Like the trip around the bases, what goes around comes back around. One night after Oregon (10-4, 1-1 Pac 12) let go of an eighth-inning lead that Arizona State (7-7, 1-1) would capitalize on, it was the Sun Devils turn on Saturday to give one up at the death. Clinging to a 4-3 advantage in the ninth, closer Cole Carlon couldn’t get the job done, as Jeffrey Heard smashed a go-ahead home run in the final frame to put the Ducks over the top, winning by a final of 6-4.
“Guys made a couple of good swings, and they beat us,” head coach Willie Bloomquist said postgame. “That’s the beauty of baseball and the heartbreak of baseball at the same time…They got us, and it’s a tough one to swallow. Had things lined up the way we wanted it to right there.”
On another night, when pitching led the way for Arizona State, Adam Behrens stepped into a spot start and performed as well as his coaches could’ve asked for. With usual Saturday starter Connor Markl being a late scratch, Behrens was given the ball in haste, and the freshman maneuvered through 4.1 innings calmly. Although bit for three runs, two of which came in his final inning of work, Behrens kept the Oregon hitters off balance to induce frequent weak contact. Not having a solidified role between spot starts and long relief, Bloomquist praised Behrens’s versatility and alertness in stepping up to the challenge on short notice.
“Wherever he’s going to be used, he just goes up and gets outs,” Bloomquist said. “‘Whatever you need, coach, I’m game.’ He did his job and kept us in the game there.”
Per Behrens himself, the collection of easyouts he put together was courtesy of his newest weapon, which aided his variety.
“I was messing around with a new changeup grip,” Behrens noted. “I felt like I was getting more drop out of it. Being able to throw every pitch for a strike when I can, too.”
As Behrens worked rather comfortably, ASU’s bats originally answered Bloomquist’s call for more production. Being bumped down to the five-spot in the order due to an uninspiring .220 batting average, veteran catcher Ryan Campos responded with a vengeance in the bottom of the second. Swinging early in the count on lefty Toby Twist, the junior launched a fastball over the right field wall to match Bryce Boettcher’s RBI single in the top half. Jax Ryan would give ASU the lead later in the frame, bringing in Compton on a fielder’s choice.
After a shutdown third from Behrens, the Sun Devils’ 2-1 lead ballooned to 4-1, as Nick McLain and Jacob Tobias crushed consecutive home runs. Each had separate value outside of the scoreboard, as McLain’s longball was his first of the campaign, while Tobias’s tank marked the end of a 1-16 slump on the Texas trip last week.
Behrens began to tire in the fifth as Anson Aroz took him deep over the center field wall in the fifth. Subsequently putting two runners on, Ben Jacobs would pick Behrens up out of the bullpen. Though Jacob Walsh was able to bring in another run and cut ASU’s lead to 4-3, Jacobs flipped the switch with five consecutive strikeouts to keep the Ducks where they were in the sixth and seventh.
Even with Jacobs’ stingy stuff, the Sun Devil bats couldn’t pour it on like fans had grown accustomed to in the initial games of the season. Then again, Oregon reliever Brock Moore chucking near triple-digit fastballs wasn’t the easiest task at the plate. Coming in for Twist to start the fifth, Moore didn’t allow a baserunner in his two innings of work. Though Bradley Mullan wasn’t as overpowering as his predecessor, Mullan’s unorthodox, pointed elbows delivery also threw Sun Devil hitters off as he kept them quiet in the seventh and eighth.
“He had a weird little arm thing,” Nick McLain observed. “Don’t know what that was.”
After Hunter Omlid tossed a scoreless eighth, Bloomquist had no hesitation in calling on Cole Carlon for the save after working two-thirds of a frame on Friday. With his stuff playing as usual, Carlon retired the first hitter of the ninth but surrendered a one-out double to Drew Smith, who advanced to third as the tying run on a passed ball in the next at-bat. As the pressure mounted, the diamond would form in Oregon’s Jeffrey Heard.
On a 1-0 count, Heard lifted a Carlon fastball to left-center, the deepest part of Phoenix Muni. What looked to be a sacrifice fly off the bat continued to carry, and ironically, on a night where the wind had knocked down long fly balls, the elements helped carry Heard’s hit just over the outstretched glove of Harris Williams and over the left field wall.
“These kids aren’t going to be perfect,” Bloomquist said of Carlon’s blown save. You just try to put them in the best situations when we can. It’s not going to be a perfect science; we just have to keep putting them in situations where they feel they can be successful. Cole’s been great in that situation so far. We had the guy we wanted coming in there in the ninth. Everything matched up exactly how we wanted it to. They got us.”
After the Ducks pushed across an insurance run following the dramatic dinger, the Sun Devils did put two on for McLain in the bottom half, but the switch-hitter got beat by Mullan’s outlandish delivery. McLain, searching for a fastball, got his wish but popped it up softly in the infield to kill any hope of a Sun Devil rally.
While Hard’s heroics will take the headlines, a Sun Devil offense that was producing over 10 runs per game prior to last weekend has now gone cold by their standards. For Bloomquist, the decline in devastation in the batter’s box is as much to blame for the loss as that one fateful pitch.
“We’re not getting as many baserunners as we were at the start of the year,” Bloomquist emphasized. “We swung the bats a little bit better tonight, ran into a few balls, the home runs were solo shots. We weren’t able to throw the knockout punch in there with guys on base. I’ll take the homers, sure, but it would be nice to get some more guys on base at the top of the order. That’s where we’ve been scuffling here these last few days.”
Staging one comeback of their own before being bitten by the same bug already this weekend, the Sun Devils and Ducks are set to finish up an entertaining series on Sunday at noon. Looking to get off on the right foot in conference play, Bloomquist reiterated the nature of the game, calling on his team to put it in the past and attack the next opportunity.
“That’s baseball sometimes,” Bloomquist concluded. “Can’t dwell on it, got to turn the page, sleep quick, and be ready to go tomorrow.”
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