ASU Baseball: Defense and pitching depth continue to trouble ASU

(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)

The Arizona State Sun Devils lost the series and their second straight game to the Washington Huskies Sunday afternoon after a close 7-6 game that came down to the final out.

The Huskies got off to a hot start, producing five runs in the first four innings of the game.

“We have not played well defensively and I think that caught up to us today and in my opinion led to the first four runs,” ASU head coach Tracy Smith said following the loss.

Four of those five runs were split between the second and third inning where two costly defensive miscues occurred.

In the second inning, with runners on first and second, freshman outfielder Hunter Jump dove for a fly ball to right-center field that fell out of his glove and directly led to one run scoring and advanced a runner to third base, a runner who later came around to score.

Then, in the third inning, left fielder Taylor Lane mishandled a routine fly ball that put runners on first and second, runners that both later scored in the inning.

“I think we know what our weakness is and has been all year,” Smith said, referring to the defense.

ASU has 66 errors in conference play this season. No other team in the Pac-12 has 50 yet thus far.

Many have come from the young infield of freshmen Gage Workman, Alika Williams, Drew Swift and Spencer Torkelson, as well as sophomores Carter Aldrete and Lyle Lin. Those six players have accounted for 48 of ASU’s 66 errors this season.

While the defense has struggled, the offense has kept pace all season and continued to do that all weekend against Washington. The inconsistant defense and lack of depth from their pitching staff prevented a series victory, continuing a common theme.

While some, including Alec Marsh, Dellan Raish and Eli Lingos have stepped up, few have been able to produce many productive innings, making it hard for Smith to go deep into the bullpen.

“We need to get better on the mound,” Smith said. “The name of the game and the way to lose baseball games is by the pitching and the defense. That’s the stuff that has to get better so it doesn’t surprise me that we can continue to put pressure on them offensively, I’m just disappointed because we’re asking a lot of our offense to play around the miscues defensively and it caught up to us today.”

The expectations Sun Devil baseball had coming into the season will certainly not be accomplished, but Smith knows that his team’s path to improvement has to start now.

“Some of it is inexperience, some of it is lack of concentration, some of it maybe be that’s just who they are. So we got to get better at it through development and recruiting.”