Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN
As Gage Workman smashed a 2-2 fastball back up the middle, driving in the Sun Devils 46th run of opening weekend, the fans, the coaches and players began to accept what they hope to be the team’s newest reality: high octane offense and emphatic wins. Whether it is too early to read in to or not remains to be seen. However, as the Devils head into their one-game stand against the University of San Diego, confidence, maturity and a winning attitude will certainly be permeating from the ASU dugout.
If you were to thumb through last year’s results, even the loftiest projections would not touch what happened against Notre Dame. The Devils put up 10 or more runs in every contest, scoring as many total runs in three games as they did in their first nine of the 2018 campaign.
While the run production was impressive, the Devils’ patience at the plate was even more awe-inspiring. Over the course of the weekend. ASU took 22 free passes, a number they needed eight games to get to last year.
That was opening weekend’s theme: improvements across the board.
“This is us maturing,” junior outfielder, Carter Aldrete said over the weekend. ” We have a lot of returners here and over the years we’ve had guys try and do too much.”
Thus, simplicity was the solution. The Devils made sure to watch pitches instead of swing at them and the results paid off. ASU saw 534 total deliveries from Notre Dame and manager Tracy Smith said that he “… can count on one hand the amount of times guys swung on balls out of the zone.”
That micro-triumph translated to macro-success, a trend ASU hopes to keep up heading into their one-game stint against the University of San Diego.
It may not be so easy.
Although not quite as forceful as Arizona State, the Toreros marginally won their opening weekend series against Wagner College, a small division-I school located in Staten Island, NY.
In their first and second games, USD put up 14 and 15 runs respectively and won the series finale 3-1. Aside from the nine runs allowed in game two, USD held the Wagner Seahawks scoreless in the series’ first contest and to just one run in the finale.
In their fourth game of the season, San Diego played Long Beach State, a storied program with some of the highest major league player production in all of college baseball. San Diego won the game 4-0.
For what it is worth, the two series for both teams, ASU and USD, were against less than formidable opponents. Notre Dame is a struggling program largely made up of underclassmen and Wagner is a small school from the NEC. Both ASU and San Diego took advantage and the proof is in the box score.
So, what does that mean for the two squads when they go head-to-head?
By the numbers, ASU is at a disadvantage when it comes to roster size. The Devils have 27 players on the team while San Diego will travel to Tempe with 36 guys locked and loaded. Of USD’s 36 players, 15 of them are pitchers compared to ASU’s 12.
But, what the Devils lack in roster size, they make up in power and offense. Spencer Torkelson will be coming off the Pac-12 Player of the Week award when he takes the field against the Toreros, with Aldrete and Hunter Bishop behind him with two home runs and one homer respectively.
At the top of the order, Trevor Hauver has been incredible. In the first three games of the season, he has walked eight times and has been on base in 10 of 16 plate appearances, good for an on-base percentage of .625.
The Devils’ problem against San Diego will be the pitching. Alec Marsh, Boyd Vander Kooi and RJ Dabovich, the team’s main rotation, are all unavailable for the Wednesday night showdown. Outside of those three, the Sun Devil pitching staff has done nothing to prove they are capable of shutting down a good offense. San Diego may be their first battle.
For the Devils, it will be their first test of reality. For the undefeated Toreros, it will be the same.
