walking the tightrope as well as a freshman could, the Sun Devil bats made junior righty RJ Gordon throw early but couldn’t get to him collectively. Success was found in two powerful swings by Brandon Compton, as the eight-hole hitter tagged the hard-hurler for two home runs on the night, tallying three RBIs after a game-tying single in the eighth.
“Compton, what more can you say,” Bloomquist said. “He’s doing outstanding. Swinging the bat good, hitting lefties as well as righties, can’t ask much more from him.”
Following Sean Fitzpatrick’s escape of a bases-loaded jam in the sixth, a pair of solid frames from Ryan Schiefer, and a shutdown ninth by Cole Carlon, the Sun Devils would put three runners on for freshman Ethan Mendoza in the bottom of the ninth. Having played well above his experience level with a quiet swagger to him, head coach Willie Bloomquist did not doubt the rookie’s ability to plate the winning run.
“Having an 0-5 with the game-winner, I guess, will work at times,” Bloomquist said with a smirk. “Even with our big guns in Nick and Toby coming up, I wanted him to stay focused. I told him when he was in the hole, ‘You’re going to win this thing. Stay locked in and be ready to win this game. He just kind of looked at me like, ‘yeah, no kidding.’”
“I was excited,” Mendoza continued. “I wanted to get that walk-off, and I knew I was going to get the job done.”
Working a 2-2 count while fighting off breaking balls, Mendoza barreled a fastball up the middle, deep enough behind second base that the fielder had no play at the plate, as Arizona State cinched the walk-off win.
Even with the victory, the Sun Devil bats couldn’t fully shake its negative momentum from the Texas trip. Although Gordon’s pitch count ramped up quickly on Friday, and ASU scratched out a run in the first, Compton’s solo blasts would be the only damage done against the Oregon starter. Settling in after surrendering two runs and over 50 pitches through two innings, Gordon and Grayson Grinsell would hold ASU off the basepaths in the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings.
“We were able to get his (Gordon’s) pitch count up with quite a few walks early on,” Bloomquist recalled. “But he settled in and threw the ball pretty well. On the same token, we have to get better offensively than we are right now. We’ll take the win and be happy with that, but we understand we have to get better in a lot of areas… We’re capable of more.”
Luckily for the offense, the Sun Devil bullpen stepped up to keep the Ducks bats from breaking the game open. Inheriting the bases loaded in the sixth, Sean Fitzpatrick would walk in a run but keep the game tied at three with a massive strikeout of Jeffrey Heard. Passing the rock to Ryan Schiefer, the breakout star of the relief corps continued his strong start to the season with 2.1 strong innings. While a pair of errors in the seventh allowed the go-ahead run in for UO, Schiefer’s work of seven outs in eight batters faced was crucial in keeping the deficit where it was.
“He’s been nails,” Sean Fitzpatrick said of his teammate. “Awesome to watch.”
Bloomquist observed the bullpen’s overall performance as a drastic improvement from the start of the season after his bullpen served as the brightest spot from a dull last week and continued that level of play on Friday.
“The win-loss record from Texas wasn’t great, but the bottom line is that the bullpen was one of those shining spots that we came out of that with,” Bloomquist said. Guys are starting to find their roles, and we, as a coaching staff, are starting to figure out where to use guys. Each time they toe the rubber, they’re getting more and more comfortable.”
Entering the bottom of the eighth trailing 4-3 and without a base runner since the fourth, ASU looked to pick up offensive momentum desperately. Jacob Tobias lit the fire with a leadoff double, eventually setting up Compton for a chance to drive in the tying run. Having launched two home runs already on Friday, Grinsell exploited Compton’s aggressive approach, going down two strikes on sharp breaking stuff. Shortening up his swing, Compton punched a single past the shaded shortstop, with Tobias scampering home to tie the score.
“I was trying to be super aggressive on the first strikes, I see,” Compton said. “At first, I was just trying to pull the ball. But he gave me two offspeed, and I kind of looked stupid. I wanted just to go back up the middle, get a hit, and keep passing the baton.”
While the handoff would be delayed until the ninth, the Sun Devils would load the bases off a pair of walks and an infield single from Ryan Campos. Following a shallow flyout from Tobias, Phoenix Muni’s eyes turned to Ethan Mendoza, whose hard grounder up the middle gained too much ground to make a play at the plate as the first-base dugout emptied in celebration.
“Ethan’s been swinging the bat really well,” Bloomquist said of his standout second baseman. “We’re thrilled to have him doing what he’s doing right now. The guys that have that confidence and want to be in those situations are usually the ones that are going to get it done. He’s that type of kid who wants those situations.”
While no Texas A&M or TCU, Oregon is as formidable on the diamond as you can be in today’s Pac-12. Just last year, the Ducks stormed to a conference tournament championship. They rode their late-season momentum all the way to a super regional, taking out mighty Vanderbilt in the process before bowing out one win short of Omaha. Returning plenty of their contributors from that run makes Friday’s win for Arizona State even more promising, considering its ability to wash away a worrisome weekend in the Lone Star State.
“The experience was very valuable for all our guys, for sure,” Schiefer noted. Being able to play high-level competition got us ready for where we want to be.”
“In Texas, those teams were really sharp and didn’t make mistakes,” Compton added. “If we make mistakes, they answer back. We learned we have to play that type of baseball.”
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