(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
On a 1-2 curveball diving sharply into the Dedeaux Field dirt, Hunter Bishop swung hard and missed harder. He walked back into the dugout, put his bat down and unleashed a frustrated punch into the stomach of the blue Powerade cooler nearest the bench’s side wall.
Bishop’s punch into an object that felt nothing from it was harmless yet symbolic. It was a gut punch, a release of disappointment and frustration and a physical representation of the last two games for the Sun Devils: frustrating and dismantling losses, they were gut punches.
The USC Trojans entered Friday night’s contest seven games below .500. A four-run win for them against the number seven ranked Sun Devils was improbable, the odds were preemptively stacked against them. But nine innings, 14 hits and 10 runs after the first pitch was thrown allowed the improbable to happen. The Trojan (11-17, 4-6) took game one from the Sun Devils (25-3, 8-2) by a final score of 10-6.
The game’s result was simple, a loss. But, the path to get there was a winding and long road filled with sloppy defense and poor pitching. It was a loss not to be blamed on the bats but one sitting squarely on the shoulders of fielding reminiscent of last year and pitching reminiscent of the last three games.
“I don’t think tonight came down to the way we swung the bat,” assistant coach Ben Greenspan said. “We swung the bats well enough to win. I think everything tonight came down to the defense and the pitching.”
The pitching was headed up by a face that meant consistency. Over his previous 48 innings, Alec Marsh was untouchable, pitching to the tune of a .094 ERA and making the midseason All-American First Team. It had been two months of glory.
But, on Friday night with the wind pushing cool air from left to right field, Marsh gave up more runs than he had on any night since April of 2017. Two years later, it was costly history.
Marsh’s eight earned run showing was the partner in the Sun Devil defense’s crime.
Sam Ferri uncharacteristically had an abysmal night behind the plate where he collected two costly errors that allowed runs to score.
“You look around the diamond and we made a lot of mistakes,” Greenspan said. “Take out one or two guys and I think just about everybody made a mistake out there. Those are guys capable of playing better defensively.”
But, over the Devils’ last three games, their defensive capabilities and their skills on the mound have been tucked away somewhere hidden, a place seemingly unreachable for Tracy Smith and his team.
Over the last 27 innings, ASU has surrendered 40 runs paired with eight errors. Eight errors covers 22 percent of the team’s 36 total defensive blunders on the season. 22 percent in just three days.
They have been three days spent staring directly into a crystal clear mirror with last year’s results, a high octane offense and a defense that could not keep up, staring right back.
“It’s a little lack of focus,” Greenspan said. “I think we have good players that are capable of making all those plays and so I think sometimes that stuff snowballs a little bit.”
The hope for Smith and his Sun Devils is certainly that this metaphorical snowball has hit the end of the mountain. As the last few days have implied, nothing other than it has and will keep rolling.
But, according to Greenspan who spoke instead of Smith, the end of the mountain and thus the rolling of the snowball is something only the team can control.
“Keep two feet in today,” Greenspan said of the necessary approach to getting back on track. “Today is the most important game of the season. This is (the player’s) team. We’ve been saying that since they won and we say it when they lose. It’s your team, take ownership.”
So, after 28 games in a 55 game season, the Devils will need to get back on their horse and create a barrier for the snowball that has rapidly and disappointingly rolled down the mountain.
Whether it’s the relief pitching, the defense or the man on the mound, ownership of the past and a laser focus on the present are the only things that can do that. If they don’t, the present may start to look eerily like the team’s ugly past.
