(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
In need of a series win, the Arizona State baseball team traveled North to No. 2 Stanford’s Klein Field at Sunken Diamond, but left Northern California without a win, as the Cardinal swept the three-game weekend.
Alec Marsh delivered a quality start to open things up Friday, throwing six innings of three-run ball, but Stanford starter Tristan Beck proved to be too much for the ASU offense, as he pitched seven shutout innings, allowing only five hits.
Dellan Raish, Jake Godfrey and Brady Corrigan were able to collectively hold the Cardinal scoreless, but the Devils’ offense was tasked with facing closer Jack Little, who despite allowing his first run of the season in the eighth inning, held the lead en route to a 3-1 victory.
Saturday’s game started on a very different tune, as Spencer Torkelson continued his hot hitting, blasting a solo home run in the top of the first to give ASU an early lead. A Taylor Lane double in the fourth inning plated two more, giving starter Sam Romero an additional lead, pushing the score to 3-0.
On the weekend, Torkelson went 4-11 with two walks to go along with three runs scored.
“He’s a smart hitter, he can take what you give him,” Smith said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re providing him protection behind him, so other guys need to do their job behind him so he gets some pitches to hit … he’ll take the walks when you give theme to him, which is production. It’s not quite a home run, but it’s still getting on base and trusting the guy behind you.”
Through the first five innings, Romero kept Stanford out of the hit column, before allowing two runs on two extra-base hits that led off the sixth inning.
After those two hits, the junior right-hander recorded six straight outs before Tracy Smith gave way to Chaz Montoya two batters into the eighth inning.
While ASU scored an additional run in the eighth on Torkelson’s second home run of the game, the bottom of the eighth inning of Saturday’s game was the difference in that contest. The Cardinal pushed across nine runs on five hits, three walks, a hit batter and an error. It took three pitchers for the Devils to get out of the inning, an inning capitalized by Andrew Daschbach’s grand slam that came on a 3-1 pitch that moved the score in favor of Stanford from 4-4 to 8-4.
Sam Romero and Chaz Montoya both issued walks before Jake Godfrey entered the game and after Godfrey came in, Gage Workman committed a costly error, letting a routine ball go through his legs that scored the game-tying run and brought Daschbach to the plate.
“It seems like any time we do those things, it kind of snowballs on us a little bit,” Smith said. “It got away from us. If we even hold it to one or two there, at least give yourself a chance. But that’s not the first time, it’s a lot of trouble, we’ve had a lot of trouble with those last six outs of the game.”
While Workman drove a two-run homer beyond the right field fence in the ninth inning, the Cardinal offense in the half inning prior was insurmountable as ASU fell 11-6.
“I thought for darn near the entire game we dominated that game yesterday,” Smith said. “We just coughed it up and gave it away at the end.”
The Devils counted on senior Eli Lingos Sunday afternoon, just over a week removed from the southpaw’s worst outing of the season, as he allowed eight runs on nine hits in just 4.1 innings last Saturday against USC.
Lingos received early run support like Romero did Saturday, as a Gage Canning third inning double plated Alika Williams and Hunter Bishop. However, the Devils lost that lead quickly, as Stanford scored three runs in both the third and fourth inning, with Daschbach hitting his second homer of the weekend, a two-run shot in the third.
The Cardinal didn’t look back, as they went on to score 4 more runs in the game. ASU added one in the eighth on a Torkelson groundout, but could not climb back, falling 10-3 for the sweep.
“My disappointment today was with the lack of fight,” Smith said. “For the first time in a long time and maybe even for the first time this season, I thought we just kind of rolled over and gave in to the circumstances of the first couple of games. That’s the biggest disappointment for me, not fighting and battling until that last out.”
While ASU could not pull out a victory in Palo Alto, they left having not needed many bullpen innings, as all three starting pitchers went at least six innings.
Although the Devils only needed 4.1 innings from their relievers, they relied on six different pitchers to get the job done over the three days, a sign of continued inconsistency in that department.
“We’re asking a lot of those guys, I think it’s just unfortunate that we’re not having any consistency coming behind them, we’re asking them to go deeper,” Smith said. “But you can’t fault them, they compete and give their team a chance to win, we just have not put it together for any sort of consistency.”
That consistency was a critical part of the weekend sweep, as ASU could not play consistent baseball at any point. On Friday, timely hitting was absent On Saturday, an untimely error caused a snowball effect that led to struggles out of the bullpen and Sunday, defense struggled once more.
“We’ve seemed to make that mistake or whatever in the critical time of the game and I just think that’s confidence or lack thereof to experience winning and get the job done, which we haven’t with any sort of consistency,” Smith said. We’ve got a lot of baseball left, so we’ve got to figure it out.”
Exactly halfway through Pac-12 play, the Sun Devils have six weeks to try and get back close to .500. Next weekend, ASU welcomes in Utah for three games beginning Friday.
