(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
“Brandon Kipper just texted me and said, ’21-0… can we just take a knee?'” Oregon State play-by-play announcer Mike Parker said on Friday’s call of Arizona State Baseball and Oregon State.
The line sums up a night that ASU will want to block out of its head.
The game slipped out of the Sun Devils’ hands before they even stepped up to the plate.
Seven days ago, ASU junior left-handed pitcher Adam Tulloch ended his seven-inning start against San Francisco with three earned runs, 13 strikeouts and zero walks in 102 pitches. The glorious performance earned him Pac-12 Conference Pitcher of the Week before he entered his Friday matchup against the No. 5-ranked Beavers.
But Friday’s performance lasted just two-thirds of inning for Tulloch, where he allowed seven earned runs and five walks in 73 pitches. He was able to strike out two.
The uncharacteristic start from Tulloch was just the tip of the iceberg for the Sun Devils. A deep hole early snowballed into their worst loss in six years, as they dropped the series opener to the Beavers 21-0.
Entering the game, Tulloch had allowed nine walks in 25 innings pitched. Most notably, he had zero walks in his last start that cemented him as ASU’s ace. However, the Beavers’ offense, the best in the nation, humbled the left-hander quickly as it put runs on the scoreboard early.
The rare poor start from Tulloch started with an apparent lack of control as he couldn’t find the zone. The first three Oregon State batters got a walk, hit-by-pitch and another walk to load the bases for freshman infielder Travis Bazzana, who benefited from the strong Oregon winds and swung a ball that made it over the left-field wall to give Oregon State a 4-0 lead.
The Beavers scored four runs on one hit, which foreshadowed the ugly pitching for the Sun Devils that was to come. The second frame would be Tulloch’s last, as he would again load the bases for Bazzana in a deja vu moment. Bazzana would again capitalize with a two-RBI single, extending the Beavers’ lead to 6-0.
ASU senior right-hander Jacob Walker would relieve Tulloch to stop the bleeding and hoped to give ASU a glimpse of a comeback, but those dreams were dashed immediately. Walker was able to get out of the side, but the third inning saw a similar outcome as Tulloch, with the right-hander giving out free bases via walks to load the bases.
At the end of the third inning, the Beavers would respond with a single, triple and a double to explode the lead to an absurd 12-0. The fourth saw the third ASU pitcher of the game – sophomore left-hander Graham Osman – and again the Sun Devils walked the first two batters. They then gave up a single to load the bases.
Then, in an almost eerie turn of events, Bazzana again came up to the plate with the bases loaded – the third time in the game in only the fourth inning. Like his other at-bats, Bazzana was able to drive in two more runs for his eighth RBI of the game, which made it 14-0 Oregon State.
Simultaneously, ASU’s bats were on the total opposite side of the hitting spectrum. They were simply outclassed by the Beavers sophomore left-hander Cooper Hjerpe. The Beaver ace was locked in early, retiring the first eight ASU batters in dominating fashion. Hjerpe allowed only three baserunners during his time on the mound.
Hjerpe’s final stat line saw him allow one hit and two walks while punching out 12 in seven innings of work. The utter dominance by the Oregon State sophomore halted any hope for ASU. In another twist of irony, the Beavers’ last game was a 13-7 loss to Grand Canyon, where the Beavers didn’t record a single strikeout. On Friday, Oregon State watched Hjerpe fan 12 batters to end a sensational outing.
It wasn’t until the sixth inning that ASU didn’t allow a run in an inning, but it did load the bases for Oregon State before getting out of the situation clean. In what eventually became a tiring joke, Bazzana was up to bat for the Beavers with the bases loaded for the fourth time, but he couldn’t add to his eight-RBI night. He fell one short of tying the single-game RBI record for Oregon State.
The rest of the game saw the two clubs go through the motions of just trying to get the contest over with.
After the smoke cleared on the massacre, ASU faced 60 batters – walking 15 of them – and allowed 15 hits and 21 runs in 247 pitches. Oregon State hit 12-28 with runners in scoring position and left on 15 runners, which they didn’t need. The Sun Devils suffered their worst loss of the season, which barely beat their 19-3 loss to BYU, and also suffered their worst loss in six years.
