For the majority of Friday evening, Arizona State was attempting to play catch up. ASU was playing catch up in the Pac-12 standings – where the Sun Devils entered the weekend a game and a half behind the 20th-ranked Cardinal. The Devils were playing catch up on the mound – where head coach Tracy Smith chose to go with a bullpen-heavy effort as Stanford sent its ace, Brendan Beck, to the bump. In trailing 3-0 and 5-3, Smith’s squad was playing catch up on the scoreboard, too.
It easily could’ve gotten away from Arizona State. On a night where Stanford took advantage of early pitching mistakes from the Sun Devils and sent two home runs well past the walls of Phoenix Municipal Stadium, redshirt freshman Christian Bodlovich kept things from getting ugly.
With Arizona State trailing 5-3 in the sixth inning, Bodlovich entered. With a run already in after Brock Peery opened the inning by allowing a solo home run to Brett Barrera, redshirt junior right-hander Brady Corrigan had just tried and failed to find his command, allowing a single and a walk to the only two Cardinal hitters he would face. Corrigan’s inability to clean things up forced the San Pedro, California, native into a bases-loaded jam with only one out in the inning.
“I truly thought that was the game,” said Smith, whose Sun Devils following the 9-5 win improved to 19-9 and 8-5 in Pac-12 play with the win. “You could even feel our dugout at the time – they could’ve broken it open, and we weren’t really hitting on all cylinders offensively, so we just felt like ‘gosh, if we can just keep it close.’”
Bodlovich did just that, avoiding any more damage against the Sun Devils by striking out sophomore Brock Jones – who’d previously sent a two-run home run over the building behind ASU’s bullpen – looking. With two outs, Bodlovich was able to get senior Christian Robinson to fly out to center field to end the Cardinal threat and keep the Sun Devils within two runs.
“I thought that honestly was the turning point of the game,” said Smith. “Him keeping it there gave us a chance to win.”
As the Arizona State bullpen worked to keep the score within striking distance; the offense worked to get Beck off the mound. The Stanford senior right-hander entered Friday night’s start with a 5-0 record in six starts in 2021. For six and two thirds innings, he worked his way through the Sun Devil lineup – allowing three runs in the third inning but avoiding any major trouble.
Upon Beck’s exit, the Arizona State offense came to life. With two outs in the seventh, the Sun Devils scored via a balk from Tommy O’Rourke, cutting the deficit to one. In the eighth inning, ten Sun Devils came to the plate, and five of them scored, with freshman Ethan Long delivering ASU’s first lead of the night – and the go-ahead runs – with a double to right center field.
“Going into the cage before the game, I was working on going to no-stride,” explained Long of his approach against Stanford’s Zach Grech, one of the most successful relievers in the Pac-12. “I knew if I had a stride off that guy, he’d beat me. I went in there knowing he’d try to challenge me with the fastball.”
The side-arm mechanics of Grech forced Long to look for a mistake in the upper portion of the zone. When Long got the pitch he was hoping for, he lined a double into the gap, opening the floodgates for the Arizona State offense. Grech entered the evening with a sub 1.25 ERA and the Sun Devils’ eighth-inning offensive outburst nearly doubled it, as ASU overwhelmed the Stanford bullpen on a night where hard-hit balls were coming often.
“We just came out swinging, so I knew we had a good chance to put up a bunch of runs,” said Long, citing some of the Sun Devils hard hit balls in the first inning. “I knew right (when Bodlovich escaped the sixth) that we were winning this game. Our bats were hot; we just hadn’t been scoring when we needed to, so I knew once he shut it down that we were going to come back and win.”
The frequently-used Sun Devil bullpen outlasted the Cardinal when the same was asked of them, as a hard-hitting night from the Sun Devil bats exploded for six unanswered runs to end the contest. Smith told reporters following the win that the staff elected to spot-start redshirt freshman Graham Osman in order to give redshirt sophomore Tyler Thornton another day or two of rest.
“We have a good staff this year of guys not caring when they throw,” explained Bodlovich of ASU’s success in another bullpen-dictated game. “That’s something that (pitching coach Jason Kelly) always talks about. The situation shouldn’t dictate how you approach pitching, and I think that’s something we do a good job with.”
On consecutive weekends the Sun Devils have earned momentum-shifting wins on Friday night, something redshirt freshman Joe Lampe said is key to their success in the weeks to come.
“I think the biggest thing is that we’re getting these wins in Pac-12 play,” said Lampe following a 2-for-2 performance with an RBI and a walk. A week prior, the Devils won in Seattle, grabbing a victory in a 16-inning marathon against Washington. “It shows that we can play with anyone in the PAC, and it’s ours to lose. I think we’re bonding as a unit at an all-time high right now.”
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McClain’s hitting streak dies in win
Sean McClain’s 23-game hitting streak – the third-longest such streak at ASU since 1998 – came to an end Friday night. The redshirt freshman reached base in the first inning via a walk but finished the night going 0-for-3 at the plate. McClain’s performance drops his batting average back below .400.
