ARLINGTON, Tex. - If one had told Willie Bloomquist that Texas A&M (10-0), the seventh-best team in the country per D1Baseball, would notch just four hits on Friday night, he’d be pretty confident that he would’ve walked out of Globe Life Field victoriously. However, his usually explosive lineup could not even light the match, as the Sun Devils (5-4) managed just two hits in a 4-0 loss to the Aggies.
Having held their opponents to 10 runs in as many games, Texas A&M proved why against a dynamic Sun Devil lineup that came into Globe Life Field averaging nearly ten runs per contest. Usual Friday starter Ryan Prager took the bump and made mincemeat of the ASU order from his first pitch to his last. Threw five shutout innings, Prager’s work would be enough comfort for early home runs off the bats of Braden Montgomery and Hayden Schott to hold up for the win.
“They kept us off balance,” Bloomquist said of the A&M pitching. “Two hits on our end, both by a freshman, that’s not really acceptable. We’re way better than two hits.”
Dominating on the east-west plane, Prager’s mix of late-ride fastballs and sweeping sliders had a fearsome array of Sun Devil hitters bewildered. Aside from a walk to Nick McLain in the right fielder’s first at-bat this season, Prager worked through the first three innings without surrendering a hit while notching four strikeouts.
After an easy first for Prager, freshman Thomas Burns took the hill on surely the most significant stage the Wisconsinite had ever seen. At the center of the home of the World Series champions, going up against the No. 7 team in the country, Burns came out unsettling with a pair of walks. To make matters worse, star two-way player Braden Montgomery would launch a three-run shot over the left field wall, putting Burns three runs down before he could record an out.
“Thomas wasn’t as sharp as normal tonight,” Bloomquist noted. “He was a little bit sped up walking the first two hitters, didn’t help calm him down giving up the three-run homer three hitters into the game. There were times he settled down and threw good pitches, and sometimes he showed a little bit of getting rattled.”
The free bases Burns allowed prior to the Montgomery home run would serve as a prelude to what was to come. With a pro-Aggie crowd loud from the start, Burns would wind up walking six in his four innings of work, much different than the hard-throwing strikes shown at Phoenix Municipal Stadium the last two weekends.
Even with his fastball noticeably down a couple of ticks and his breaking balls dull, Burns was able to limit the damage. Aside from a wall-scraping home run by Caden Sorrell in the second, Burns would navigate in and out of jams to hold a stacked A&M lineup to just four runs on three hits through the first four frames.
“Six walks is uncharacteristic of him,” Bloomquist continued. “To his credit, he responded and hung in there. That’s a good learning experience for him. Not his best performance by any means tonight, but he was at least able to hang in there for four (innings).”
While Burns kept the deficit manageable and himself in the game for the time he was after plunking Montgomery twice, three brilliant innings of relief from Ryan Schiefer behind him kept it that way. Prager and the A&M arms would continue to extinguish any hope the ASU offense had of getting back in the game. Pulled after the fifth, Prager would notch eight punchouts while scattering only three baserunners to shun the Sun Devils offensively.
Fittingly, the lone bright spots in the box came from freshman infielder Ethan Mendoza. A Texas native with plenty of family in the stands, Mendoza would pick up both ASU hits with a double in the fifth and a single in the eighth.
Stranded both times, Mendoza and his early swings in both instances would be the outlier of a quiet offensive day that didn’t see a single runner advance to third base.
“We didn’t do a good job of taking advantage of some breaking balls up in the zone,” Bloomquist recalled. “We let some go for strikes; I thought we were a little passive on that. We had some pitches to hit, and we didn’t capitalize.”
Even after Prager’s day ended, left-hander Evan Aschenbeck didn’t make life easier for the Sun Devils. Working all corners of the zone, the senior from Brenham allowed just one baserunner (Mendoza single), grabbing for strikeouts on a 75 percent strike rate en route to a four-inning save.
“We left the bats on the plane,” Bloomquist said. “We’ll have to get those out tomorrow, hopefully, and get them going.”
While the aura of Globe Life Field and a storied program like Texas A&M added to a heightened environment, Bloomquist believes his team had the chance to step into the moment rather than let themselves be intimidated, thus possibly mixing into the recipe for defeat.
“This should be a moment that’s exciting for these guys to go out and show what they have,” Bloomquist emphasized.” If we clammed up, that’s too bad. This is a great opportunity for these guys to come out and shine.
Nonetheless, there are still two more chances at a head-turning victory this weekend. With No. 5 TCU on deck Saturday, Bloomquist believes there’s optimism to be had after staying within one-swing range of Texas A&M all night long.
“The message is pretty simple,” Bloomquist started. “We pitched it not very well to start the game; we didn’t swing it at all, walked six guys, hit two, and lost by four runs. We were a couple of hits away from being right in that game. From that standpoint, it’s encouraging. Certainly didn’t swing the bats and were right in the game. We’re not far off, got to get better at a few things, and come out with a better offensive approach tomorrow and play more to our style of play.”
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